Merry Christmas! Have a lovely day all ❤️☀️

📡🎅 For just one night a year, we get to switch our radar from "RAIN" to the special "SANTA" function. If we are very lucky, we might catch a quick glimpse of Santa and his reindeer as they head our way. Next stop: New Zealand! Merry Christmas, Meri Kirihimete

🧵/Aotearoa: A few people doing some amazing mahi, if you have a few spare coins this Christmas. (Feel free to add!) “Kick Back Make Change stands for radical love and youth justice. We believe no young person is too “at-risk” to love - and that love is a powerful agent for change.” Info/donate:

Reflecting that it’s the same rage, coming from the same place of entitlement.

You can see this entitled, Christian nationalist viewpoint coming into play in Aotearoa with recent attacks on trans rights, and undermining of pay equity, science, art history, sex education. This deeply held rage towards anything not conservative is demonstrably showing up in our policy decisions.

I'm not sure what was decided at Stonehenge during the winter solstice this year, but I approve of the new god/ruler/emperor/pagan supreme being or whatever the rank is of the one that was chosen:

#GretaThunberg arrested in London over ‘#PalestineAction prisoners’ placard - www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... "she sat down with a sign saying “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.” #ukgov position gets more ridiculous by the day

My most recent article on how the medical system in NZ is pretty damn awful to Māori and how docs are much like cops open.substack.com/pub/kaimataa... #nzpol

And yet New Zealand did not send anyone to last week’s UN convention on anti-corruption. There were 170 nations present, but not NZ.

Reposting this with alt text, taken from the fabulous @madhmstr.bsky.social who had shown us magic is still out there this holiday season. 🥰🎄🦌 (1/2)

PSA re Project 2026 👇 This is being driven from the US but has implications for Aotearoa; there are bad actors here with decision making power salivating over this. It’s a logical assumption that the outcome of our next election will impact how much progress they make on using this as a blueprint.

New from me: Health officials said there was ‘no evidence base’ about the likely impacts of the Government’s decision to ban puberty blockers for transgender youth. newsroom.co.nz/2025/12/22/c...

Better things are possible

Any time David Seymour appears in this news claiming to be standing with a minority targeted by prejudice and violence journalists have an obligation to remind us he accepted a donation from a man who threatened to "destroy mosque after mosque until they take me out" www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350...

See, New Zealand? Good, joyous things are possible.

Petition for cinemas to have to disclose the time the movie actually starts as opposed to expecting people to sit through 40 minutes of ads on top of a 2 hour plus movie 🫠

Sad to read Simon Wilson will be leaving the Herald and hope to see his writing elsewhere. Gift link to his last column with thanks Simon for being someone who truly loves Tāmaki Makaurau for what it is, and what it could be. 👇

The problem with media treating politics like a game or a horse race is that it removes journalistic focus on the very real consequences of policy decisions.

The last season of America continues to get worse.

It's a real indictment of the horrendous state of NZ media that this actual data gets essentially no coverage. Meanwhile I can't even count the number of "failing cafe owner blames cycleways for his poor business performance" stories...

“I can see why women don’t call the police, and that is not okay – it is not safe.” We need to start treating violence - from perpetrators through to police through to unacceptable policy and behaviour in every single sphere - like the deeply embedded, deliberate, systemic crisis that it is in NZ.

1000% this - without a sustainable funding model (and without governing with vulnerable communities at the centre of policy as opposed to expecting underfunded foodbank organisations to fill the gap left by bad governance), staff are constantly trying to keep their heads (and clients) above water.

We are all one bad week away from from needing a food bank or housing support. We are much more likely to have a bad week than magically become millionaires.

Ideally we’d have things set up so food banks weren’t required, but letting them disappear while also removing/reducing other support is beyond cruel. Most of us are much closer to needing this support than we realise/like to admit.

Headline from 2024, and now from 2025. Waiting until the last minute to allocate funding is a dangerous way to govern - half a million New Zealanders rely on foodbanks for support. "Every year we're left wondering if we'll be funded. It's unsustainable.” Unsustainable - and deeply unacceptable.👇

I know it’s click bait but, knowing people who quite literally cannot access a home in this country, and others who are deciding every week between paying for food, rent or power, and still more being targeted by this government’s policy with no end in sight, “cursed” doesn’t begin to describe 2025.

