The secret diary of... 2025

I was enjoying a boozy lunch the other day with a couple of similarly wizened journos who were likewise in their pomp last century. Nostalgia is an affliction of the old, and they brought up the 1980s satirical British TV series Spitting Image, much-loved for its use of puppets playing political figures of the time.

"Oh, if only there was satire like that now! Mean. Vicious," they chorused, over the fifth or sixth beer.

It was a little disrespectful of the professional satirist at the table. I sulked but let the comment pass by the time of the sixth or seventh beer, and later I reflected on how much I hated Spitting Image. Partly because I can’t stand puppets. Mostly because I have limited tolerance for mean and vicious anything, including satire.

It’s not that I have zero tolerance. My long-running Secret Diary series relies heavily on the urge to grab a knife and plunge it in the reputation of the chosen wretch of the week. Satire is the art of twisting the truth into a grotesque travesty. I’m all good with that but I have to admit I lack a certain malice. As such I think the year’s most devastating satire in New Zealand politics was the campaign that cast Green MP Benjamin Doyle as some kind of paedophile.

It was a truly mean and vicious affair that used the elements of satire — travesty and caricature — to make its point. It was out of control, out of nothing. It created a moral panic based on Doyle making a social media reference to the sexual term "bussy". Doyle released a long-winded statement: "The term is wordplay. It’s a satirical in-joke made about myself with people who know me in mind".

A "satirical in-joke"! And so it was a satire that inspired a satire dressed as dirty politics, and it hounded Doyle out of office. Strange how everyone involved in Doyle’s downfall just moved on after the MP had been hounded out of office, as though it were no big deal that a career in politics was ended by baseless innuendo made by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

Stranger still is the way a false story of sexual misconduct became a media sensation, as opposed to the media disinterest in a true story of former Act New Zealand president Tim Jago’s sexual offending. Jago, too, was cast as some kind of paedophile. The difference with Doyle is that Jago actually was a paedophile. Act just moved on, as though it were no big deal Jago was found guilty of three charges of indecency with a boy between 12 and 16, and jailed for two years and six months.

Perhaps unwisely I wrote a satire on Jago in his voice. Someone on social media was a bit disgusted by it and commented that I was "cosplaying" a convicted paedophile. God almighty. I don’t think anyone read that particular Secret Diary and I cannot say I blame them.

As such I was nervous about writing a recent Secret Diary in the voice of former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming. To do so would risk cosplaying someone facing eight charges of possessing objectionable publications including child sexual exploitation and bestiality material, but I forged on and I gather it was one of the most popular diaries I wrote this year.

Sean Plunkett phoned to tell me it was the best I had ever written. I will take praise from any corner although a compliment from The Platform founder is possibly a sign that I’m doing something wrong.

The intersection between satire and criminal offending is rare territory. For the most part, though, satire in 2025 was business as usual, targeting the usual suspects whose only crime is various degrees of incompetence. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon seems to be working on a master’s degree in incompetence and I wrote more Secret Diaries about him this year than any other wretch. I tried to balance it out with satires on Labour leader Chris Hipkins but the problem is that nobody ever wants to read about him. Secret Diaries on Hipkins were about as popular as the one on Jago.

There was fun to be had with awful Stuart Nash, awful Brian Tamaki, and Act’s awful school lunches.

The most fun I had was with fellow professionals in the fourth estate, and duly swung an axe at Patrick Gower over his gormless column in praise of Amanda Luxon, and at the host of New Zealand’s least-watched current affairs show, Ryan Bridge.

I can picture both of them with their large heads and bulging eyes styled into mean, vicious, and very, very funny crafted puppets.

By Steve Braunias