Judy Gill: Te reo Māori, taonga and the question of responsibility

Te reo Māori is frequently described as a taonga—sacred, tapu, precious—and the Treaty of Waitangi is often invoked to argue that the state therefore bears an obligation to protect it.

Increasingly, a further claim is added: that difficulty learning te reo Māori today is driven by “intergenerational trauma”. This article questions whether that trauma framework is being used with conceptual precision and evidential discipline, and whether it explains contemporary language outcomes better than simpler factors such as age, literacy, educational quality, and language use in the home.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 28.12.25

Thursday January 1, 2026 

News:
Māori excel in New Year Honours 2026 - Tama Potaka.
Māori recipients in the New Year 2026 Honours list demonstrate deep and enduring commitment to Māori advancement and community leadership across Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka says.

John Robertson: ACC and Maori healing

Let’s not kid ourselves. ACC is supposed to be a taxpayer-funded injury insurer. You pay your levies. You get hurt. They fix you with stuff that actually works — medicine, science, evidence. That’s the deal. That’s the social contract.

But somewhere along the line, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo has snuck in and taken over. ACC is now paying for Rongoā Māori, a so-called “healing program” built on Māori spiritual beliefs. And at the heart of it? Tikanga.

Greg Bouwer: A Libel Revived - The False Narrative of Jewish Hatred Toward Christians in Israel

A persistent and pernicious myth has resurfaced in global discourse: that Jews in Jerusalem (and by extension, Israelis as a whole) harbour contempt for Christians, regularly expressed through acts of public disdain such as spitting on clergy and pilgrims. In some corners of social media and anti-Israel activism, this claim is treated not as a fringe concern but as a reflection of Jewish identity and Israeli character.

This is not just a distortion. It is a revival of an old libel in modern form — a cynical inversion of reality, deliberately weaponised to undermine Israel’s moral standing and smear the Jewish people.

From BreakingViews archives: Fiona MacKenzie - The “Land Back” Pogrom — Most Kiwis Don’t See It Coming

(Note: To reduce word count and aid understanding, Māori words have been omitted where possible.)

New Zealanders who pay attention to the slow creep of our political and legal institutions have every reason to feel uneasy. Many believed the 2023 election would halt the advance of racial division and restore a government committed to equal citizenship. Instead, the Coalition—particularly the National Party —seems schizophrenically determined to avoid offending those who demand ever-expanding tribal privilege. Far from dismantling race-based policy, it is still normalising it in much legislation and policy.

Dr Will Jones: Protests Calling for “Death to the Dictator” Erupt Across Iran

Mass protests have erupted across Iran calling for “death to the dictator” over the regime’s economic crisis, as Donald Trump threatens military action if the country rebuilds its nuclear or missile programmes. The Telegraph has more.

Melanie Phillips: The British government's horrible hero

Citizenship is not a right but a privilege to be earned

This is an expanded version of my column in today’s Times (£).

At the weekend, the Prime Minster, Sir Keir Starmer, said he was “delighted” to welcome to Britain Alaa Abd el Fattah, an Egyptian activist who also has British nationality.

Long lauded in progressive circles as a pro-democracy and human rights activist, Fattah had previously been banned from leaving Egypt after spending much of the previous twelve years in jail for anti-government activities.

Matua Kahurangi: Hungry families wait while MUMA allegedly hoards supermarket vouchers

Another day, another ugly disclosure, and once again the Manukau Urban Māori Authority finds itself at the centre of it.

Fresh OIA material shared on X by Suit and Tie shows that one million dollars worth of supermarket vouchers were allocated to the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency for distribution during the last census drive. These vouchers were meant to encourage participation by families who are doing it tough. That is the entire point.

JC: 2026 and Causes for Optimism

Two articles in the business section of the Weekend Herald proved to be a good read. Both were basically unrelated in content but it was the cause for optimism that brings the two articles together. Before I delve into this though, I want to (as I do from time to time) comment on the doom and gloom pervading the political discussion on Backchat. A lot of it is in direct contradiction to the facts that are emerging in relation to the economy. As with climate change – the end is not nigh.

Wednesday December 31, 2025 

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

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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