Act’s ‘visually misleading’ post: Is it a graphic or a graph?
A statistics professor has criticized an Act Party social media post for using a misleading graphic to compare medicine funding between Australia and New Zealand. The party claims the image is a decorative graphic rather than a data-driven chart, but experts argue it distorts the actual numerical difference.
Why it matters
This highlights the ongoing debate over the use of visual misinformation in political advertising and the lack of regulatory oversight for social media graphics.
ACT's 'visually misleading' post on Facebook. Photo / Facebook
An Act Party post about the gap between new medicines funded in Australia and New Zealand is “visually misleading”, according to a statistics professor.
The post on the Act Party’s Facebook page shows two stacks of pills and says Australia has funded 215 medicines between 2011 and 2025, while New Zealand has funded 86. Australia is represented with a stack of 10 pills and New Zealand has just two pills.
Professor Thomas Lumley, a biostatistician at the University of Auckland, says the difference between the pill stacks depicted is five times, when it should be 2.5 times.
The Act Party’s press secretary for Todd Stephenson denied the post was misleading, saying it was a “graphic and not a graph”. It aimed to show the gap between Australia and New Zealand’s funding of new medicines.
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