Nats’ jobs growth advert ruled misleading

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a National Party Facebook advertisement comparing jobs growth and beneficiary numbers was misleading.

But the political party is appealing the decision and has not taken the advert down.

The advert stated that there were 1000 more people ‘‘on the dole every month under Labour’’ compared with ‘‘nearly 10,000 jobs every month under National’’.

Its stated sources were Ministry of Social Development fact sheets covering September 2017 through

December 2019 for the benefit figures and the Household Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2015 through to the third quarter of 2017.

Following two complaints, the authority’s complaints board ruled that the phrase ‘‘every month under National’’ was misleading as the data used did not cover the entire nine-year period of the National Government, but instead a selective period.

The board noted that the comparison itself was fair, however, even as it compared two quite different datasets.

It noted that political advertisements were well within their rights to present ‘‘specific data with a bias in its favour in order to make a political point’’.

The complainant said National was intentionally misleading consumers because if you averaged out its nine years in power there were in fact 3581 new jobs a month.

National argued in its response that the best numbers to use were the more recent figures as they were at a more comparable point in the economic cycle.

‘‘If we were to compare the entire nine-year period under National then that would require including the Global Financial Crisis years, which would clearly not be a reasonable comparison with the period under Labour.’’

A National spokesman said the party would appeal the decision.

The advert remains online, in line with National’s policy of keeping an advert online while it appeals a negative ruling.

ASA chief executive Hilary Souter said the authority generally expected adverts to be removed during the appeal process if a complaint was upheld against them.

A National Party spokesman said the party would appeal the decision.