Karoline Leavitt’s White House briefing doublethink is straight out of Orwell’s ‘1984’

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing on Nov. 4, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

During a press conference on Dec. 11, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced there was good news on the state of the economy.

“Inflation as measured by the overall CPI has slowed to an average 2.5% pace,” she said, referring to the consumer price index. “Real wages are increasing roughly $1,200 dollars for the average worker.”

When CNN political correspondent Kaitlan Collins attempted to ask a follow-up question, Leavitt pivoted to an attack. Not on Collins, a frequent target of White House ire, but on Leavitt’s predecessor in the Biden White House, Democrat Jen Psaki.

Psaki, claimed Leavitt, stood at the same lectern a year before and told “utter lies.” In contrast, Leavitt insisted, “Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real, factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it ’cause you want to push untrue narratives about the president.”

The “real, factual data” that underpinned Leavitt’s statement was specious at best. The actual inflation rate for September was 3%, not the 2.5% figure cherry-picked from economic data. The rise in real wages? CNN business editor David Goldman writes that in the past year, U.S. workers have experienced “the lowest annual paycheck growth that Americans have had since May 2021.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks to the media on Dec. 11, 2025.

I’m a historian who has written about the enduring legacy of George Orwell’s ideas about truth and freedom. Listening to Leavitt assert a “truth” so obviously discordant with people’s lives, I was reminded of the repeated pronouncements from the Ministry of Plenty in Orwell’s “1984.”

“The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen,” Orwell wrote. “As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.”

The novel’s doomed hero, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department that produces these fraudulent statistics – figures that are so far divorced from reality that they “had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.”

In the world of “1984,” not only are statistics invented, they are continually reinvented to serve the needs of Big Brother’s regime at any given moment: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

Transparency as doublespeak

The lack of transparency depicted in “1984” has an uncanny echo in our current political moment, despite Leavitt’s repeated assertions that President Donald Trump is the “most transparent president in history.”

Leavitt has made that claim countless times, including in her public defense of Trump’s “Quiet, Piggy!” dismissal of Bloomberg News journalist Catherine Lucey last month.

In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase which through the process of “doublethink” had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning.

“Doublethink,” in Orwell’s writing, was the mechanism of thought manipulation that allowed someone “to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”

Doublethink was the mechanism that enabled the citizens of Oceania, the Anglo-American superstate governed by Big Brother’s authoritarian regime, to accept that “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

And it is the mechanism that allowed Leavitt to proclaim, in defending Trump’s unwillingness to release the Epstein files, “This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.” That claim was pronounced “fabulously audacious” by The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, in a story headlined “Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein.”

President Ronald Reagan records a radio address on foreign policy on Sept. 24, 1988, in which he discussed “our philosophy of peace through strength.”

Making ‘lies sound truthful and murder respectable’

In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Over the past 10 months, Leavitt has, among other things, claimed that the now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID – provided a grant of $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru. Not true. She has misrepresented the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as fully eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. In reality, deductions for these are capped. She claimed that Trump coined the motto “peace through strength.” He didn’t. The phrase has been in circulation for decades, used most prominently by Ronald Reagan during his presidency.

And she recently sought to delegitimize U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and colleagues’ plea to servicemen and women not to obey illegal orders by suggesting tautologically that “all lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our servicemembers,” and hence Kelly’s plea could only serve to provoke “disorder and chaos.”

All governments lie. But Leavitt has become a master of the art of political language, wielded to aggrandize her boss, belittle his opponents and deflect attention from administration scandals.

Laura Beers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Karoline Leavitt’s White House briefing doublethink is straight out of Orwell’s ‘1984’ – https://theconversation.com/karoline-leavitts-white-house-briefing-doublethink-is-straight-out-of-orwells-1984-270675

America faced domestic fascists before and buried that history

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arlene Stein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University

Fritz Kuhn, center, is congratulated by fellow officers of the German American Bund in New York on Sept. 3, 1938. AP Photo

Masked officers conduct immigration raids. National Guard troops patrol American cities, and protesters decry their presence as a “fascist takeover.” White supremacists openly proclaim racist and antisemitic views.

Is the United States sliding into fascism? It’s a question that divides a good portion of the country today.

Embracing a belief in American exceptionalism – the idea that America is a unique and morally superior country – some historians suggest that “it can’t happen here,” echoing the satirical title of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 book about creeping fascism in America. The social conditions required for fascism to take root do not exist in the U.S., these historians say.

Still, while fascist ideas never found a foothold among the majority of Americans, they exerted considerable influence during the period between the first and second world wars. Extremist groups like the Silver Shirts, the Christian Front, the Black Legion and the Ku Klux Klan claimed hundreds of thousands of members. Together they glorified a white Christian nation purified of Jews, Black Americans, immigrants and communists.

During the 1930s and early ’40s, fascist ideas were promoted and cheered on American soil by groups such as the pro-Nazi German American Bund, which staged a mass rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939, displaying George Washington’s portrait alongside swastikas.

The Bund also operated lodges, storefronts, summer camps, beer halls and newspapers across the country and denounced the “melting pot.” It encouraged boycotts and street brawls against Jews and leftists and forged links to Germany’s Nazi party.

Yet the Bund and other far-right groups have largely vanished from public memory, even in communities where they once enjoyed popularity. As a sociologist of collective memory and identity, I wanted to know why that is the case.

The Bund in New Jersey

My analysis of hundreds of oral histories of people who grew up in New Jersey in the 1930s and ’40s, where the German American Bund enjoyed a particularly strong presence, suggests that witnesses saw them as insignificant, “un-American” and unworthy of remembrance.

But the people who rallied with the Bund for a white, Christian nation were ordinary citizens. They were mechanics and shopkeepers, churchgoers and small businessmen, and sometimes elected officials. They frequented diners, led PTA meetings and went to church. They were American.

Hundreds of American Nazis walk on a country road. — Nearly 1,000 uniformed men wearing swastika armbands and carrying Nazi banners parade past a reviewing stand in New Jersey on July 18, 1937.
AP Photo

When they were interviewed decades later, many of those who had seen Bundists up close in their communities remembered the uniforms, the swastika armbands, the marching columns. They recalled the local butcher who quietly displayed sympathy for Nazism, the Bund’s boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the street brawls at Bund rallies.

