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NEW ZEALAND Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won a second term in office on Saturday in a historic landslide election victory for the Labour Party.
It became the first party to win an outright majority in the New Zealand parliament since proportional representation was introduced 24 years ago.
Labour won a stunning 49 per cent of the vote, compared with just 27 per cent for its nearest rival, the conservative National Party, giving it 64 seats in parliament.
“This has not been an ordinary election, and it’s not an ordinary time. It’s been full of uncertainty and anxiety, and we set out to be an antidote to that,” she said to supporters in Auckland.
“We are living in an increasingly polarised world, a place where, more and more, people have lost the ability to see one another’s point of view,” she said.
“I think in this election, New Zealanders have shown that this is not who we are.”
Ms Ardern won plaudits for her response to the twin mosque shootings last year in which 51 people were killed.
Her handling of coronavirus included an early lockdown, followed by a second in August and has seen New Zealand effectively deal with the outbreak.