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Why the relentless bias? A 1News Verian Poll, in which the exact survey question was not made available, got reported as follows by OneNews, "Poll: More New Zealanders oppose than support Treaty Principles Bill. The poll, which surveyed 1006 eligible voters .. found 23% supported the bill while 36% were opposed. A slightly larger group - 39% - said they didn't know enough about the bill, and 2% preferred not to say". At the bottom of the article One News stated that the question asked, "Do you support, or oppose, the bill; not know enough to say; or prefer not to say" . Where to start? Survey questions and responses are one of my fields in economics. First, the survey question could not have asked, "Do you support or oppose the bill or not know enough to say?" because that line doesn't reference which bill. Each word matters in survey questions, so what exactly did it ask?


Second, I do not interpret the survey results in such a way that, "more NZers oppose than support the Treaty Principles Bill". How on earth can one draw that conclusion when 41% of respondents replied saying they either want to know more about the debate, or prefer not to say? If you add that number to the 23% who are opposed, then who knows how many Kiwis are falling on the side of support - or opposition - to the Bill. Potentially 64% may turn out supporting the Bill (=23 % + 41%) should those who want to learn more about it end up in support. Indeed, the entire point of the debate ACT Leader Seymour has started is to persuade that 41% of undecided folks they should throw their support behind his Bill. Why can't our State Media just report the news, rather than putting their stupid anti-right spin on every story, in this case that Kiwis are lining up against ACT's bill in majority numbers, when there is no proof? Just report the actual goddam survey question & actual goddam answers next time, and leave the interpretation to the readers, rather than assuming we are all dumb.


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Only a few months ago, the Chair of the NZ Green Investment Fund (NZGIF) and Chancellor of the University of Auckland, Cecilia Tarrant, visited my "Law and Economics" class. Why? She's a lawyer who worked in "structured products" and "real estate finance" at Morgan Stanley in New York - and knows a Kiwi friend of mine who's at Google there. She presented some slides on the NZGIF. The first slide below is very green. The second features "NZGIF Solar Finance". The third shows how NZGIF has created a structure, via its Solar Finance vehicle, that "provides a simple and repeatable financing solution for solar energy". Its "cornerstone partner" is a company called Solar Zero, which provides an "investment grade" asset. Chancellor Tarrant is the nicest, friendliest person in the world - though I'd like to meekly comment that Solar Zero was put into liquidation two weeks ago and may end up costing the taxpayer, who is funding NZGIF, $100 million dollars. Turns out the structure that the Green Investment Fund provided was not "simple" nor "repeatable". Turns out its "cornerstone partner" was not made of stone, but subject to liquefaction. The power point slides are great and colorful, although I do wonder maybe in need of a little revising for next year's class. The NZ Green Investment Fund should itself be liquidated. NZ already prices carbon via our Emissions Trading Scheme. We can't afford "picking winner" subsidies when our economy has stagnated. Have the Greens thought about how scarce resources should be allocated between solar panels & helping the poor? Do they think this $100 million was better spent on panels - or on taking 100 families out of poverty? My preference is the latter.



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