German American interviewees, who remember firsthand the support the Bund enjoyed before the U.S. entered World War II, 50 years later laughed at family members and neighbors who once supported the organization. Even Jewish interviewees who recalled fearful encounters with Bundists during that period tended to minimize the threat in retrospect. Like their German American counterparts, they framed the Bund as deviant and ephemeral. Few believed the group, and the ideas for which it stood, were significant.

I believe the German Americans’ laughter decades after the war was over, and after the revelations of the mass murder of European Jews, may have been a way for them to distance themselves from feelings of shame or discomfort. As cognitive psychologists show, people tend to erase or minimize inconvenient or painful facts that may threaten their sense of self.

Collective memories are also highly selective. They are influenced by the groups – nation, community, family – in which they are members. In other words, the past is always shaped by the needs of the present.

After World War II, for example, some Americans reframed the major threat facing the U.S. as communism. They cast fascism as a defeated foreign evil, while elevating “reds” as the existential threat. Collectively, Americans preferred a simpler national tale: Fascism was “over there.” America was the bulwark of democracy “over here.” This is one way forgetting works.

Communities will remember what they have forgotten or minimized when history is taught, markers are erected, archives are preserved and commemorations are staged. The U.S. has done that for the Holocaust and for the Civil Rights Movement. But when it comes to the history of homegrown fascism, and local resistance to it, few communities have made efforts to preserve this history.

Remembering difficult pasts

At least one community has tried. In Southbury, Connecticut, community members erected a small plaque in 2022 to honor townspeople who in 1937 organized to keep the Bund from building a training camp there. The inscription is simple: “Southbury Stops Nazi Training Camp.”

Mounted police form a line in front of hundreds of people. — New York City mounted police form a line outside Madison Square Garden, where the German American Bund was holding a rally on Feb. 20, 1939.
AP Photo/Murray Becker

The story it tells provides more than an example of local pride – it’s a template for how communities can commemorate the moments when ordinary citizens said “no.”

When Americans insist that “it can’t happen here,” they exempt themselves from vigilance. When they ignore or discount extremism, seeing it as “weird” or “foreign,” they miss how effectively such movements borrowed American idioms, such as patriotism, Christianity and law and order, to further hatred, violence and exclusion.

Research shows that some Americans have been drawn to movements that promise purity, unity and order at the expense of their neighbors’ rights. The point of remembering such histories is not to wallow in shame, nor to collapse every political dispute into “fascism.” It is to offer an accurate account of America’s democratic vulnerabilities.

Arlene Stein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. America faced domestic fascists before and buried that history – https://theconversation.com/america-faced-domestic-fascists-before-and-buried-that-history-268978

The Housemaid: this dark, sexy thriller is a seriously satisfying watch

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harriet Fletcher, Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin University

Based on the bestselling novel by Freida McFadden, The Housemaid is a dark, sexy and satisfying thriller with plenty of twists to enjoy along the way.

Millie (Sydney Sweeney) applies for a job as a housemaid for the wealthy Winchester family. We first meet her as she pulls up to the grand Winchester house in her run-down car – a gated mansion with echoes of the sinister and mysterious Manderley in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. What secrets might be contained behind these gates? Millie is about to find out.

She is interviewed by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), an eccentric and over-familiar housewife who is so taken with Millie that she immediately offers her the job on a live-in basis. An alarmingly artificial family portrait looms large in this early scene, suggesting that the Waspy Winchesters are more artist’s impression than reality.

Millie is given a bedroom in the attic – a strange place to lodge a housemaid, considering the enormity and grandeur of the Winchester mansion. The attic is stark, claustrophobic and loaded with gothic literary connotations that the story knowingly leans into.

The trailer for The Housemaid.

Also part of the Winchester household is Nina’s charming and sensitive husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) and their cold, and at times creepy, daughter Cecelia (Indiana Elle). Sklenar expertly plays all the right notes as Andrew – the heartthrob husband, doting dad and even Millie’s patient confidant, routinely apologising for his wife’s erratic behaviour.

He grows even more compelling as the film gains momentum. Directed by Paul Feig of Bridesmaids and Spy fame, The Housemaid is a thriller tinged with comedy. Its best, darkly funny moments are often delivered by Sklenar in climactic scenes where his lines land with perfect timing.

Cecelia, meanwhile, is an archetypal creepy kid, often found tinkering with a rickety old doll’s house that uncannily resembles the Winchester mansion, or spouting cryptic and ominous messages. That said, she serves her purpose of dropping narrative breadcrumbs as we piece together the family’s secrets.

Sweeney is adept at portraying the enigmatic housemaid, Millie. Early on, Millie confesses to us via voice-over that she has lied on her resume: she is under-qualified, sleeps in her car and washes in public restrooms.

She is desperate to hold on to this job, no matter what. Sweeney excels in playing a character who seems broken and desperate, without veering into melodrama. Even in the most high-stakes moments, there is a captivating sense of control and subtlety to her performance.

Seyfried’s troubled housewife is the foil to Sweeney’s mysterious housemaid. It’s here that Seyfried’s notably expressive style of acting comes powerfully into play. Excessively warm but with sharp edges, Nina too is something of an enigma. From her interactions with so-called friends – a shallow coterie of Stepford-wife types who gossip about her the moment she leaves the room – we learn that Nina’s life is far from perfect.

The Housemaid is an adaptation of McFadden’s hugely successful novel. She has been dubbed the “queen of crime fiction” on BookTok (the TikTok subculture dedicated to discussing fiction) due to the immense popularity of her work among influencers.

As this origin story suggests, The Housemaid is an unapologetic crowd pleaser. It doesn’t reach the intellectual heights of a thriller like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which straddles genre and literary fiction. In fact, when I asked a friend why she’d read the novel, she said she’d Googled “what’s the easiest book to read?”

