Earlier this year, Newshub broadcast an opinion poll asking:

“When Queen Elizabeth is no longer Queen, should New Zealand break away from the Commonwealth and become a republic?”

As you’d expect, support for a republic was much lower than in other polls (just a touch over one third of respondents said yes). This is not a surprise - we know from our own scientific polling that any suggestion New Zealand might leave the Commonwealth on becoming a republic results in a 5-10% drop in support.

This is sadly an ongoing issue for our campaign. While our focus is on the issue of our head of state, we have to point out constantly that this change doesn’t affect Commonwealth membership. As Prince Charles’ own recent comments to CHOGM in Rwanda have emphasised, whether we keep the monarchy or republic makes no difference to Commonwealth membership.

After an unsatisfactory response from Newshub, we made a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority on the basis that the broadcast, and its accompanying article, presented the opinion poll as if it represented sentiment for the monarchy.

The BSA has released its decision, and it’s very much a case of losing the battle, but (slowly!) winning the war. Our complaint regarding accuracy has been dismissed, while the BSA has accepted that the poll question could have been phrased better:

[16] We are of the view that while the poll question could have been phrased better, the broadcast was not materially misleading in either of these respects.

This is something of a Pyrrhic victory for Newshub; essentially the BSA has accepted our contention that the poll was not phrased well, while ruling in Newshub’s favour because of their right to free expression. In future, our campaign can now point to this ruling as a clear indication from the BSA that polling on this issue that references loss of membership of the Commonwealth can be disregarded.