Former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern joins Kiwi exodus to Australia

By Ainsley Thomson

 

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her family are relocating to Australia, becoming the most high-profile addition to a growing wave of Kiwis moving across the Tasman.

 

After spending much of her time overseas since her 2023 resignation, Ardern and her family now plan to base themselves in Australia, a spokesman said. Australian media earlier reported that Ardern, 45, her husband Clarke Gayford and their daughter Neve were seen house hunting in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

 

“They have work there, and it brings the added bonus of more time back home in New Zealand,” the spokesman said in a statement Thursday.

 

 

Ardern is one of hordes of Kiwis who have moved to Australia in recent months. Official data released earlier this month showed more than 60,000 New Zealand citizens left the country in 2025, with 61 per cent headed across the Tasman.

 

This exodus will be a key issue in New Zealand’s November general election, with many moving to Australia in search of higher wages and a better standard of living — intensifying pressure on lawmakers to make New Zealand more competitive and attractive.

 

Since her shock resignation, Ardern has spent most of her time in the US, taking up dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also on the board of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, and last year released her memoir A Different Kind of Power.

 

Ardern rose to power in 2017 on a wave of adulation dubbed “Jacinda-mania.” That was again in evidence in 2020, when she led the Labour Party to a 50 per cent share of the vote at the height of the Covid pandemic, an unprecedented victory under the current electoral system.

 

In 2018 she became just the second world leader to give birth in office, after former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

 

After an extremist went on a shooting spree at two mosques in the South Island city of Christchurch in March 2019, killing 51 and injuring dozens more, an image of Ardern wearing a headscarf as she mourned with families of the victims went around the world and helped to ease outrage in Muslim nations.

 

Still, her brand of leadership proved divisive in New Zealand, particularly over some of her government’s Covid vaccination and lockdown measures. Mounting cost-of-living pressures during her second term also added to her unpopularity among some New Zealanders.

 

When she quit politics in 2023, she said it was because she didn’t have the energy or inspiration to seek re-election.

 

“I have given my absolute all to being prime minister but it has also taken a lot out of me,” she said at the time. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple.”