The Housemaid has less to say than Gone Girl about the complexity of gender roles and relationship dynamics, and I’d be surprised if any of the performances receive the kind of critical acclaim Rosamund Pike earned for her iconic turn in David Fincher’s adaptation. But let’s be clear: The Housemaid is a hell of a good time at the cinema.

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Harriet Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Housemaid: this dark, sexy thriller is a seriously satisfying watch – https://theconversation.com/the-housemaid-this-dark-sexy-thriller-is-a-seriously-satisfying-watch-272116

Can Urgent Care Clinics actually take pressure off hospitals? Yes, but they’re not the only way

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Karnon, Professor of Health Economics, Flinders University

When we’re acutely ill or injured, we want to be able to quickly access care in Australia’s hospital emergency departments (EDs). But more of us are seeking care in EDs. This went from 7.4 million in 2014–15 to 9.1 million in 2024–25. And the system is struggling to cope.

EDs are becoming more crowded and patients are staying in EDs for a lot longer. Around 10% of patents waiting for an inpatient bed spent 19 or more hours in an ED – six hours longer than they would’ve waited four years ago.

Around 10% of patients who were discharged home spent eight or more hours in an ED – almost two hours longer than four years ago.

Improving access to inpatient beds from the ED is an important part of reducing ED overcrowding. But so too are strategies to reduce the number of patients presenting at EDs.

Since the May election, the federal government has been spruiking its expanded network of Urgent Care Clinics to reduce ED presentations for patients with urgent but non-life-threatening conditions.

But how are they working? And how do they fit with other services that have a similar aim of keeping Australians out of hospital?

A composite of a health worker looking stressed

When it comes to public hospitals, everyone seems to be waiting – waiting for emergency care, waiting for elective surgery, waiting to get onto a ward. Private hospitals are also struggling. In this five-part series, experts explain what’s going wrong, how patients are impacted, and the potential solutions.

What’s currently in place?

Three free services are in place to divert patients who don’t need to go to hospital to more appropriate settings – or to direct them to an ED if they are critically ill:

Healthdirect (called Nurse-on-call in Victoria) is a 24/7 phone advice service operated by nurses and has been in operation since 2006. It gives callers health advice, including whether they should see a GP or go to an ED.

Urgent Care Clinics are a network of around 90 health services, mainly staffed by GPs, where patients can walk in without an appointment and receive treatment for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions. They’re open every day, from early in the morning until late at night and can provide diagnostic services such as blood tests and X-rays.

Virtual ED services provide consults via a video link with specialist ED physicians and other clinicians. Over the past five years, virtual EDs have been established in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales. Health providers can call virtual ED services for advice about where to send a patient.

We know little about their quality and safety

There is little published evidence evaluating the three services, though significant evaluations of Urgent Care Clinics and virtual EDs are underway.

The interim evaluation of Urgent Care Clinics reported no data on the safety and quality, but noted that before opening, clinical assessments were conducted to confirm their safety and readiness to operate.

An evaluation of a virtual ED service in New Zealand reported similar seven-day re-presentation rates for virtual and traditional EDs. This means a similar proportion of patients need to go back for further care, suggesting patients receive a similar level of care in both types of EDs.

Do they reduce pressure on hospitals?

We want to be confident patients who would otherwise have presented at an ED are using these services and that they’re an efficient use of health budgets.

The early evaluation of Urgent Care Clinics found 46% of Urgent Care Clinic patients would have otherwise presented at an ED. Some 5% of patients using an Urgent Care Centre were referred to an ED.

So Urgent Care Centres avoided four in ten ED presentations and resulted in a small reduction in health service costs.

Data from virtual EDs in Queensland and Victoria show 30% of patients are then referred to a physical ED. This suggests virtual EDs manage patients with more serious conditions than Urgent Care Clinics.

An economic evaluation of an early virtual ED service in Victoria also estimated a small reduction in health service costs, assuming all patients would otherwise have presented at an ED, but none would have been admitted. Other scenarios generated larger estimated cost reductions.

Published data on Healthdirect shows 69% of patients attended an ED and 65% consulted a doctor when advised. One review reported Healthdirect generated “modest but significant” reductions in ED usage and after-hours GP visits.

How can these services improve?

We can improve these services, in particular, how the services integrate with each other.

Half of patients using an Urgent Care Clinic said they would have seen a GP if they hadn’t used the clinic. If patients had better access to GPs, it would free capacity for more patients who would have presented at an ED to get treated in Urgent Care Clinics.

Most virtual EDs are relatively small scale, other than in Victoria, where the virtual ED takes more than 700 calls per day. This suggests there is capacity to increase the scale of virtual EDs, which should reduce average costs.

Virtual EDs can refer patients to Urgent Care Centres to access diagnostic services, and Urgent Care Centres can call virtual EDs for specialist advice. Research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the linkages between Urgent Care Centres and virtual EDs.

Healthdirect refers patients to GPs, Urgent Care Clinics, EDs and virtual EDs. We need more research to assess the appropriateness of these referrals to identify opportunities to improve the use of these different health services.

While the three services target overlapping groups of patients, they’re currently evolving independently. Instead, we need to develop, implement and evaluate a plan for the integrated delivery of these services.

Each service can help keep Australians out of hospital, but the value of an integrated approach will be greater than the sum of the individual services.

Read more from the Hospitals in Crisis series here.

Jonathan Karnon has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to evaluate virtual emergency department services in Australia

Charmaine Gray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can Urgent Care Clinics actually take pressure off hospitals? Yes, but they’re not the only way – https://theconversation.com/can-urgent-care-clinics-actually-take-pressure-off-hospitals-yes-but-theyre-not-the-only-way-270684

Not sure you picked the right uni or TAFE course? 6 ways to help you think it through

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew J. Martin, Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology, UNSW Sydney

For the class of 2025, exams are done and results are coming in. Attention is turning to plans for next year.

With the benefit of a bit more free time and brain space, some students might be wondering if they have made the right decisions about courses. Perhaps your results have made you reconsider your preferences.

Keeping in mind the last date to change your preferences differs between states and territories and offer rounds, how do you know if you picked the right course?

