David Cunliffe and Kiwipower

At 12:00 today, the following picture was Tweeted by David Cunliffe’s account:

Now NZpower is the Labour/Greens policy to nationalise the buying of power for New Zealand from the generators, state or privately owned. The idea being that they will set the price at which generators will be able to sell power, thus helping to bring the power prices that consumers pay down. Because Labour and the Greens are claiming that power prices are raising at rates above inflation. Now it is not the aim of this blog to explore policy issues, it is solely to report and comment on the social media aspect of policy announcements and discussions. With this in mind, when this graph was put together, did no one in the Labour leaders office/Labour research unit think that questions might be raised about the trend from 1998 to 2008? Would there not have been a better way to show the information to make the point they are trying to make? It is great that a party is trying to show the full picture, but if you are going to do that, there needs some form of acceptance of the role played by your party in the original increase.

Most of the replies so far have been attacking labour for the increase in power prices they oversaw between 1999 and 2008. Which is to be expected from a graph like that. It appears there is no body in the Labour leader’s office/research unit whose job is to play the role of the other side and critique statements and policy announcements and graphics before they go out. I suspect this is the same on the other side of the political divide as well. Having someone playing that role would help lift the quality of the graphics and policy announcements going out, and help keep the discussion on topic. Thus helping generate cut through in the media community.

UPDATE:

David Cunliffe’s account has started to reply to some of the criticism.