National Party ads deemed not in breach of standards

WELLINGTON: A National Party advertisement about petrol prices was not misleading, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

On Thursday, the ASA published rulings on complaints about three different ads — none of which were upheld.

One ad, which had four complaints, compared average fuel prices and taxes under National between 2008 and 2017, to average prices under Labour on November 29, 2019.

It also featured a bar graph that was not to scale.

Another ad, with nine complaints, featured a bar graph comparing rents under National and Labour — which was again not to scale.

A third complaint was laid against an ad which used a movie poster format with images of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson and included the text ‘‘How to lose a surplus in 2 years’’.

The Complaints Board ruled that National’s social media ads were ‘‘advocacy advertising’’ and therefore robust expression of opinion was allowed provided the advertiser was clearly identified.

A majority of the board found that the data displayed on the two ads with graphs was correct and sourced, which saved the hyperbolic graphic from being misleading.

On the fuel ad, a minority of the board disagreed and said it was ‘‘reasonable for an audience to assume the visual element of a graphic comparison would match the numerical data it represents’’.

‘‘The minority considered that some consumers would rely solely on the bar graph proportions rather than the numbers provided, especially when viewed in conjunction with the strong wording used in the text of the advertisement that said the Government was ‘‘fleecing New Zealanders’’, the ruling read.

One of the four people who complained about this ad, Dylan Reeve, said he was disappointed by the ruling.

‘‘I kind of expected them to let them go on the graph — you know, graphs get misused in advertising all the time, frequently not showing the axis properly or not labelling things.

‘‘But I thought averaging nine years of data and comparing to one sample was just not a representative way of showing the data,’’ he said.

Mr Reeve said in his view something that was ‘‘mischievous’’ was ‘‘inherently not honest’’. — RNZ