I research educational psychology, with a focus on student motivation and engagement at school and in post-school life.

Here are six ways to help guide your thinking about course choice. Three of them fall under a nuts and bolts approach to decision-making and three are more big-picture considerations.

The nuts and bolts approach

This refers to the specific, practical “thinking through” process of course selection. There are various parts. Three especially important ones involve asking yourself these questions.

What do I like? This seems simple, but can get lost in other considerations. So go back to basics and list the subjects, topics and areas you enjoy. These might be subjects or topics at school where – relative to other subjects and topics – you thought the lessons, activities and assignments were pretty good. Or, it might be an area that wasn’t covered at school, but where you have demonstrated interest in learning about outside school.
What am I good at? List the subjects, topics and skills you are good at. These might be subjects or topics at school where – relative to other subjects and topics – you were able to do what was asked of you, you were able to complete tasks and assignments, and did OK in them. Or, it might be something that wasn’t covered at school, but you have clearly shown you have that skill set.
What are the opportunities for future pathways? Look at the subjects, topics, areas and skills in your two lists – especially the ones in both. Order them in terms of what you think has the most opportunity and viability in terms of further study, work, advancement or income – including how they may be positively or adversely affected by artificial intelligence (if it is possible to find out). What you have listed doesn’t have to rank highly on all these things, but it is helpful to have an eye to the future. The point of this part of the exercise is to consider what you like and what you are good at in practical, realistic and sustainable ways.

This ordered list puts you in the ballpark of what course is likely a good fit for you and offers personal potential.

The big-picture approach

This involves bigger, broader questions to keep in mind as you develop your ordered list. There are also numerous parts to this. Here are three key ones.

Life is not a perfect sequence of events. For you to be successful in five, ten or 20 years from now, you don’t have to get everything absolutely right, right now. You make the best decision you can and if a more viable path presents itself or if the path you chose is genuinely not the one for you, you will deal with it then.
Life is not linear. We don’t go straight as an arrow from school to retirement. There can be winding paths, dead ends and wrong turns. This is the nature of human development and how we can grow and learn about ourselves. Make your decision, start this next chapter and see where it takes you.
This is just the start. The course you choose now defines the start of your journey after school. It does not define the destination. Yes, what you choose now matters – but not because it will dictate your entire life. Rather, because it places you on a starting block and all the possibilities and insights this starting block affords you.

Andrew J. Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Not sure you picked the right uni or TAFE course? 6 ways to help you think it through – https://theconversation.com/not-sure-you-picked-the-right-uni-or-tafe-course-6-ways-to-help-you-think-it-through-271311

Planning your next holiday? Here’s how to spot and avoid greenwashing

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rawan Nimri, Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality, Griffith University

More of us than ever are trying to make environmentally responsible travel choices. Sustainable travel is now less niche and more mainstream, with 93% of travellers in one survey
saying they would consider sustainable choices.

Accordingly, an increasing number of hotels have become certified. This means they have been officially checked and approved to meet sustainability standards by an independent organisation.

The World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance says hotels need to reduce waste and emissions by as much as 66% by 2030 to deliver meaningful change. The World Travel and Tourism Council reports that more than 5,000 hotels worldwide have adopted its independent verification program.

Major chains, including Hilton, Marriott and Accor, have also set measurable sustainability targets. These commitments are shared with guests through hotel websites, signs in lobbies and cards placed in rooms.

So when it comes to booking accommodation, navigating the sheer volume of buzzwords and promises – “eco”, “sustainable”, “green”, “responsible” – can feel overwhelming.

When you’re planning your next trip, how can you check whether the sustainability claims live up to the promises?

Don’t believe all the claims

When hotels present themselves as environmentally friendly or sustainable through marketing, but don’t live up to those claims, it’s called greenwashing.

In our study, just published in the Journal of Vacation Marketing, we conducted focus groups with Australian travellers and asked them how well they understood hotel sustainability messages.

We learned that guests don’t always believe claims. They viewed simple actions, like skipping daily room cleaning or turning off the air-conditioning, as too small to really count. One traveller said:

They only mention towel reuse, but nothing else, but what about food waste or cleaning chemicals?

Motivations of hotels were often questioned, too. Guests felt that hotels expected them to do most of the “green” work, such as reusing towels or using the in-room recycling bin.

That made them feel the responsibility was being pushed onto them. It also created suspicion that sustainability is disguised as cost-cutting, so trust in the hotels’ initiatives suffered. Other travellers noted:

They had signs all over the place, and for me, it felt like they were trying too hard and making it seem better than it actually was.

Hotels talk a lot about being green, but to me, it feels more like branding than real action.

When the promises are backed by action

But when hotels explain exactly what they’re doing, show proof of their actions, and admit where they’re improving, guests feel more confident. They may even pay more for their stay.

What we found supports a growing consensus among travellers.

Nobody wants to fall for greenwashing, and consumers want to feel empowered to make the right choice for the environment. Guests want to know if they’re at risk of supporting greenwashing, so they can choose hotels whose efforts are verifiable.

Information matters. So when hotels get their messages wrong, they can undermine the trust of their customers.

Waterfall gardens forest — Hotels can get certified with independent registers.
Riley Jackson/unsplash, FAL

In recent years, a number of registers have been established that certify sustainability actions taken by hotels. External registers are financially independent of the tourism industry, and have minimum standards required for registration.

Here’s what to watch for

Not everybody can become an expert in sustainability, so we have put together a list of things you can look out for when you’re booking accommodation, as well as what you can do to help other travellers.

