The Prime Minister has come to the end of her 6 weeks maternity leave. Winston Peters, who was the acting Prime Minister while she was on leave, flew out of New Zealand at midnight last night to Singapore for meetings. He is the Foreign Minister. Ms Ardern is now back as Prime Minister. She lives in Auckland but will travel to Wellington on Saturday with her baby, Neve, and her partner Clarke Gayford. They will settle in Premier House which is owned by the government and is for the use of the Prime Minister. The family will possibly stay in Wellington for a few weeks to allow the baby to settle in a familiar home. Mr Gayford will be the main carer of the baby but Ms Ardern is still breast feeding so she won’t be far away.
In an interview with Ms Ardern, she was asked if she feels ready to go back to work. She said, “Absolutely, I am ready.” Although she has been keeping up with the paper work but she said her colleagues have been very generous in taking on extra work that she would normally do. She said her time with her baby has been wonderful although a lot of the time has been involved in mundane things like feeding and changing nappies.
She knows that many people around the world have been interested in how she is managing and she says she understands the interest because at the moment it is very unusual for a Prime Minister to give birth but she thinks in the future it will not be so unusual. What about the public wanting to see the baby often? She understands that privacy will be difficult, people are naturally interested, but baby Neve did not ask to be a public figure so the family will try to keep her out of the public eye as much as possible.
Vocabulary
• mundane – ordinary, boring jobs that we all need to do like cleaning
• the public eye – this is an idiom