The 2025 Ice Sculpture Awards

Hello, my name is Lorde and I will be your guest emcee for the SIXTH consecutive Ice Sculpture Awards! The excessively longest and most exciting yet! And I’d just like to summarise this year in my own words:

What Was That?

The amount of time that Frozen Peaches rented my Cameo services for has now expired, so I’m going to hand the mic back to the finest think piece website south of the Waimakariri, possibly the Equator.

The David Cameron Award for Biggest Upset: Mark Carney

In the two weeks between the Liberal government losing the last byelection of 2024, and Justin Trudeau resigning as Prime Minister, here is every individual poll result for what percentage of voters supported the Liberal government:

• 20%

• 19% 

• 19.4% 

• 23.8% 

• 20% 

• 20% 

• 21.3% 

• 22% 

• 16% 

• 22.5% 

• 21%

They were at UK Labour levels.

And then Mark Carney took charge.

And he won 43% of the vote.

To put that into perspective, the last Liberal leader to do that was Trudeau.

No, not Justin, who never even cracked 40%.

Pierre.

In 1980.

There has never been a comeback story like it in my lifetime. It was Jacindamania squared. It was as though Hipkins had comfortably won the 2023 election - except it's actually more impressive than that, because the Conservatives, far from being hampered by more conservative parties like National was here, totally united the right bloc to surge by 7.5%. Even against this bellowing tide, Carney was able to knock Pierre Poilievre, his Conservative rival for the Premiership, out in his own seat.

This is the sort of politics that only happens on television. It’s fantastical. If I hadn’t had to catch Carney’s unbelievable transformation of Canadian political fortunes at the top of this article, you’d be reading all this at the bottom for Politician of the Year, where he clearly owns the title and nobody can hold a candle higher than his kneecaps. 

It’s all downhill from here.

The Let the Wookie Win Award for Five Dimensional Dejarik: Donald Trump

The only country on your massive northern frontier is about to elect a leader whose words and actions are startlingly in sync with your own. So what do you do? Slap tariffs on Canada, talk about annexing them, and watch another liberal institutionalist take power. Way to secure your border. And that’s not even getting started on his bewildering prevarication over Ukraine, not to mention whatever might possibly have been the point of rattling sabers over Greenland and Panama. I never even have my phone on me on shift at work, and I was relentlessly checking it at 3pm last week just because he had me dead convinced he was about to bomb Venezuela. 

The How Can I Make This About Me Award: Donald Trump

Where’s Rob Reiner when you need him :(

Honourable Mention: Andrea Vance

Is it more important for news headlines to focus on the exploitation and poverty of working class women, or on whether it’s okay to drop the c-bomb on well-paid parliamentarians? Seems like an easy choice, right? 🤦‍♀️ 

The Nostradamus Award for Best Prediction: #resistlibs

Everybody who’s been yelling hysterically for the past decade about how Trump is a fascist who will wreck the economy and throttle American democracy - and I absolutely count myself as a “Russia Russia Russia!” TDS sufferer from the get-go - is getting grim vindication way too late.

The Strong Team More Team Better Team Award for Political Management - Honourable Mention: Independent Together

Much like Your Party, they probably should have realised that this was going to break bad at the naming stage. But I’m getting the honourable mention out the way first because the real award has to go to…

Te Pāti Māori!!!

Hi, I’m Hone Harawira. My going rates on Cameo are a lot cheaper than Lorde. How about a themed lightning round?

The Chuck McGill Award for Most Upset: Tākuta Ferris 

I mean. Man, what did you even think was gonna happen? That all of Labour’s non-Māori volunteers were gonna go “oh damn, I hadn’t thought about that?” and abandon the party? 

The You Will Return Award as presented by Don McGlashan: Mariameno Kapa-Kingi

TPM’s leadership cabal should perhaps have thought through the expulsion a little more if it was going to be pretty much immediately reversed under law.

The Tim Robinson Award for Dog-Gone Investigation: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer & Rawiri Waititi

The Ngira Simmonds kotahitanga call-out was sooo satisfying. 

The Troy Barnes Award for Pizza Delivery: Oriini Kaipara

That sprinkler really rained on her parade.

