Tim Donner: Trump Scorecard - Hits and Misses of 2025

This year has made the president's first four years look like a mere dress rehearsal.

After spending the year implementing his audacious agenda at a frenetic pace, we might have thought Donald Trump would at least take a break on Christmas Day. Perhaps he would sit back for a moment and reflect on his extraordinary volume of executive and legislative initiatives and limit his engagement to missives wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. But of course, that would be totally out of character for a president who barely sleeps and treats each day in office as if it were his last. So Trump took to Truth Social and posted more than 100 times, in between dropping bombs on ISIS in Nigeria.

David Farrar: A small but good law change

Radio NZ reports:

The government is proposing to amend alcohol legislation so restaurants with on-site retail spaces can sell take-home booze.

The amendment to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act would mean restaurants can apply for an off-licence, if they also sell takeaway food or non-alcoholic beverages prepared by the business.

Andrew Moran: 2025 Was the Worst Year for Climate Alarmism

Even Bill Gates abandoned the charade this year.

Since former Vice President Al Gore fooled the world with An Inconvenient Truth two decades ago, climate alarmism has kicked into overdrive. Over the years, politicians and bureaucrats around the globe have committed to spending trillions of taxpayer dollars and making your life as miserable as possible to prevent the Arctic ice caps from melting. Some of the younger generations aren’t even having children because the planet is dying or something. But it turns out that conditions are not as dire as the doomers said.

John Robertson: New Zealand’s Colonization Obsession Is Historically Illiterate

By 2025, New Zealand’s public discourse has hardened into something resembling a ritual: colonization is invoked, rehearsed, and recycled with near‑religious regularity, as if repeating the word itself constitutes historical insight. What began decades ago as a necessary reckoning has metastasized into a narrow, obsessive framework that treats colonization not as a universal human process, but as a uniquely modern moral crime—conveniently stripped of global context, scale, and historical precedent. This is not serious history. It is ideological repetition dressed up as moral sophistication.

Professor Alexander Gillespie: NZ report card 2025 - how the country fared in 28 key global and domestic rankings

Standardised testing and regular progress assessment became key features of the education system this year, so why not apply those same principles to New Zealand as a whole?

There’s an important difference here, of course. This exercise is about prompting discussion and debate, and should be read with a degree of caution. The metrics tell us only so much – but it’s still possible to trace the nation’s ups and downs.

Matua Kahurangi: Māori poverty pays very well if you run the trust

If you’re on X, you may have seen a report by independent journalist Nick Shirley into Somali-run daycare centres in Minneapolis. According to the investigation, these centres received staggering sums of public money despite reportedly having no enrolled children. The 42-minute video has racked up around 84 million views on x since it was posted on 26 December. That does not happen by accident. It happens because people recognise a scandal when they see one.

David Farrar: Little support from Māori for TPM leader and deputies

Radio NZ reports on a poll of 328 Maori, which asked about Te Pati Maori. They asked who should lead TPM, and the current leaders did not come out well. They got:

Insights From Social Media: Politicising Santa - When Even Myth Must Kneel

Colinxy writes > This essay follows my earlier piece, The Marxist Imperative: Politicise Everything, where I argued that the modern ideological project has no natural boundaries. It expands, metastasises, and colonises every available cultural space. Nothing is allowed to remain neutral, shared, or simply fun. Everything must be interrogated, problematised, and, ultimately, politicised.

Right on schedule, Brighton and Hove Museums have stepped forward to demonstrate the principle in action. In a blog post, the museum declared that Father Christmas is “too white,” “too patriarchal,” and in urgent need of “decolonisation”. His famous naughty‑and‑nice list, we are told, is a “Western binary” that reinforces “cultural superiority” and “colonial assumptions”[i]. Santa, apparently, is not merely a jolly gift-giver but an emissary of empire.

Tuesday December 30, 2025 

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Patrick Carroll, Dan Sanchez: Individualism - A Deeply American Philosophy

In just a few short centuries, the philosophy of individualism has radically reshaped how we relate to one another.

What Is Individualism?

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” -Henry David Thoreau

Are you an individualist? To some extent, you probably are, whether you realize it or not. After all, individualism is baked into American culture.

