Curia Found In Breach Of Industry Standards, Lester Levy Is Not A Happy Man, & Other Updates
Some updates:
Curia Research found to be in breach of professional industry standards
David Farrar, a co-founder of Taxpayers Union, who he remains in lock-step with, has “resigned” his research firm, Curia, from The Research Association of New Zealand (RANZ). For those of you who don’t know, RANZ is NZ’s only professional standards and industry group “dedicated to professional providers and users of research, data and insights. The Research Association New Zealand (RANZ) brand is a trust-mark .. and indicates that the bearer is a member of an expert community, which upholds the highest professional and ethical standards.”
It looks like the Professional Standards Group (PSG) of RANZ upheld complaints against Curia for bias, and were on their way to suspending/expelling Curia Research - so Farrar resigned.
One of the complaints was with Curia helping Jordan William’s other outfit, Free Speech Union, with compiling survey results. Curia omitted critical data points - including that most academics weren’t interested in engaging with FSU or Curia.
About the breach of professional industry standards, a few days ago, Farrar wrote: “Yesterday I saw an e-mail from RANZ that, not only had the PSG upheld the latest complaint against me, but that it was considering a recommendation that could involve suspension to expulsion. I was absolutely stunned…with the deepest regret I resigned from RANZ.”
It will be interesting to see whether political parties and media still quote Curia, given the breach of professional standards. Perhaps Taxpayers Union will play a polling firm role, or maybe Williams and Farrar will just spin up a new name and organisation to stand behind.
RBNZ cut rates
It was a mixed bag of forecasts before the RBNZ OCR cut - ANZ, Westpac and Kiwibank had forecast that the RBNZ would hold their nerve, but in the end, the markets and other pundits won.