The LCK Player of the Year Award: Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke

Because she’s doing everything possible to get her team the win, and everybody else on her team is doing everything possible to get the other team the win. We at Frozen Peaches would like, in fact, to formally extend Maipi-Clarke a seat at next year’s awards -

Because she’s the only one we can possibly be sure will still be around to accept more plaudits.

This has been Hone Harawira, making you aware-r. 

The Heart Part IV Award for Going Viral: Graham Platner

For good reasons, and then bad ones. Of all the oddities about the stories he tells, the strangest is the total absence of colour from the picture he paints a back-alley tattoo parlour in Croatia that knows how to ink a proper Nazi tattoo. Surely it’s impossible not to notice how atrocious the vibes of such a spot are - short of being blitzed drunk out of your mind, which, of course, is precisely the problem here. Alcoholism is not some moral sin and recovering alcoholics deserve full lives - only, I don’t know about the good people of Maine, but personally I prefer my Senators who served in war zones to be capable of remembering the things they did. 

The Hillary Sandwich Award for Losing To A Loser, also presented by Don McGlashan: Chris Bishop

Failing against Christopher Luxon in a popularity contest…that has to hurt. (Don’t worry, Bish, I will have more to say about you later.) 

The Leonardo DiCaprio Academy Award for Catch Me If You Can: George Santos

School walkouts work ❤️

The “She didn’t dump me, I dumped her” Award for Messy Breakups: Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn

She wants to run the entire economy. He doesn’t even want to run their party. This summer, witness a match made in political hell that will send shivers down your spin.

The Merrick Garland Award for Too Much Magnanimity: Andrew Little

Little is a dutiful servant of progress who, despite having often aggrieved different pillars of the left, is ultimately acceptable to a broad sweep of everybody left of centre - hence why he won such a resounding mandate in ranked choice voting to govern Wellington. But turning around in the heart of Kiwi progressivism to appoint the nakedly incompetent Ray Chung, who has surely the single most toxic profile in all of New Zealand local politics, head of a council committee might just be the thing that does him in with the left. It was a terrible note to start off on. 

The Baldwin Street Award for Worst Hill to Die On: Ray Chung

Strangely insistent on the point of factual reporting about the mayor’s supposed, uh, drug-fueled sex parties? You can get away with elements of Trumpian conspiracy gutter politics in Australia and New Zealand, but going for the full sell seems to be a no sell - not least in, uh, Wellington.

Honourable Mention: Peter Dutton

See above. Picked a fight with traditional media and lost. In 2025. How you manage that, I don’t even know. Chess, dogs, et cetera. 

The Tuxedo Mask Award for Delivery: Elon Musk

He came, he saw, he killed millions of poor people for the crime of not being born American, he buggered off to do more ket. The gutting of USAID is the great unsung tragedy of 2025 for the history books. A disgusting and entirely unjustifiable crime.

The Sisyphus Award for Running Up That Hill: David Seymour

Blowing into the awards at the absolute last minute by promising to relitigate the Treaty Principles Bill at the 2026 election, without engaging in any of the issues that led to its downfall, the critique of its prioritisation over the many pieces of legislation ACT has not made remotely the same fuss about publicly crowing over, and accusing his coalition partners of “abandoning” him over a bill they wrote down on a piece of paper “we are not committed to passing this past first reading” which David signed back in the big ‘23 - how many times do we have to reach you this lesson, old man in the body of a younger man?!

Honourable Mention: shared four ways between Auckland Council, Waka Kotahi, Gerry Brownlee & CERA

I didn’t know it was even possible to actually, physically finish the City Rail Link. Never mind the Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre - announced in 2012, and opened a week before Christmas. I just thought these names were just kinds of games that consultants played on paper. 

(Don’t mention the ferries.)

The Gene Kelly Award for Singing In The Rain: Wayne Brown

“Am I going to be able to get a use out of this award again? Probs not”, I wrote last year. Well I was WRONG. “Wayne, wayne, go away?” On the contrary, it wayned and it poured in the Auckland local elections, and when all was said and done, he persisted, stronger than ever before. What a political comeback from once the most hated man in the country. 

The Me, Me, Pick Me Award for an Only Child: J.D. Vance

The Lazarus with a Triple Bypass Award for Political Survival: Chris Hipkins

Hipkins was so clearly and utterly a man of the last government, and especially associated with the polarising COVID response, that in 2023 it seemed laughable that he would survive to the next election. If Labour’s polling had dipped this year - if they had begun to show signs of infighting and ambition, or serious divides over policies like taxation, or botched their relationships to coalition partners, or Hipkins had fallen lower than Luxon - he would surely have felt the ax raised over his neck. 