Kristian Guise: Wealth Tax - A Simplistic Answer to Complex Problems

A wealth tax would be immoral and impractical.

Recently, great interest has been paid to ideas of a British wealth tax. Britain’s struggling finances have caused eyewatering tax rises and seen the rise of the Green Party whose policy is to tax wealth.

A wealth tax is a direct tax on the value of an individual’s total net assets at a certain point in time. These assets include vehicles, jewelry, artwork/antiques, savings/investments, cash, property, intellectual property, and businesses. Such a tax would be catastrophic, as I will show.

John Stossel: The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism (Myths Explained)

People find fault with capitalism. Many think they’d prefer socialism.

Why? Because they believe absurd myths about it.

Click to View

From BreakingViews archives: Barend Vlaardingerbroek - Contextualising the persecution of Christians

Freedom of religious belief is a fundamental human right. It stems from the freedom to hold and express one’s own opinions. This principle is one that all of us – religious and non-religious alike – should be able to agree upon.

It is worrisome, therefore, to come across reports of the persecution of people for reasons of religious identity. Whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan or whatever, nobody should be persecuted because of religious belief. The Bishop of Truro’s Independent Review for the Foreign Secretary of FCO Support for Persecuted Christians (full report due later this year – see “Christian persecution 'at near genocide levels'”, BBC News, 3 May 2019), which warns that Christianity may be “wiped out” in parts of the world, including the Middle East, should accordingly set the alarm bells ringing.

From BreakingViews archives: Brian Gill - Who promotes science thinking when everyone defers to culture?

With New Zealand science agencies shy to push the general power and wonder of science, and instead applauding ethnic world views, the science view-point flounders.

The seven University of Auckland academics whose letter to the Listener in July 2021 provoked what a former newspaper editor called "the full, vindictive fury of the woke academic left", weren't just concerned that a government educational working group proposed making science and Maori knowledge of the natural world equivalent in the school science curriculum. They also worried generally about "disturbing misunderstandings of science emerging at all levels of education and in science funding".

From BreakingViews Archives: Bob Jones - Colonialism Nonsense

Try and imagine the carry-on in Britain if its government announced special privileges for the original Anglo-Saxon and Celt citizens.

Nearly 40% of today’s Brits are of non-traditional ethnicity. Take those of Indian ethnicity. They have the highest educational standards of all Britain’s diverse ethnicities. They also have the highest incomes and are the least likely to be in prison. The current cabinet is dominated by Indian ethnics, many of four generations back and most pundits are picking the current, (Indian ethnic) Chancellor as Boris’s successor.

But here in New Zealand the government’s posture, if in charge in Britain, would be that you citizens of Indian ethnicity, must step back and allow special privileges to the poor suffering original Anglo-Saxon and Celt inhabitants.

That is a parallel of what is happening here in New Zealand with maoridom.

David Farrar: Kiwiblog’s 2026 predictions

Here’s my 20 predictions for next year, which I’ll score at the end of the year. I got 13.5/20 right for 2025.

Monday December 29, 2025 

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Ani O'Brien: The Best and Worst of NZ Politics in 2025

According to me (Ani O'Brien). Don't shoot the messenger.

New Zealand politics in 2025 was essentially a live-action stress test for MMP, public patience, and the integrity of Parliamentary norms and traditions. The Government started the year promising “growth” but quickly realised that promising things that are in no small part out of your control is a bad idea. The Coalition also discovered that nothing angers New Zealanders more than change, except not changing anything. The tri-party arrangement has stood the test of time though. Ministers might have to carefully explain that they are all on the same page, just reading different paragraphs, in different languages, from entirely different books, at times, but their core shared purposes have been sufficient glue.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 28.12.25

Monday December 29, 2025 

News:
We’re Changing Our Name - James Cook High School.
Our school is directing a new path in their journey; one full of opportunity, growth, and promise for our students. We’re embracing change across our school, curriculum, and strengthening connections with the wider community.

David Farrar: Business confidence at 30 year high

Radio NZ reports:

Business confidence has hit its highest level in 30 years on improving activity and on expectations of an economic rebound.

ANZ’s Business Outlook survey showed headline confidence rose 7 points to a net 74 percent expecting better conditions.