Nats will query electorates

The National Party still plans to dispute any new electorate boundaries drawn for the 2020 election based on the 2018 census, despite a review finding the data was sufficient.

This position could cause a legitimacy crisis for the next election as the largest opposition party could reject the basis of the election itself.

The damning independent review of last year’s Census 2018, released yesterday, found multiple failings in the way the census was carried out.

But it also said Statistics NZ ‘‘should’’ be able to cover for its failings enough to meet top-level population goals for the census, which included the numbers used to redraw electorate boundaries.

The report found that as of July 2019, Statistics NZ had reached an interim population ‘‘coverage’’ rate of 98.6 per cent, higher than the 98 per cent target. This was despite only receiving an initial census response rate of 83.3 per cent – the rest of the data had been filled in subsequently.

National’s statistics spokesman Jian Yang said administrative level data was simply not accurate enough to draw such important boundaries with.

Statistics Minister James Shaw reiterated yesterday that the Government was confident the top-level data would be accurate.