Instead, he’s going to be the first ousted Prime Minister in modern times to survive in the leadership to the next election, and contest once more. I haven’t been especially impressed with Labour in Opposition, but he’s certainly held it together with a skill few would have foreseen in him. Of course, this award may wind up as a commentator’s curse if his alleged failure to confront McSkimming early drags him down…

The Allan Lichtman Award for Worst Prediction: me, predicting all five mayors of the major New Zealand cities would be reelected

Okay, so I got it wrong on the facts of their electability - but looking back, this was just a stupid prediction to make anyway! Local elections have a lot of turnover as plenty of people move on to new things in life; why presume that all five mayors would want to come back in the first place?

The Rangitata Accountability Award: Caerphilly

In devolved elections in Wales, the heart and soul of the Labour Party left Labour in the dust - winning just 11% of votes with a tone-deaf, entitled campaign - to stave off Reform by giving almost a full majority of votes to the Welsh nationalist, Plaid Cymru, instead. In this moment of total crisis for Labour and existential fear for the West of the far-right, and as somebody who would certainly describe myself as a unionist*, I am going to be keenly interested to see to what extent the progressive nationalist parties of the UK can act as backup bulwarks stymieing Reform’s advance.

*Except on matters of South Island autonomy, on which I am a relentless hardliner. 

The Houdini Discountability Award: Reform UK voters

Reform’s key issues are high, rising and dysfunctional immigration; stalled economic prospects; and a broken political culture of bickering where nobody gets anything done. I speak without hyperbole when I say that no single act has done more to cause every single one of those issues than Brexit. And it is obvious to literally everybody, for and against, that nobody is more responsible for Brexit than Nigel Farage.

So why are Reform in first place???

It’s like MAGA clapping for Trump when he cuts tariffs.

Honourable Mention: nationwide rates cap enjoyers

Hmm, what a brilliant idea it was to discard a government that said “hey water provision and disposal is a big issue, we should make a sensible long-term investment in our infrastructure” in favour of “awww nah guys local control can handle it”, and then get really mad that local councils keep raising rates in a desperate and impossible bid just to play catchup on water, and then - you know what solves costs spinning out of control? Why not simply install a US-style debt ceiling? It’s genius! Why don’t we just cease every cost to the public for that matter by having the government say so! If you think about it, we don’t need to pay for the roads! Price controls! Rent controls! Put Zachary in charge of MCERT, why not! I’m gonna have a stroke!

The Super Finn Bros. Award for Six Months In A Leaky Boat: CEO of War Pete Hegseth

The US is just one of many countries whose military has been carrying out murders of civilians and war crimes against combatants for its entire existence, but never has it been done so blatantly. Hegseth says everybody they’re killing is a narco-terrorist, and then the survivors they have picked up get released. You can only conclude they’re innocent fishermen and suchlike caught in the crossfire. Heinous.

The Helicopter Parent Award for Overlong Influence: John Tamihere

Just stuff off. He’s been involved in Parliamentary business near as long as Gerry Brownlee, for chrissakes. Longer than Judith Collins. And I get that a lot of people in TPM feel that he has contributed greatly to their success, but at some point you need to start getting new blood in to build experience, and to do that you have to break up the old boys’ club and tight family connections that prevent the most competent people getting in and repositioning for the future. Debbie and Rawiri will be extraordinarily difficult to replace and still have a shot at holding their seats, but the public never chose JT - indeed, Tamaki Makaurau rejected him in 2020. If there must be a sacrificial lamb to share over the fire and thus bring peace, let it be him.

Honourable Mention: Raf Manji

As of the local elections, Manji has now lost three elections in a row and, sad to say, pretty much become the Beto O’Rourke of the South Island. I don’t feel too bad about saying that, because I’m confident that Raf is much happier with his life than poor Beto. 

The Frozen Peaches Award for Best Use of Free Speech: Deborah Russell and the fellow Labour members of the Finance Select Committee

Holding the government accountable is when you yell at the Finance Minister, and the more you yell the better a job you’re doing.