Look for independent proof. Book with hotels with recognised third-party certifications, such as EarthCheck or Green Key. If there is no certifier named and no explanation of what was checked, treat the claim as marketing, not evidence.
Check for details. Trustworthy green claims use concrete details such as percentages, dates and clear actions. Phrases like “eco-friendly,” “sustainable”, or “planet positive” without statistics or examples are too vague to trust.
Compare the claims against what you see. Test promises against reality. Reviews, guest photos and what you notice on arrival should show real changes, such as refillable toiletries, recycling and less waste, not just posters.
Ask: who is really doing the work? Many “eco” messages ask guests to reuse towels or skip cleaning, which are actually cost-cutting initiatives. Better signs are investments in efficient systems, using solar power, water-saving fixtures and proper recycling. If the towel card is all you see, the balance is wrong.
Look for honesty about limits. No hotel is perfect, and honest ones admit it. Brief explanations of current limitations with future goals are more believable than claims of being fully sustainable.
Watch out for suspicious language and pressure. Be cautious of absolute claims like “zero impact” or “100% sustainable” without proof. Also be wary of messages that make you feel guilty for wanting normal comfort.
Use your power as a consumer. Ask simple questions before you book and notice how clearly the hotel replies. Check independent review sites, too. After your stay, mention specific practices, good or bad, in your review to deter hotels from greenwashing behaviour.

Not just a green label

Travel is changing, and so are travellers. More people want holidays that feel good for them and for the planet.

When you know what to look for, you can spot shaky green claims and choose hotels that match your values. That pressure matters. It nudges the industry to be authentic, cuts down on greenwashing, and supports the hotels that are actually doing the work, not just putting a green label on the door.

We would like to acknowledge Dr Farah Shishan from the University of Jordan who contributed to this research.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Planning your next holiday? Here’s how to spot and avoid greenwashing – https://theconversation.com/planning-your-next-holiday-heres-how-to-spot-and-avoid-greenwashing-270977

Police officers spat at, called paedophiles in wake of Jevon McSkimming scandal

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

Former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming RNZ / Mark Papalii

Police officers have been spat at and called paedophiles, child abusers and kiddie fiddlers since Jevon McSkimming’s offending became public, their union says.

The Police Association says officers are tired in the wake of the disgraced former Deputy Commissioner’s case as its president detailed the abuse they’ve had hurled at them.

Steve Watt says officers now face a long process to regain trust from the public “piece by piece”.

McSkimming pleaded guilty in November to three representative charges of having objectionable publications of child sexual exploitation and bestiality.

He was sentenced to nine months’ home detention on Wednesday.

The judge began with a starting point at sentencing on Wednesday of three years’ jail.

Reductions were given for McSkimming’s early guilty plea, rehabilitation efforts, prior good character and remorse and steps taken to prevent reoffending.

Police Association president Steve Watt RNZ/ Phil Pennington

His offending included 2945 images – about 1900 searches for material of a sexual nature, 432 of which were intended or highly likely to return objectionable material.

Police Association president Steve Watt told Morning Report the case had been tiring for officers.

“They’ve been spat at, we had one member reported walking past the construction site where they yelled out to him calling him Jevon and asking him if he’d interfered with animals recently. You know, it’s not right and it’s not fair on our members,” he said.

“And the reality is that our members are having to pick up that public reassurance piece by piece by getting out there, doing what they do best and responding to crimes, dealing with victims, you know, dealing with assault files.

“But it’s going to be a long process in order to gain that trust and confidence back from the public,” Watt said.

More scrutiny needed on jail time for ex-cops

He said the union realised the courts would face difficulty sending a former top police officer to jail for fear of violence.

“Sometimes the depravity of certain situations, that needs to be overlooked,” he said.

“I think there are a number of issues that obviously the court have to take into consideration, and sometimes those are perhaps overlooked because of the position that’s being held, and that just needs to be looked at a bit more closely.”

Watt said there would also be consequences from the Independent Police Conduct Authority’s scathing findings into how police, at the highest levels, mishandled a complaint against McSkimming.

“It’s going to have some pretty big ramifications for our members, particularly in the disciplinary and employment space,” he said.

“We’re still working through what those ramifications are going to look like and come the new year, we’re going to be working pretty closely with police just to gain a better understanding of it and work with police on the processes that are going to be put in place.”

The Police Association said officers also felt let down by [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/580740/andrew-coster-breaks-silence-after-resigning-from-social-investment-agency

a recent interview with former Commissioner Andrew Coster].

“Look, it was a fairly compelling interview, but the reality is it didn’t take full responsibility really for the issues,” Watt said.

“And that was disappointing for members. They wanted to see, an open, full and frank ‘this was my fault’, and that was disappointing.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

ASB, BNZ increase some fixed home loan interest rates

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

BNZ will increase some fixed terms by between 19 and 30 basis points, while ASB is increasing some fixed rates by between 20 to 30 basis points. RNZ

ASB and BNZ have joined the Westpac and ANZ in pushing some of their fixed home loan interest rates higher.

BNZ said it would increase its fixed terms by between 19 basis points, for an 18-month fix, and 30 for a three-, four- and five-year fix.

It will slightly reduce its six-month rate.

That takes its two-year rate to 4.69 percent.

ASB was increasing the same rates, by between 20 basis points and 30 basis points.

Its two-year rate has lifted to 4.75 percent.

Banks have blamed higher funding costs for the increase.

Markets had priced in another OCR cut before the latest monetary policy statement. But when the Reserve Bank indicated that was less likely, they adjusted.

The two-year swap rate lifted from 2.54 percent in October to 3.09 percent on 15 December, although it has softened slightly since then.

Neither bank has changed its one-year rate. The one-year swap rate also lifted but has since fallen more meaningfully.

“While today’s adjustments reflect the reality of higher funding costs, the change in market conditions is good news for some of our savers with term deposit rates increasing by up to 35 basis points” said Adam Boyd, ASB’s executive general manager personal banking.

ANZ, the country’s biggest bank, said it had seen more customers wanting to switch from a floating rate to a fixed one in recent days.

Some economists have said it could prove that the swap rate reaction was too extreme, and rates could fall a little again.

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The special envoy’s report doesn’t hold all the answers for defeating antisemitism

By The Conversation -

December 18, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matteo Vergani, Associate Professor and Director of the Tackling Hate Lab, Deakin University

In the wake of the Bondi terror attack, the government is under pressure to do more to address antisemitism in Australia.

Many have raised a report by antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal as holding the answers we need. Released back in July, the government is yet to formally respond.

But what does the report recommend, and how much of it is useful for tackling antisemitism? While there are some good ideas in it, it’s not a fix-all for this deeply complicated problem.

