As we approach the silly season of the 2026 election campaign, we are already seeing that the first casualty of right-wing political parties, the truth, is already dead, writes Piripai’s Dave Stewart

The recent bloodletting inside National and their deep and bitterly divided factions saw Chris Bishop unceremoniously dumped as campaign chair and replaced with Simeon Brown, who if nothing else has made politics the blood sport that it has become in recent years.

And immediately the bulldust started flying.

There’s a sure bet in politics when the ruling party is failing and failing badly and that is crank out the law and order argument.

No one is for less law and order, so it's easy to run a campaign on it and say that the other guys are 'soft on crime'.

It’s on the Political Loser’s Handbook, Chapter 1 Page 1.

During the last election campaign, National and ACT turned up at crime scenes and stood in the still fresh blood of victims and blamed Labour for the crimes.

Penalties handed down by judges that were deemed insufficient –- all Labour’s fault.

Once violent crime became a sound byte, National and Act called for the police minister to be sacked or worse.

They never let up on the government being responsible for all crime until, well, until they were the Government and it was their problem.

So, what did they do? They made up alternative facts.

And now with Mr Brown leading the charge all the National Party politicians are posting that they have “reduced victims of violent crime by 49,000 since coming into Government”.

They gained this data from the New Zealand Crime & Victims Survey (NZCVS).

The survey measures perceptions, not police data. The NZCVS is a self-reported victimisation survey – it captures both reported and unreported crime.

Separately, NZ Police data for the year ending May 2025 showed a 7 percent increase in violent crime victims, pointing in the opposite direction.

Some violence increased.

The same survey period showed:

n A 42 percent rise in Pacific victims of violent crime

n A 30 percent increase in hospital staff assaults over two years

n Record-high prison assaults in 2024-25

n 2000 more sexual assault victims between October 2023 and May 2025

Causation is unclear. The NZCVS notes it measures the number of victims, not what caused the shift – so attributing the drop directly to government policy is a political interpretation, not a finding of the survey.

The baseline was a peak. The October 2023 baseline (185,000) was relatively high – so some of the reduction may reflect regression toward a longer-term mean rather than policy impact.

Bottom line, the 49,000 figure does not align with police or justice data. Presenting it as straightforward proof of the Government’s success glosses over conflicting police data, rises in specific types of violence, and the reality that correlation with government policy doesn’t equal causation.

As the election campaign and Mr Brown’s brand of dirty politics 2.0 steps up, so too will the dishonesty.

It’s a shame because what we want to be talking about is the poor choices this Government has made that has failed to deliver the promised cost of living relief to everyone but their donors.

Politics should be about lies and bribed political parties shovelling money to the well off, to landlords and tobacco companies, to mining and big oil.

And it certainly shouldn’t follow the US version of alternative facts – good grief – look where that has taken the world.