The “GY!BECIgJWTFAYTA?” Award for Eloquent Rhetoric: Stuart Nash

I don’t even wanna type it out here. A foul way to talk about over half your constituents. Succinctly demonstrates the senselessness of such a view of the world.

Honourable Mention: Christopher Luxon

The most pointless political evasion of all time? 

The We Are Charlie Kirk Award for Powerful Persuasion: David Seymour

Remember how important it was that we engage in a high-falutin, intellectual, in-depth debate about the Treaty Principles? Apparently, there’s no such place for curating and pursuing that over the principles of the Regulatory Standards Act. No, those are just up to a party representing a minority of people to decide. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you can’t convince your own coalition partners it’s worth it - what matters is bringing a massive bill into law for one year, and if it gets repealed after that, who cares? You did your part.

The Actually I Voted For It, Before I Voted Against It Award for Jandalising Legalisation: Winston Peters

See above.

Honourable Mention: Keir Starmer

Practically ripped his own party in two fighting for months for the two-child benefit cap, one of the greatest drivers of poverty across Britain, and then swung around to scrap it. Briefed he was going to take the plunge on raising income tax; didn’t. This from the figure so stolid he once pledged to resign if fined over a pint and a curry during a COVID-era workday. One of the most incomprehensible leaders of this quarter century; it’s something of a dark miracle of history that he wound up as Prime Minister of a G7 state. 

The Traffic Award for Weirdest Political Coding in Fiction: Andor Season Two

SPOILER WARNING BELOW!

Hey, phenomenal season of telly, but I dinged it quite a bit in my video on the other page and I’m not gonna spare it here either. What the heck does the Maya Pei Brigade being Neo-Republicans mean? Sure, I understand their divides are mostly personal bickering and the stress of their hungry, traumatised circumstances, but I sure would love to shed a little light on at least a couple items off of Saw’s list! I understand we don’t need to show human cultists and galaxy partitionists. I get what the show’s going for by making its genocide victims affluent white French people, just as, for instance, Diego Luna plays an illegal migrant who is the son of a black man shot by police. 

But then you get to the Mon Mothma speech where she’s like “ooh, there’s a gap between what we say here and the truth” and it’s just like? That’s called the other Senators disagreeing with you?? Like I get a lot of them are BSing, but this is truly a level one political insight - nothing she says means anything until she actually begins to identify the root cause of the system’s corruption, and the speech finishes just as she’s getting started! And don’t get me started on the total opacity of the Rebel council. I enjoyed many of these scenes and episodes regardless, but god I would’ve liked to learn something about who Bail and Mon actually were as politicians, once. Guess I gotta shell out for Mask of Fear some time next year.

I’m so proud of myself for going up against a show I really like instead of having a stroke over the “wind turbines are destroying the planet” scene from Landman.

SPOILER WARNING ABOVE! 

The Gliding Over All Award: Chlöe Swarbrick & Marama Davidson

Where are you guys on the issues? The Greens have felt less conspicuous and especially, startlingly nowhere when it comes to cultural hip-ness and humour. What was the last funny viral moment the Greens had since OK boomer? Understandable for Marama vis a vis fighting cancer alongside her job. Not understandable for Swarbrick. 

Honourable Mention: Judith Collins

After such a high-profile and persistently mentionable career, the universal acceptance of the fact she will never come close to the leadership again has, ironically, liberated her just to get on with being a bloody good minister.

The Let Me Be Frank Award for the Collective Memory Hole: abuse in state care & subsequent coverups

The government made another big apology, emotions were moving on the day, and then the politicians move on to the next target. Just the latest example of how we utterly refuse to analyse this responsibility to our neighbours and peers is the government’s brutish approach to homeless people, so many of whom are disconnected from and suspicious of traditional institutions and systems, putting business owners and peeved pedestrians ahead of these victims of so many different crimes. 

The Wanna See Me Fall Award: Pam Bondi

Why on God’s green earth would you promise the Epstein files so readily when your boss is so obviously in them? She hasn’t been punished yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time.

Honourable Mention: Penny Simmonds

Of the thousand cuts that have aggravated various small groups, one of the handful of the most egregious were her blows against disabled people and their families. So many people conscious of their disabilities are never gonna be remotely wooable for any part of this government again.

