A Labour member complains

First let’s deal with the headline of the story:

Has the leak worked? Poll boost for Labour

The headline writer should be shot.

Labour has lifted by six points to its highest level since March 2014 in the Roy Morgan Poll.

Labour is up to 32 per cent in the poll – up six points from a fortnight ago while National was down six points to 43 per cent support.

However, the impact of Labour’s analysis of leaked Auckland real estate data remains unclear.

The poll of 886 voters began on June 29 and ended the day after Labour released that data on July 11.

So 90% of the poll was before the release. So the headline is trying to manufacture a story.

Onto the rest of the story:

The Herald revealed today that former Maori members’ chairman Shane Te Pou has written to the party demanding his personal data be removed from Labour’s database of home buyers, which it claims is the same information leaked from Barfoot & Thompson.

Te Pou cited the Privacy Act in the letter after being told by the estate agency that the purchase of his family’s house was likely among those used to bolster statistics purporting to show people in China were buying up New Zealand houses.

In revealing the statistics, Labour’s housing spokesman Phil Twyford tweeted: “People of Chinese descent bought 39.5% of houses sold by major (Auckland) real estate firm. This is foreign money.”

Te Pou is married to Annie Du, who is of Chinese ethnicity. He told the Herald his wife’s name was used to buy the family home during the period covered by Barfoot & Thompson sales data, obtained by Labour.

Te Pou wrote: “I am Maori. My wife is of Chinese descent. My money is not foreign.”

If I had purchased a house in Auckland, I’d be appalled that a political party had got hold of the data without permission.