David Farrar’s conflict of interest. IrishBill
Just because I’m not commenting on The Standard does not mean I’m not reading it. I’m subsribed to the RSS feed and occasionally go on and have a peep at the comments.
I just discovered this.
I’m not a believer in swearing but, FFS!
What an awful post!
What does Billy Boy have to say?
In his NBR column a few weeks ago (subscriber-only) Matthew Hooton made a passing reference to David Farrar getting rich off National Party polling.
Shortly after that Fran O’Sullivan ran a piece about Farrar’s company impression polling on a couple of National’s front-benchers.
At the time I didn’t see it as a biggie. Everyone knows David is National’s pollster and that he’s the one that does their sensitive polling and has a lot of influence with National’s leadership. He claims he doesn’t but in a PR-driven government like this one the idea that the main pollster has no sway is so absurd as to be insulting.
So like I said, no biggie, but that’s National Party polling. Sure the taxpayer might have to foot the bill through parliamentary services but I’d rather that than have parties even more beholden to private funders than they already are.
But then I was told by a reliable source that it’s not just National Party contracts David’s getting rich on. It turns out his company, Curia, has also been paid around $9300 to poll on the issue of super city governance for internal affairs. That’s work that was not tendered out but handed to David without competition.
OMG! Someone is actually making money with their lives! $9300 is not much. Farrar will not be getting all of that by the time he pays the bills.
To be fair there is no legal requirement to tender work under $10k
So Bill’s post is a waste of time. Shall we read on?
Add to that the fact that David was also likely to be running political polling on the issue for National and was engaged in spinning the Supercity on his high profile blog and certain questions of conflict of interest start to arise.
It was only by random chance that I found out this contract. It’s quite likely that David is doing other sub $10k polling for other ministries. He may well also be using the results of this polling to help hone the National Party’s spin on issues such as the Supercity.
Bill’s comments are very carefully worded here.
“David was also likely to be running political polling…”
“It’s quite likely that David is doing other sub $10k polling for other ministries.”
“He may well also be using the results of this polling to help hone the National Party’s spin on issues such as the Supercity.”
If the blog author is not sure of the facts how can we (the reader) be?
The Comments:
Lukas:
pfft.. 9.3K, who cares, that is not exactly going to make him rich! You kill your own story rather well though here… “there is no legal requirement to tender work under $10k”
Good point… If only he liked my blog 
.
Gosman:
So is the asertion here that the Minister of Internal affairs directed the Department to employ Curia?
If so then do you have any evidence that this is the case?
If not then was are you saying that the Internal Affairs, (and possibly other Ministries as well), has ditched political neutrality and is now activiely supporting the National party behind the scenes?
No evidence for that.
Big Bruv:
Where was the concern for this type of behaviour when Clark was running the country?
Good question.
Tigger answers:
Farrar doing research work for a Labour led government wouldn’t be a conflict of interest…
Note he said “type of behaviour”!
Chris Diack says:
What a beat up.
The workers electronic paper attacking someone for trying to earn a living.
Here are the known facts:
1. Mr Farrar runs a business (Curia) as a pollster.
2. One client is the National Party. This is notorious.
3. Another client appears to the DIA.
Where is the conflict?
Is the Standard suggesting that any pollster who does work for a political party cannot get government contracts? If that’s the case then that would have previously ruled out UMR, Labour’s pollster which is a good polling company.
Surely the issue is the quality of the work not which other clients a polling company might have?
Why is the Standard attacking the Minister of Internal Affairs – why would he be polling on the new Auckland Council?
Surely Curia would be doing work for the Local Government unit of the DIA and the Minister of Local Government is Rodney Hide.
Again where is the conflict of interest?
All good points.
IrishBill replies:
Aren’t you the guy that tried to steal the labour party’s house? May I politely suggest you’re in no position to lecture on ethics or conflict of interest.
Aren’t you the guy that avoids all the tough questions? May I politely suggest that you actually have a debate and LISTEN to what others are saying?
