Jonny Wilkinson outside the fully accessible respite house.
As 2025 draws to a close, I have been looking back over the year’s columns.
Twelve months of stories, frustrations, absurdities, wasp attacks, social change, policy shifts, and tiny sparks of hope. What emerges is a portrait of a country and a community still trying to find its footing on the path toward inclusion, sometimes gracefully and sometimes like David Seymour twerking on ice.
The year began with the fallout from government cuts and confusion in the disability sector.
The year before, policies landed without warning or consultation, leaving disabled people scrambling to figure out what supports they still had.
Later in the year, the ministry attempted to tidy up the mess through widespread engagement.
Although to be fair, some of the so-called consultation felt more like being handed a set menu rather than being invited into the kitchen to help design it. Still, it was a step forward from the chaos of 2024.
The challenge for 2026 is making sure disabled people are not just listened to but actually heard. We also need to ensure that the new outcome-based planning model does not quietly slide back into old-school medical thinking dressed up in modern language.
Much of this year involved confronting the consequences of systems that simply are not built for everyone. The most shocking example was the case of the autistic 11-year-old girl who was misidentified, restrained, and injected under the Mental Health Act. A brutal reminder of what happens when organisational culture, understanding of neurodiversity, and basic human decency all fail at the same time.
We also saw health inequity in action through the story of Blake Forbes, a young man with cerebral palsy who could not get a basic diagnostic scan. It is astonishing that in 2025, we still lack solid disability data, let alone equitable pathways through the health system.
Yet there were bright spots. The establishment of a National Autism Research Centre.
A long-overdue focus on mobility parking misuse. Early signs that residential services may finally get the investment they have needed for decades. And here in Tai Tokerau, a community movement that has stepped up with real momentum.
Our EGL leadership group has been out in the community conducting accessibility audits in Whangārei town centre and running their famous EGL discos.
These gatherings regularly see up to 60 tangata whaikaha dancing, laughing, and occasionally partying until sunrise.
If you want a glimpse of genuine inclusion, look no further than a room full of disabled people outlasting the average nightclub crowd.
This year also brought a significant win when the Whangārei Accessible Housing Trust offered us a fully accessible rental home.
This allowed Tiaho Trust to finally provide a much-needed respite service for disabled people and their families. After years of unmet need, it has been gratifying to see a practical, community-driven solution take shape.
Across the year’s columns, humour has remained one of my favourite tools for unpacking heavier issues.
My travel misadventures alone could fill a book. There was the time I was strapped into a bright pink airport wheelchair and rolled through the terminal like a trussed turkey. Or the day at Auckland Zoo when my nearly flat mobility scooter gave up halfway between the meerkats and the coffee cart.
And of course, the now legendary wasp incident, which resembled a Shakespearean tragedy involving a wrought iron chair, a cloudless sky, and several angry insects with a talent for dramatic timing.
There were lighter cultural observations too. Jason Momoa’s dream of becoming a Kiwi, which may depend on surviving our notoriously strict disability screening for immigration. The slow decline of enthusiasm for the Melbourne Cup.
My ever-growing collection of bizarre vintage cookbooks. And the uniquely Kiwi habit of freezing outside while sweating under six blankets inside.
But the strongest thread this year has been inclusion, not as a buzzword but as something lived.
The joy of an accessible mid-winter dinner where disabled people were the norm.
The Getting Out There Expo celebrating businesses and spaces that are doing it right. And this year’s International Day of Disabled People theme, which finally made sense in practice rather than theory.
If there is one message from 2025 I want to carry into 2026, it is this. Progress does not come from declarations. It comes from community, persistence, visibility, and the belief that inclusion benefits all of us.
Here is to 2026. May it bring more action, more collaboration, fewer wasps, and many more reasons to celebrate what is possible when we work together.
I wish you all an inclusive Christmas and a diverse New Year.