A highly charged environment

In response to rising numbers of antisemitic incidents, the Albanese government appointed Segal in July 2024 as the nation’s first special envoy to combat antisemitism. The government also commissioned a plan with recommendations to address the issue.

One year later, Segal published her plan, which set out those recommendations.

The context was highly charged. Jewish organisations were warning of rising hate. This included hate speech, discrimination, bullying, vandalism and physical assaults, and reported increases in both volume and severity.

Other voices pushed back, arguing the numbers were inflated and legitimate criticism of Israel was being counted as antisemitism.

The debate was intense, both within the Jewish community and across the wider public.

Released amid an already polarised debate, the report became an additional focal point for existing disagreements.

As I have written for The Conversation before, a central limitation of the plan was its failure to engage with the most contested issue in public debate: how to clearly distinguish between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel.

This distinction is complex, but it’s essential to combat antisemitism in the current context.

Because the plan did not clarify this difference, many people rejected it outright.

Which recommendations might help?

But the plan included several constructive recommendations, particularly those focused on skills, education and coordination.

For example, it proposed working with government departments to ensure consistent recording of antisemitic hate crimes and incidents through a national database. It also called for reviving interfaith work that has stalled in recent years.

This work is especially important for rebuilding trust and social cohesion, particularly after the Bondi attack.

The plan asked online platforms such as X and Meta to take greater responsibility for content on their sites. This included more transparency in moderation decisions and clearer rules for how algorithms shape what people see.

In practice, however, the opposite has happened. Since Elon Musk took over X
(formerly Twitter), and following the election of US President Donald Trump, major platforms have relaxed hate-speech moderation.

As a result, extreme content often remains online, even after the Bondi attacks. This includes praise for Hitler, denial of the Holocaust, and other serious attacks against Jewish people that are not removed by the platforms.

The plan further called for stronger coordination between law enforcement agencies to prevent and respond to antisemitic threats, as well as continued government funding for operational security at Jewish institutions and events. Such measures may have helped at Bondi, where security was clearly inadequate.

Which recommendations aren’t so useful?

The more punitive recommendations in Segal’s plan were unlikely to reduce antisemitism. These included withdrawing funding or imposing penalties on universities, cultural institutions or media organisations that did not comply with antisemitism standards set by the envoy.

Rather than helping, these measures inflamed the debate and shifted attention away from antisemitism itself to disputes about free speech and institutional autonomy. Without clear guidelines distinguishing legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism, such measures could be used politically.

The plan missed an opportunity to address difficult conversations in a constructive way. For example, it called for widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as a first objective, without discussing why some people resist it.

The approach prioritised compliance over persuasion, limiting its capacity to address underlying disagreement.

What else should we do?

Antisemitism is not one single thing. There is no single solution.

To reduce prejudice and discrimination against Australian Jews, education and sustained community efforts are essential, alongside better coordination across institutions, civil society and technology companies to limit the spread of hateful ideologies. The Jewish community, alongside all communities targeted by hate, should all stand in solidarity rather than in isolation.

But to reduce the risk of violent attacks such as the one in Bondi, the envoy’s recommendations are not enough. Better laws are required to combat terrorism and limit access to firearms – the latter of which the government has already flagged.

Law enforcement agencies need to engage constructively with communities to detect early signs of risk, without infringing on people’s rights and freedoms, as research on the issue has shown. The success of these interventions depends on participation across society and collaboration, so it’s important to build bridges across communities.

For this reason, we should resist authoritarian temptations. Silencing dissenting voices, banning opinions because they feel unpleasant or offensive, or relying on mass surveillance of anyone deemed suspicious will not solve the problem.

These approaches are likely to make it worse. They will antagonise large segments of society instead of fostering collaboration.

The worst terrorist attack on Australian soil struck the Jewish community, and it struck all of us. It is time to collectively reflect on what has happened and how to rebuild lasting social cohesion.

Matteo Vergani receives funding from the Australian government (Australian Research Council, Department of Home Affairs) and the Canadian government (Public Safety Canada).

– ref. The special envoy’s report doesn’t hold all the answers for defeating antisemitism – https://theconversation.com/the-special-envoys-report-doesnt-hold-all-the-answers-for-defeating-antisemitism-272167

Ryan Peake says it’s ‘pretty cool’ to be defending his NZ Open title

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

Australia’s Ryan Peake, 2025 New Zealand Open champion. www.photosport.nz

Australian golfer Ryan Peake will return to Queenstown to defend his New Zealand Open Crown in February.

Peake described his win at Millbrook earlier this year as “life-changing”.

The former West Australian bikie gang member said returning as defending champion was “pretty cool”.

“Never got to do it before in such a significant event,” Peake said. “I’m really looking forward to this opportunity.”

The win earned Peake full status on the Asian Tour, while it also helped him secure a World Tour card through his standing on the 2024/25 Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit.

“I was straight on the road, learning to travel the world again. It’s been challenging but great character building,” he said.

“Now I’m turning my focus towards my DP World Tour card. It’s been quite crazy, but I’m just looking forward to getting back to New Zealand.”

Peake said he remains grounded about his past and how it shapes him.

“Other people look at my story differently. For me, it’s just my life – something I live and deal with every day.

“It doesn’t feel as extraordinary to me as it might to others,” he said.

Australia’s Ryan Peake wins the 104th NZ Open golf tournament at Millbrook Resort, Arrowtown, 2025. Steve McArthur / www.photosport.nz

His victory at the New Zealand Open not only launched his international season – it also made him the first New Zealand Open champion to win a start at The Open Championship.

“I didn’t perform my best at Portrush this year, but it’s definitely something I want more of.”

The 32-year-old said he still receives support following his 2025 win.

“New Zealanders come up to me on the street now – they recognise me and say, ‘You won the New Zealand Open’. They’ve made me feel like I’m part of the country. It’s been pretty cool.”

The New Zealand Open returns to Millbrook Resort in Queenstown from 26 February to 1 March 2026.

