Act's medicine funding graphic exaggerates NZ-Australia gap, professor says

A statistics professor says an Act Party Facebook post visually exaggerates the gap between new medicines funded in Australia and New Zealand, depicting a fivefold difference when the actual ratio is 2.5 times. The post shows 10 pills for Australia's 215 funded medicines and two for New Zealand's 86. Professor Thomas Lumley argues most viewers would interpret the image as a bar chart, giving an incorrect reading, though Act's press secretary calls it a "graphic and not a graph." The party denies misleading intent, and no complaints have been filed with the Advertising Standards Authority, which doesn't regulate social media posts. Similar past political ads, like a 2019 National Party fuel price chart, were ruled acceptable despite being labelled "mischievous."