A Confidential Christmas Message

If you’ve felt this year like you’re working longer, paying more, and being lectured harder, congratulations. You’re not imagining it. You’re just living in modern Australia, where every problem is “complex,” every solution involves another agency, another levy, another regulation, and less of your freedom.

Let’s start with the household altar every government now worships at: the cost-of-living crisis. The Reserve Bank’s cash rate sits at 3.60 per cent after a string of cuts earlier in 2025, and yet inflation is still stalking the shopping trolley.

Canberra’s answer? Spend, announce, re-announce, then call it “responsible.” The 2025–26 MYEFO remains in deficit at $36.8 billion. Structural budget deficits cause inflationary pressure. Yet real budgetary reform is deferred to “future discussions”, which usually means on the never-never.

Meanwhile, housing has become the national sport where spectators can’t afford a ticket. Governments promise “access” while protecting the one sacred metric they dare not offend (because the banks have so much at stake): ever-rising prices. Another verboten topic is immigration, because we’re not allowed to have an adult conversation about capacity. Record migration levels continue to smash its impact into rentals, roads, and hospitals.

Then there’s the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the budget-eater that never sleeps. Everyone wants the NDIS to work, but everyone knows it’s growing too fast. And while reform was announced earlier this year, it was presented in bureaucratic language and ministerial fanfare, and so will probably achieve very little. But it's worth noting that even Labor's policy wonks now admit the NDIS is crowding out essential services and needs to be pared back.

On energy, we get the same political theatre: targets, slogans, subsidies, and the unspoken belief that the laws of physics will bend to Green Left politics. The government’s locked in a 2035 emissions cut of 62 to 70 per cent. Its “Future Made in Australia” strategy will lock in more renewables (unreliables) as it really is just protectionism for solar panels and the like. While “Future Made in Australia” sounds like good policy, in reality it is a greenwashed industry policy that doles out tax breaks and handouts for billionaire green wheelers and dealers who are already milking the system.

You don’t have to be anti-environment to notice what’s missing: honesty about costs, reliability, and the ideological bans that keep nuclear and other baseload options off the table.

And since no year is complete without a fresh bite out of civil liberties, the digital clampdown is well underway. New eSafety codes targeting age-restricted material, including hosting and search services, take effect on 27 December. Meanwhile, the government's ban on under-16s using social media already kicked in on 10 December. It’s all “for the children,” of course, until the rest of us find ourselves proving our age to access basic services or speak freely online. And Digital ID? Still expanding. Still “voluntary.” Right up until it isn't.

Which brings us to the darkest reminder of 2025: national security and the cracks in our social fabric.

The Bondi Beach terror attack, committed by two radical Islamists, was a brutal wake-up call. It reminded Australians that open borders and naive multiculturalism come with a price and that evil doesn’t disappear just because we pretend it doesn’t exist. But, true to form, what followed wasn’t a serious reckoning. It was the usual political scramble: more gun laws, more restrictions on protests, more “hate speech” regulation. Most of it is performative, to be sure. But some of it is deliberate and a reminder that governments never let a good crisis go to waste.

In international matters, our foreign aid contribution this financial year is likely to crack $5.1 billion. That's all while Australians suffer from homelessness, food insecurity and energy poverty at home, and Australian Government gross debt is rapidly approaching $1 trillion. Just two weeks ago, another $50 million was thrown Volodymyr Zelenskyy's way to continue sending Ukrainian men into the meat grinder.

So what’s the Christmas lesson in all this?

It’s the same one that’s always been true but is now desperately unfashionable. You are not the state’s property. Your family is not a unit of government planning. Your business is not a tax milking cow. Your beliefs are not subject to a “community standards” committee. And your freedom is not a seasonal courtesy extended by Canberra.

At its core, Christmas is about Jesus Christ. It’s about the birth of the Saviour who taught us the sanctity of life, the power of truth, and the value of humility. In a world increasingly ruled by bureaucrats, busybodies, and bullies in suits, Christmas is a defiant reminder that the most important things in life are outside the state’s reach: faith, family, love, and freedom.

So rest. Eat too much. Spend time with family and the people you love. Remember what matters. And in the New Year, don’t let the busybodies steal your peace or your liberty.

A note from the Confidential Daily team:
We’re taking a short Christmas break and will return to your inbox on Monday, 5 January 2026. Between now and then, we may re-issue some of the best editions of the past year because some truths are worth repeating. And if anything big breaks, we may just power up early. Because, let’s face it, governments don’t take holidays from being governments.

MERRY CHRISTMAS. STAY FREE!

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
– Isaiah 9:6,