If anyone had any doubts about the NZ Herald’s political stance over Key’s GST proposals, they certainly won’t anymore. Front page of the NZ Herald this morning had a headline “Poll shows solid backing for GST rise if income tax cut”. We then read on to find out that the so called “poll” was actually an email sent to the 6,432 Herald readers on the Herald’s reader panel. Of these only 1,407 replied.
Now I hardly think this “poll” is scientific, objective and representative of the views of all NZers.! Far from it. Wouldn’t mind knowing the full demographic of this reader panel – but I can guess… What the Herald only mentioned at the end of the article is that a greater percentage of readers thought that the tax package was unfair (45%) than it was fair (43%).!!! Also only 22% thought that the tax proposals would promote economic growth versus 51% saying it wouldn’t. Wonder why the Herald didn’t lead with these results..??
Come on the Herald, you can do better than this, and your readers expect more.!!!
And yet a sample of 2 taxi drivers shows which way the political wind is blowing?
Stuart if you or any reasonable person in NZ or any western country for that matter consider the MSM to be reporting news as an objective exercise then you are rather simple.
Their role is to make money for their owners and nothing else.
TUT TUT Nathan
Don’t you realise that
2 Taxi drivers are the MANY
1407 Herald readers are the FEW
You can usually tell what the editorial team of the Herald or Dom Post think is important to National by these sort of editorial decisions on how to mislead the public.
However, I am not so sure that National will fight that hard for 15% GST. The money for the cuts to income taxes and the baseline company rate come from elsewhere.
GST is the diversion.
In 2008 – no need to increase GST to afford income tax cuts and still have a balanced budget, to reassure voters (but they cannot afford their tax cuts and also balance the budget).
In 2009 – tax cuts deferred till we can afford them (to promote the need for both spending cuts and restraint in spending to mitigage the recession). So they appear responsible, yet unemployment rises.
In 2010 – budget nuetral tax reform, income tax cuts now while we remain in budget deficit.
The spin keeps changing.
What they are doing is
1. Making business tax changes to property to provide money for income tax cuts.
2. They are increasing the tax on productive business (they ended R and D tax incentives, they raise the issue of ending the 20% depreciation on plant and equipment) to provide money for baseline company tax cuts to Oz banks.
We should be maintaining support for productive business activity and if anything transferring money from increased property income tax collection to investment areas where the use of the money will grow the real economy – not personal tax cuts for consumption spending.
@ bob – no, not that naive: always hopeful though
Its the old lies, damn lies and statistics I suppose.
My point is that the Herald reported the views of 1,400 herald readers as the views of the Nation, when this is hardly the case at all.!
@SPC – according to the tax working group’s figures, there is not enough money in changing tax rules re investment property to finance the tax cuts to top marginal rates.
The big problem i see with this is that it is fine while it is part of the Herald as they have there own particular market segment of right wingers, but all of a sudden the same or similar story appears on stuff, where many Kiwis get there news and these 846 participants become a genuine poll of NZ.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3313887/Public-split-over-Keys-GST-plan
Yes i know it says unscientific, but most kiwis will just skim read an artical like this. Is this is waht the media are like in countrys where the government controls the media and they only say what they want you to hear???
Dead right – skim reading such a headline will leave readers with a totally distorted view of reality. Now isn’t that irresponsible at best and dishonest at worst Stuart
We haven’t seen any actual figures yet so any survey is meaningless. From what I have seen of the figures there is a large deficit in the benefits of increasing GST and property depreciation changes vs 39 to 30% top rate reduction even before you add in compensation for low earners. One suspects there may be a nasty shock when the real figures come out.
TopCat
Apparently the dream of rates converged at 30 cents is going as they ponder matching a possible 27 cents rate Oz company tax rate (they cannot afford to converge at 27 cents). If they give up on convergence, they might settle for 33 cents trust and top income tax rate and then the question is where the company tax rate goes – staying at 30 cents or going to 27 (if it goes to 27 their arguement for a necessary closer alingnment if not convergence is undermined).
But such a less bold approach means that other tax changes would fund it without GST changing.
They’ve still got to fund it. Our unemployment rate is now 7.4% so they are facing increased outlays for welfare payments and GST and Company Tax payments must be dropping given how poorly the NZ economy is going. I can’t see changes to rental depreciation being a sustainable funding source given the people are going to sell a lot of their rental properties and they won’t be receiving money from the clawback when properties are sold at a profit. Any GST increase will get swallowed up with compensation.
Tax cuts in the current environment are fiscally irresponsible and will condemn future governments to years of debt. George Bush did the same thing in 2002 and look at what is happening the the U.S economy now.
Agree – fiscal benefit from rental depreciation laws etc will not show up immediately and so if this is the route they take to fund tax cuts, then there may well be a debt blowout to start with. Hardly what the country needs at the moment (on top of the $250m per week as it is..)
Sorry, but this is a complete double standard, if we look at earlier polls done by NZ Herald Labour took them at their word!
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/01/17/time-for-a-big-boost-to-the-minimum-wage/
Please explain the differences between this and the minimum wage poll?
It must be a damned short pole!
“See update re Herald poll. Reflects comments I have been receiving.”
Oliver, the quote I have copied is one of Trevor’s comments from the post you linked to. The truth is that as long as the poll reflect the comments that Labour MPs get from taxi drivers etc, the Herald polls are all good, if they don’t then you get a response like Stuart’s….”Its the old lies, damn lies and statistics I suppose.”
What I would like to know is what the internal polling from both parties shows… that would be interesting…
there’s only one poll that counts – and that’s 18 months away. Seriously, unscientific polling results, like the Herald one, are becoming much more difficult to rely on as modes of communication change and information exchange changes and evolves. Unless the poll is undertaken by a reputable organisation, I don’t take much notice. That aside, I do follow polling trends, but these one-offs by the Herald, Stuff etc are pretty inaccurate and certainly do not capture a good cross section of NZ society.
The NZHerald stopped being objective a long time ago. It’s just been getting worse lately as it does it’s masters bidding.
@oliver
“Please explain the differences between this and the minimum wage poll?”
I don’t think there is a difference. When you consider the background to the polls, i.e. their source and the methodology used to obtain the data, the response on RA has been remarkably consistent.
“there’s only one poll that counts – and that’s 18 months away”
I suppose the poll in 2008 was an Herald type unscientific poll too…really Stuart you shouldn’t have even blogged about this Herald poll. You don’t need to remind the “many” about how not to read into the media polls too much…though one MP amongst your ranks should heed your advice…”but these one-offs by the Herald, Stuff etc are pretty inaccurate and certainly do not capture a good cross section of NZ society”…in relation to the link Oliver provided.
Yes, the poll is rubbish. You need to to poll some migrant taxi drivers, that’ll give you a better representation.
Well Oliver, the minimum wage poll was done over 2300 people. Due to lack of any other wording we have to assume that it was a scientifically correct random sampling (considering all other NZHerald polls, this is one hell of an assumption actually). This poll was “of Herald readers” which isn’t a correct sampling of people. Of course, it could be that the minimum wage poll was also only of Herald readers which would make it an unreliable poll.
To be fair it’s about as accurate as their online polls. Computer programs repeat what they’re told, as do The Herald’s reader base.
I was amused to read this thread after getting Phil Goff’s postcard survey in the mail today. I’ve never seen such leading questions in a serious survey. The questions make it seem that respondents have a choice between agreeing with Labour or hurting their own pockets.
Goff isn’t looking for our views with this survey, he’s looking for some statistics to back up his position on these issues. To pretend otherwise insults our intelligence at the same time as it erodes our trust. Come on Phil, you can do better.