A number of New Zealand’s top golfers have confirmed their entry including Ben Campbell, Steven Alker, Daniell Hillier and Kazuma Kobori.

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Households ponder future of gas as supply dwindles

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

The rate of gas installations has slowed, as the supply shrinks. 123RF.com

Renewables advocates claim it’s “madness” that thousands of new piped gas connections are being installed into houses every year, despite dwindling supply.

Organisations pushing for the country to electrify say households will face steeply rising bills in the short term and huge costs when they eventually need to switch.

They say the country’s declining natural gas supply should be saved as much as possible for manufacturers and other businesses, who are facing a costly and disorderly transition away from fossil fuels.

One advocate says, instead of banning new connections, an education campaign combined with a proposed financing scheme to help households switch to electric would be a better choice.

Data from the gas registry shows the overall number of ‘active’ gas connections has dropped and the rate of new connections has slowed.

However, new connections are still proceeding – more than 2000 were added in the last year, at a rate of nearly 200 a month.

Electrification non-profit Rewiring Aotearoa estimated another 300,000 households may use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) bottles for some form of cooking or heating.

No public data existed on the number of households using LPG, but the overall volume of LPG powering household cooking appliances, gas water heaters and heating went up nine percent between 2017-23, the most recent year of data.

The largest gas retailer in the country, Genesis, stopped accepting new piped connections last year.

But some retailers still offered gas-only connections, and Auckland network owner and distributor Vector said it would still allow new connections, if customers paid the full commissioning cost – usually about $2000.

The company, which had 120,000 residential connections on its gas network, forecasted earlier this month that it would have no new customers from 2029.

However, chief public policy and regulatory officer Mark Toner said it was “important to maintain that customer choice”.

“Some of the research shows that people really love infinity hot water, never-ending hot water,” he said. “They love cooking with gas hobs.”

Toner said he used gas at home himself and had recently replaced a gas hotwater heater with another one.

He acknowledged the long-term future of gas in New Zealand was “highly uncertain”, but customers could continue to have confidence in supply for now.

“There has been a lot of commentary about the state of natural gas in New Zealand,” he said. “There is no prospect of residential customers running out of gas any time soon.”

Green Building Council chief executive Andrew Eagles said the fact that new connections were still going in – even if that number was declining – was “absolute madness”.

The council published a report earlier this year looking at how much natural gas and LPG could be saved for industrial processes, if gas heating in homes and buildings were replaced with electric heat pumps.

“The amount that we need for manufacturing and industry is exactly the amount that homes and buildings will be using in 2035,” Eagles said.

“You’ve got firms that are closing or firing people, and down the road, you’ve got people connecting new gas, when it’s going to be significantly cheaper for that household to electrify their home.”

Retail gas prices had increased markedly and there was no indication that would change, he said.

Green Building Council chief executive Andrew Eagles says it’s “madness” that new gas connections are still being put into houses. Supplied / NZGBC

Rewiring Aotearoa chief executive Mike Casey said that message was not filtering through to many homeowners.

“It’s preference, plus a very serious lack of knowledge around the energy future for this country.”

Similarly, developers were encouraged to build and sell houses as cheaply as possible at the moment, he said.

“Avoiding any form of capex cost is a way to do that, so installing a $2000 gas califont, instead of an $8000 hot water heat pump matches what they’re incentivised to do, which is to sell turn-key solution houses at the cheapest price possible.”

All that did, he said, was “shift the economic burden onto the person who will live in that household”.

The upfront cost of installing gas systems can be much cheaper for developers than electric alternatives. RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

People love gas, but it was unhealthy, increasingly expensive and the arguments for it no longer held up, Casey said.

“They talk about instant and infinite hot water, but hotwater heat pumps can provide that same outcome now electrically.

“People say they love cooking with gas, but I think anyone who moves to induction likes induction more.”

Homeowner who wants out

When Pip Gay, 71, and her husband moved into their house in Auckland 26 years ago, the water heating, heaters, oven and stove were all gas.

Over time, as appliances have reached the end of their lives, they’ve switched almost everything to electric – except the gas hobs on a large kitchen range.

“That is wildly inefficient and uneconomic, because of the monthly line charge and the tiny amount of gas we use.”

Just having the connection now costs more than $70 a month, while the gas itself is only about $3.

Gay said she’d be very happy to eliminate gas altogether.

“It’s terrible pumping that gas out from where it’s quite happy under the sea and piping it all the way up the country, and forcing it into our houses and then burning it – it’s a bit bizarre, really.”

The upfront cost of replacing the range – which she loved – was prohibitive.

“If a young family bought this house, it’s probably the first thing they’d do, because they’d hopefully be looking at staying here for a good long spell, just like we have – but I don’t feel like doing it at the end of our run.”

The same reasoning had also put them off installing solar panels – another thing they would have liked to do.

“I wish we’d done it five years ago.”

Pip Gay says she would have loved to install solar panels and eliminate gas – but the upfront cost is too high Supplied/SolarZero

Her example illustrated the plight of many households who could see the benefit of switching to electric or installing solar, but either could not afford the upfront cost or were running out of runway to make it worth it, Casey said.

The cost of decommissioning gas, once it was connected, could become a further disincentive.

“You often hear stories of people being charged $2000 for a disconnection, but that involves digging up all the pipes,” he said. “It should be no more than the labour cost of getting the guy around to cap the pipe.”

Toner confirmed a current charge of $2500 for full decommissioning, but said capping the pipe was also an option, at a cost of a few hundred dollars.

“If you’re doing works on property and earthworks in particular, you would want a full disconnection at the street to make the site safe,” he said. “If you’ve simply replaced an appliance in your house, it would be a very sensible option just to cap and remove the meter.”

‘Running out of gas’

Earlier this year, the government rolled back the previous ban on new oil and gas exploration, and set aside $200 million as a ‘co-investment’ to encourage development of new fields, recently extending that to include new drilling in existing fields.

It was also exploring options to import liquified natural gas (LNG) as a back-up option in the meantime – a move that has been widely criticised as expensive and inefficient.

Gentailer Genesis, which has a 46 percent share in the Kupe field, stopped accepting new household gas connections last year.