The What’s Gonna Work Award for Teamwork: Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis & Erica Stanford

Forming a great wall against Bish.

The What Is Work Award for Policyless Politics: DISHonourable Mention (that wraps back around to being Honourable): Todd McClay

Todd McClay was GOING to win this one  for being two years behind on delivering a trade deal with India, but now he actually has one on the table, I gotta celebrate him instead. 

The “Where are they now?” Award for Moving On: Jacinda Ardern

My coworker rated the docco! I thought she acquitted herself well on Graham Norton, instead of feeling the stomach-turning sense of pandering I usually do when I see her speak to American audiences! 

Then again, I spoke to a Canadian tourist this year who was shocked to discover that Jacinda wasn’t still Prime Minister in the big ‘25, so maybe she hasn’t done all that good of a job communicating she’s not actually abroad in an official capacity anymore. 

DISHonourable Mention: Andrew Coster

“Nobody talks about social investment anymore and it makes me sad”, was Andrew’s award last year. Well, hopefully cleaning him out of politics can get somebody in there ready to make real positive change for the disenfranchised. Coster’s accusations against Hipkins and Mitchell come off as credible to me - but his insistence on talking about his own life and face to the world, while writing off the actual most affected person in this story as hysterical, disgusted me. Politics and public service are not your quest for meaning and purpose and being understood, they are about protecting and helping people, and when you’ve failed at that it’s your job to do what you can to make things up and help your victims. Coster has not.

The Chris Martin Award for When You Try Your Best, But You Don’t Succeed: Xavier Dickason

A loss, but a bloody good run, netting 1683 votes - over one in five voters across northwest Christchurch. Even if those voters didn’t get their desired choice, it makes me smile to know that at least somebody was engaging with them and valuing their thoughts.

The Best Award of the Year Award (DIShonourable Mention): NOTHING for The Spinoff

The Spinoff are so clearly far and above everything else in NZ politics for their batting average of political humour that I was genuinely shocked to see them somehow put up a set of awards that feels neither like they have good jokes to tell, nor want to spend the time to really say anything of substance about…any politician or issue, really. I’m not a hater, I just know they can and will be better than this.

The Politician of the Year Award: Mark Carney

If you missed the explanation for this, I don’t even see how.

Runner Up: Winston Peters

Peters is often given too much credit given his many faults even as a cynical political player. But this past year has been really extraordinary: he has managed to rise in the polls while in government, not the done thing for him, and he has begun an agile pivot to prepare his leverage for the election next year when even a few months ago most dedicated political observers would have found the idea of him going with Labour risible. He has perfectly positioned to capitalise on Te Pāti Māori’s fall, and while continued economic struggles may bleed National and ACT, it’s not clear at all that they’ll do the same for NZFirst. It turns out even an old dog can learn new tricks.

The Obligatory Mention:

Chris Bishop would win if not for the fact that, for all his unparalleled policy work in 2025 - and I will have more to say on that in the coming year - he has not done anything yet that will retrieve National’s polling, nor, as was mentioned earlier, did he actually succeed at advancing to the top political position despite being Parliament’s best MP. (I’m not sure if we can say for certain yet whether MCERT is a grand prize or a poisoned chalice.) 

The Future is Bright Award for 2025’s Brightest Prospect: Barbara Edmonds

Barbara was a fantastic recruit for Labour in the 2020 wave, with high levels of private sector economic experience. Only half a decade after entering Parliament - and, I cannot stress this enough, while also juggling eight children - she has met pretty much universally with the approval of all who have seen her as a strong economic figure. She seems to me clearly somebody ready to drive change and serve as a critical governing partner to Hipkins. 

Next year will be her trial by fire, to demonstrate if she slips up and creates a fiscal hole - because if she doesn’t; if she can reassure business and the voters and the unions out there - she will be probably the most critical part of Labour’s campaign to prove to the public that, yes, you really can continue to trust us more than National on most of the issues. And if she does a good job as expected and Labour lose the election - even if she doesn’t run for leader, as she claims she won’t - she shall continue to be one to watch.

Runner Up: Craig Renney

He’s going to be one to watch now that he’s directly entering the political arena - if you want to hear more, then you can refer back to my election forecast. 

And that’s 2025 done! Stay tuned to Frozen Peaches for my predictions for 2026 - and perhaps a little Christmas present from me to you, too…