That's a BILLION DOLLARS this government is underspending in health. A BILLION DOLLARS taken out of healthcare! They have the money, they just don't want to spend it. Not on on hospitals or doctors or nurses or admin staff or regional health care, or anyone of a myriad of needed items. #nzpol

One more piece of wonderful news that we're bursting to share before we close up shop: we're publishing Night, Ma by Elizabeth Knox in April 2026! @elizabethknoxnz.bsky.social Cover: Todd Atticus, @toddatticus.bsky.social

This is obviously a very upsetting situation that I hope is resolved soon but is also a very good read if you are well and truly over national politics and would like some lower (higher?) stakes small town drama instead 👇

One year from today is the latest possible date the next election can be held #nzpol

Prevention of art literacy and the ability to access critique of ruling power is exactly why they want to cancel education like Art History.

Thinking about how many people, especially those representing vulnerable communities clearly warned about what would happen if ACT was handed more power *years* ago and were totally written off by pundits as being alarmist instead of taking both lived experience expertise and basic facts seriously 🫠

When we were finished, he ... says to me, "You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people." And I looked at him and I said, "You know, you do, too." This is about the Vanity Fair article and photos by Christopher Anderson, but boy is this quote relevant to #nzpol.

More great news, @taniawaikatolawyer.bsky.social standing for the @greens.org.nz 💚 #nzpol

This is a lovely, hopeful article. I saw Swarbrick's interview with Gary Stevenson, but I didn't know just how many high powered people she'd met in Europe. #nzpol

We won! I won my judicial review!

This is a remarkable piece of work from Vanity Fair - the photos, the telling quotes. It’s the kind of work which just won’t exist much longer, and it’ll be one teachers reference if history ends up being taught by those who overcame authoritarianism.

Once again, reporting talking points verbatim with no context or critique (or thought for the safety of others in an environment where online violence doesn’t stay online) is irresponsible - and also fits the definition of propaganda.

BREAKING: The High Court of New Zealand has granted PATHA’s application for interim relief, declaring that the Crown should not take any steps to enforce the incoming ban on new prescriptions of puberty blockers to transgender children and young people. More to come:

If you're not in Aotearoa New Zealand, but would like some lil sprinkles of joy today, look at the posts tagged #secretsantaaonz. This is an entirely volunteer-run gift exchange, where hundreds of people buy / assemble / make gifts for someone they've been assigned. The gifts NEVER fail ❤️

#nzpol Perhaps someone in the media would like to get some answers for us by asking some unpacking questions. Just a thought. 🤔

Greens policy: “Develop a national mobility scheme that builds the highest possible level of independence for disabled people.”

Even worse, they are proposing to: ❌️ limit the number of subsidised trips a user can take ❌️make it harder and more bureaucratic to use ❌️limit it to wheelchair users only ❌️exploit Uber drivers more It's a sh*tty proposal and will severely limit the ability of disabled ppl to get out and about

Rolling out a Disneyfied version of Every Dude You’ve Ever Been Insincerely Polite To Because He Has *That* Vibe is … quite the choice.

Now that it's public: RIP FluTracking, which I understand only cost $50k per year to administer, yet provided incredibly valuable and irreplaceable information on levels of influenza-like-illness. What an utterly dim decision.

As we continue to normalise inadequate and frankly unacceptable policy across the board, it should be noted that those speaking up are experts, frontline staff, lived experience voices and the public. Leaders are permitting this through silence and inaction - actively normalising bad governance.

This is about claiming headlines + keeping control of the narrative in an election year. Shift the focus. Talk about the Greens platform, talk loudly about the policies you like. Click on articles that feature Greens leaders talking about their mahi, not responding to David Seymour’s talking points.

“That’s our message to people - we can change this.” It’s great to see a party leader being so matter of fact about policy basics and unequivocal about the fact they are absolutely possible to achieve for New Zealanders.

Huge credit to the Greens that they’ve done all the hard yards & for basically every policy gap headline between now and the election can say “We’ve got a plan for that.” Love to see common-sense policy treated as a given, not “radical” - imo we can’t focus on true aspiration without accepting this.