Chief revenue officer Stephen England-Hall said the decision was made “once the national gas supply began to decline faster than was expected”.

“The thought then was, how do we prioritise existing customers on the gas network and also electricity generation, and not necessarily prioritise new connections to an infrastructure that is clearly going to come under stress?”

While the decision was partly driven by economics, it was also “better for the environment and everybody”, England-Hall said.

“One of the things we’re very focused on is how do we help customers electrify as much of their lifestyle as they can? Fundamentally, electricity is a very, very efficient and very cost-effective type of energy.”

Genesis chief revenue officer Stephen England-Hall says the energy crisis prompted the company to stop accepting new gas customers. RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

Even so, Genesis had not ruled out accepting new customers again, if future supply became more certain – but the data “continues to show signs of decline”, he said.

“We’re not seeing any major new finds occurring and we’re not seeing major new drilling investment occurring that would give us confidence that there’s going to suddenly be a big supply of new gas in the New Zealand market.”

Importing LNG was “technically viable”, he said. “What we are very interested in around that discussion is at what cost?”

Eagles described the search for new gas as “a strategy of hope”.

“[Companies] have spent billions of dollars searching and the massive amount of territory they’ve still been able to search over the last 20 years has not found anything,” he said. “We are running out of gas.”

Alternatives like biogas offered false hope, because it was still mostly fossil gas, he said.

Financing transition

Even if new natural gas was found, it would take 12-14 years to bring online – time and money that Eagles said would be better spent electrifying the country.

“If you look at the state of Victoria in Australia, they’ve said all new builds will be all-electric… and at end-of-life for existing homes, you need to move to electric systems.”

More than 60,000 households had taken up hotwater heat pump support packages in Victoria, since the policy was introduced in 2024.

Similar policies were needed here, he said.

“The poor and people who can’t move are going to be stuck with unhealthy, massively rising costs on a network that has less and less people.”

Energy Minister Simon Watts said there was “not a clear case for further subsidies at this time in the residential gas market”.

Energy Minister Simon Watts RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

The Warmer Kiwi Homes programme had provided subsidies for heat pumps for many years, he said.

“In addition, most major banks in New Zealand provide low-rate loans for households who are installing renewable energy or switching their appliances to more energy-efficient options.”

There was no need to intervene in the residential gas market to “limit consumer choice”, Watts said.

“With new builds, data shows the rate of new connections has been declining and I understand that only one gas retailer is offering new connections where existing infrastructure is not in place.”

Ending gas connections for existing homes would impose extra costs for households, and the government had “a clear plan” to improve gas supply through encouraging exploration and procuring an LNG import facility.

Casey said simply banning new gas connections was likely to create “an allergic reaction”.

“We saw it happen in America, when the Biden administration… tried to ban gas cooktops and you literally had celebrity chefs handcuffing themselves to their stovetops, saying ‘Over my dead body’.

Rewiring Aotearoa chief executive Mike Casey says habit and a lack of knowledge is fuelling new household gas connections Supplied / Rewiring Aotearoa

Finance was the solution, but the switch could happen without subsidies, Casey said.

His organisation supported a Local Government New Zealand business case to develop a ratepayers’ assistance scheme, funded by capital raised by councils.

The scheme would offer long-term, flexible loans to anyone who wanted to make renewable upgrades to their property.

“Most New Zealanders can’t access [bank] loans – pensioners, renters, and also those who are struggling to make ends meet and struggling to pay off the mortgage.”

The scheme would fund electric appliances like heat pumps and hot water heat pumps, switchboard upgrades where needed, solar panels and batteries, Casey said.

Crucially, it would allow homeowners to transfer the remaining portion of the loan when they sold their house – making it a viable option for anyone who might not plan to stay in a property long term.

Watts gave tentative support to the idea earlier this year, and said Local Government New Zealand and the Local Government Funding Agency were currently revising the business case.

“I understand they have taken a few additional months to get it right and are ready to present it to me shortly.”

Once he received it, he would consider it alongside official advice and expected to make decisions in the new year.

“I endorse the efforts made to bring relief to ratepayers, but I will be looking at the proposal closely to understand the mechanics and viability, before sharing any further views.”

Casey said it was positive that the numbers showed people starting to leave the gas network of their own accord, but not all households were in a position to make that choice.

“If we don’t plan for a decommissioning of the gas network, then it’s going to be a chaotic transition, where vulnerable New Zealanders really suffer.”

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GDP announcement expected to show economic rebound

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

Numbers out today are likely to show the economy rebounded in the September quarter.

Gross domestic product – a broad measure of growth – is expected to have grown 0.9 percent in the three months, after a shock 0.9 percent fall in June.

Economists are predicting growth driven by agriculture, non-food manufacturing, residential construction and wholesale trade.

Their forecasts are substantially stronger than the Reserve Bank’s forecasts.

Stats NZ will release the data at 10.45am.

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Chilly Christmas Day forecast for much of the country

By Evening Report -

December 18, 2025

Source: Radio New Zealand

Christmas dinner may be an inside affair this year as MetService forecasts a chilly Christmas Day for much of the country. 123rf.com

MetService is predicting a chilly Christmas Day as the current cold snap continues.

The forecaster says a southwesterly air mass is responsible for cooler than average temperatures for most of the country.

Head of weather Heather Keats told Morning Report although temperatures were expected to rebound early next week, the pattern of periodic cool weather was likely to be prolonged.

“It’s not looking great for Christmas Day for much of the country.”

She said there was still some lee-way in the forecast a week out from Christmas but as the day approaches, the models will start to align with greater confidence and accuracy.

Keats said at this stage, a high pressure with warmer temperatures was expected in the lead-up to the New Year.

“Which is kind of what we see every year.

“If it’s a little bit rubbish on Christmas Day it tends to be much better for New Year’s Eve and vice versa depending on your location.

“So you are going to get lots of fine weather and it looks like there’ll be some warmer days coming too after Christmas.

“But whether we’re still locked in to that … southwesterly flow, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

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Households ponder pros, cons of gas against electricity as supply dwindles