Botched census let down Ma¯ ori
Bungled, botched or butchered. Those are three ways in which the 2018 census has been described since a report into its shortcomings landed on Tuesday. All are accurate. Statistics NZ’S push into online datacollecting was supposed to increase the public response but had the opposite effect. Only 83.3 per cent of the national population responded – the target was 94 per cent.
The political response has been ambiguous. Chief Statistician Liz Macpherson has resigned. Green Party co-leader James Shaw – the latest of six ministers of statistics to have been in charge during the period of the 2018 census – has seemed blase, calling the census results ‘‘a mixed bag’’. The results were much worse than ‘‘mixed’’ for Ma¯ ori. The response from the Ma¯ ori community was 68.2 per cent, so almost a third of Ma¯ ori missed out, 20 percentage points below the 2013 response. Responses were also poor in Pasifika, Asian and younger communities. The report describes some of the problems and poor responses. While some key decisions were affected by the Kaiko¯ ura earthquake in 2016, other issues were more predictable. Statistics NZ employed too few fieldworkers and relied too heavily on digital responses at the expense of print.
When Statistics NZ realised how many English language and bilingual census packs were needed, there was not enough time to print them. Rather than 1.8 million English packs and 250,000 bilingual
packs, it ended up with 1.3 million English packs and 53,000 bilingual packs. Of these, fewer than half were delivered. Many in the community waited for packs that never arrived.
Governments run on information and a census creates specialised data sets vital to economic and social organisation and planning. Gaps in data risk creating institutional biases. The absence of Ma¯ ori data will have an impact for up to a decade. Sociologist and statistician Andrew Sporle calls it ‘‘an information shackle’’ on Ma¯ ori, especially as the census is the primary source of iwi numbers. Iwi engaged in Treaty negotiations will be hit hard.
Is the information gap big enough to warrant a rerun of the census? The NZ Ma¯ ori Council thinks so. Executive director Matthew Tukaki said he was growing sick of the apologies offered by organisations such as Statistics NZ when they get it wrong for Ma¯ ori. Nor is he confident a 20 per cent hole in the numbers can be filled with other sources of information, as Shaw has suggested.
Social scientist Polly Atatoa Carr points out those ‘‘most likely to be under-counted are those experiencing the worst outcomes in the context of a Government that has made a priority commitment to achieving equity and addressing wellbeing’’. In other words, already existing inequities will be worsened by this colossal failure.
While a rerun might be impossible before 2023, 10 years without useful census information is unthinkable.