JC: A Poll Tells a Story

The Curia Poll released last week was very revealing in terms of what its content told us about where the country is headed. National went up 2.6 points to 39.6% while ACT doubled that increase going up 5.6 points to 13.7%. The interesting point to note here is that ACT’s increase did not come at the expense of National. NZ First shed a point to 5% so their propensity to rise going into an election and fall afterwards is continuing. The only point I would make about that is, based on what we have seen so far, NZ First is showing it wants to make a useful contribution to the government and is needed also, with ACT, to chivvy National along.

Graham Adams: Treaty referendum continues to alarm media

TVNZ journalists decry ACT’s principles bill.

Before last October’s election, mainstream journalists often reassured their audiences that Christopher Luxon wouldn’t go near a referendum on the Treaty principles if he became Prime Minister. They said he had ruled it out — although if they had listened carefully they would have realised that he mostly stuck to the line that a referendum would be “divisive” and “unhelpful” and that it wasn’t “National Party policy”. That is clearly not ruling out anything, but some journalists preferred to hear something he hadn’t said.