You’ve been Robbed: Bull dust and balance checks
There’s something wrong with this picture. This week, NZ First leader Winston Peters posted on social media a jab about the latest controversy he had become embroiled in: his use of the 90s hit “Tubthumping” song at a rally that band Chumbawamba wants him to “cease and desist” with.
“The song worked like a charm for our first public meeting after the election. The over 700 people in the crowd thought so too,” Peters said.
The problem is, I was one of those people in the crowd at the Palmerston North convention centre. And this is where my bulldust detector starts going off. The crowd may have enjoyed the use of the song, but there certainly weren’t 700 people – I’ve run the numbers to prove this.
This photo was taken 3 minutes and 29 seconds before Peters took the stage and there are exactly 388 people visible in this photo. The wide angle lens didn’t quite capture the very corners at the front and, to give Mr Peters the benefit of the doubt, I’ll add a generous 50 more people that are not seen in the photo. That brings my tally to 438.
For further confirmation, the convention centre’s website says this room holds a maximum of 600 people in a standing configuration, and 550 in the seating configuration. Well short of the 700 claimed.
In talking to my reporter colleagues, it’s apparent that overselling the number of attendees at a NZ First event is standard practice.
Party officials are known to set out too few seats and then scramble to seat late-comers, to give a sense of the crowd surpassing expectation.
Peters is frequently calling on the media to get its facts straight. He should follow his own advice. Not only is he wrong that the media never show up to his events – I originally took this photo to prove that – but he isn’t telling it straight.