How Marie Ardern got her niece Jacinda into politics

On a sunny but rainy Saturday, perched on a set of stairs in front of a 200 supporters and fifty-odd pub crawling pirates, Jacinda Ardern told New Plymouth this was where it all began.

Not her campaign - that was hastily put together in Wellington and launched in Auckland. Not her either - as we've all been told a thousand times, she's the daughter of a cop from Morrinsville. But her politics, this is where that all started.

Why? Because of her aunt Marie Ardern.

"She was sixteen or seventeen, and she didn't know where to go, which area to study in school, and she mentioned politics. So I said 'there just happens to be a wee campaign happening down here - come down and I'll teach you a little about politics."

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Marie Ardern is a longstanding member of party, and got the teenaged Jacinda in touch with local Labour MP Harry Duynhoven, who would soon be running for re-election in the 1999 campaign.

Immediately Ardern became the volunteer coordinator, and it was this link with Duynhoven - who remembers her as a very good door knocker - that got her foot in the door at Phil Goff's office as a fill-in secretary, and later on as an advisor to Helen Clark herself.

Marie is sitting across from me and Ardern herself in a bustling cafe in New Plymouth, so she kind of has to say nice things. I ask her if anything has changed about Ardern between then and now.

"Just the same dear. Exactly the same. Doesn't matter whether you are up there or down there, she's treat you exactly the same."

It's been yet another rollercoaster week for Ardern. A Newshub/Reid Research poll put her way behind National early in the week before a One News/Colmar Brunton one said they were ahead a few days later. And in her biggest about-face as leader yet she dropped her right to act on the recommendations of her tax working group before the next election, acknowledging the need to take any new tax to the public before enacting it.

None of this shows as she walks into the cheering crowds of a mall, the vast Govett Brewster art gallery, or in the cafe as she changes her order from fritters to a small serving of avocado and feta on toast.

"I constantly have snacks in my handbag so I don't do too badly," she assures her worried aunt.

I ask if it ever does get draining - meeting the hundreds of people every day, hearing constant stories of woe, and having to speak through a grin the entire time.

No, she says, and reels off three people she's met in the last few days in dire situations.

"For these people this isn't just casting a vote this is the difference of us dramatically changing the situation they are in," Ardern says.

"A woman I just spoke to who is raising three kids on her own she just wants to know if things are going to be different."

I ask if, now with the tax policy pushed forward to 2020, she has any regrets about the campaign so far.

"My mantra is 'no regrets'," she repeats.

"I know that through this you take some risks, and some will say that my commitment to undertaking that tax working group work was a risk, but I felt such urgency about that - and I still do."

Ardern was once part of a socialist youth organisation but now calls herself simply a "progressive". She told RNZ earlier this week that neoliberalism has failed but still believes in the power of the market to do many things, including tackle climate change via the Emissions Trading Scheme.

She rebuffs most of the questions I ask about how she developed her politics by simply saying they haven't changed from when she was a kid.

"I always wanted to help people, and I realised politics was the way to do that."

Did her views harden in university? Or high school? Not according to her, no.

She's also very good at batting away questions about whether her male critics are laying into her more as a woman.

Gareth Morgan said she was lipstick on a pig. Mathew Hooton describes her as New Zealand's Sarah Palin. Peter Dunne said Labour needed more than a smile and a wave.

Plenty of people have gotten outraged on her behalf, but she's remained completely above the fray - and won't even comment on whether she thinks the insults are gendered.

I ask if she really thinks she would get the same treatment if she was called James Ardern, or whether she's just avoiding talking gender politics at all for fear of scaring off the male vote.

"There's a certain amount of bandwidth that people have for politics, and I don't want to waste it," she replies.

The strategy of course makes total sense. The media will get outraged on behalf. She can just keep talking about hospital wait times and house prices - anything but tax, really.

Veteran MP Annette King is sitting across from us chiming in when appropriate. I ask if this election feels anything like 1999, when Helen Clark swept to power. She says it is more like 1984.

"I remember walking down the main street of Levin with David Lange and everyone just wanting to come out and have a chat with him. It's like that with her, only more selfies."