New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has become the latest leader to fall victim to a hot microphone, after her comment that the leader of a minor opposition party was an “arrogant prick” was picked up and broadcast on parliament television.
During question time in the house on Tuesday, the leader of the libertarian Act party, David Seymour, asked Ardern if she could “give an example of her making a mistake, apologising for it properly, and fixing it”.
Responding to the question, Ardern acknowledged that managed isolation – a key, but controversial, component of New Zealand’s Covid-19 response – had been difficult on the public, but added she stood by the work the government had done over the past term.
After ending her reply, Ardern sat down next to her deputy, Grant Robertson, and quietly said “such an arrogant prick”.
But Ardern’s microphone was still live at the time, with the comment just audible as the voice of Adrian Rurawhe – the speaker of the house – called for the next question.
Seymour later petitioned the speaker to have Ardern withdraw the remark and apologise, but Rurawhe declined because the prime minister was no longer in the house, and he had not seen if the remark was noted in Hansard.
A spokesperson from the prime minister’s office confirmed that Ardern had since apologised to Seymour.
Speaking to media after parliament, Seymour said “some days I am a useless Māori, others days I am an arrogant prick.”
“The apology we are really looking for is for New Zealanders worried about rising prices and ram raids.”
He said Ardern had texted him to say sorry.
“[She] said ‘I apologise, it’s not something I should have said and she said, as my mum would say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it’,” Seymour said.
“I agree with the sentiment and it is all good as far as I am concerned. I just said, thank you and I hope you have a very merry Christmas. At the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world.”
US president Joe Biden and South Korea president Yoon Suk-yeol have also recently been caught out swearing on a live mic.
In January, Biden appeared to think his microphone was off when he called a Fox News reporter, Peter Doocy, “a stupid son of a bitch” for asking a question about inflation.
Biden has also been on the receiving end of salty language caught on a hot-mic. In September, after speaking with the US president at the United Nations general assembly in New York, Suk-yeol was caught saying: “How could Biden not lose face if these fuckers do not pass it in Congress?”
He was referring to an attempt to increase the US contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
