The former leader is leaving the political arena this week, giving a valedictory speech on Wednesday as she ends a 15-year political career.

On Tuesday, she gave her last media engagements, a pair of long-form television interviews to New Zealand’s two broadcasters, TVNZ and Newshub.

She looked forward, revealing two new jobs as she begins her post-political life.

The 42-year-old will continue her work countering online extremism as NZ’s special envoy for the Christchurch Call, while also taking up a board seat on Prince William’s conservation project, the Earthshot Prize.

For most of the interviews, Ardern looked backwards at her five and a half years in the top job.

As she noted during her shock resignation announcement in January, that period covered NZ’s worst modern-day mass shooting, the White Island volcanic eruption, the pandemic and resulting economic fallout.

“There’s never really been a moment where it’s ever felt like we were just governing,” she said.

While NZ achieved one of the best health and economic responses across the pandemic, the measures needed to achieve those results frustrated and mobilised a fringe element against her government and her personally.

In February 2022, that came to a head outside parliament when protesters occupied the parliamentary precinct, blocking roads, camping on lawns and holding daily rallies where they called on the prime minister to resign, be tried, or hanged.

Ardern said that toxic culmination of resentment towards her government’s Covid-19 policies, including lockdowns and mandates, was “incredibly hard”.

“It was extraordinarily difficult. And if I have a lowlight, it was that for a group of people to reach that point,” she said.

“Everyone had worked so hard on unity through Covid and to see to see us reach that point … it was awful.

“We were working hard to get the highest rates of vaccination possible to save people’s lives. And we did. Was that a hard path? Absolutely.”

Ardern said she would watch the protest over its three weeks from her office on level nine of the Beehive and find compassion.

“Ultimately we were trying to make sure people were safe. I kept telling myself looking out that window, ‘That’s what they are doing, too. In their heart of hearts, everyone thought they were doing the right thing by New Zealand’.”

In the interviews, Ardern discussed her response to the Christchurch Mosque attacks, combining parenting with high office, and her record on child poverty, climate change and more.

Her response hangs heavy from her final interview, conducted by TVNZ stalwart John Campbell.

As they discuss Ardern’s official photo joining the ranks of former prime ministers on parliament’s walls, she remarks that soon “the only thing that will remain is that picture and how I made people feel”.

Campbell asks the outgoing Labour leader how she feels, receiving a one-word response so breathy and soft it can barely be heard.

“Tired,” Ardern says.