2023 Census heading for failure, forecasts National

Monday, 1 May 2023

The 2023 Census for the first time included questions about sexual identity and orientation. (Video first published November 2022.)

This year’s census is shaping up to be a failure with Stats NZ not on track to achieve its target of getting responses from at least 90% of people, National Party statistics spokesperson Simon Watts says.

Minister of Statistics Deborah Russell said it was “early days” to be making the prediction.

Stats NZ was reporting on its website on Thursday that 4,408,894 people had returned their individual Census forms as of 9am on Monday, but that there was still time for people to complete them.

It estimated the population at the end of December at just over 5.15 million.

Spokesperson Tracy Dillimore said the Census response rate was currently 86%, but activities were continuing.

* More than 1 million people have filled in their census forms

* Census 2023 will do better, especially for Māori, Stats NZ says

Those who have not filled in the Census, at least in theory, risk being fined.

Stats NZ advised last week that Census collectors would only be in place in most of the country until Wednesday but would continue to assist people in the cyclone-affected regions of the Far North, Te Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay until the start of June.

Deputy government statistician Simon Mason said in that advisory that, from May 9, people who had not completed all their census forms would receive a “final notice”.

“This notice will explain that everyone who was in Aotearoa New Zealand overnight on March 7, 2023, is required to complete the census, and if they do not they risk being fined $2000,” he said.

Watts said the National Party had been monitoring the number of forms coming in, and that was now just “a trickle”.

“They are not going to hit it,” he said of the 90% target.

“Most of the unreturned forms are from major cities, showing the low return rate has nothing to do with Cyclone Gabrielle,” he said.

Completion rates were worse for Maōri and Pacific communities, he added.

National Party statistics spokesperson Simon Watts says responses have slowed to a trickle.

Russell said Stats NZ had worked incredibly hard. “We had more boots on the ground, more paper forms and more community engagement.”

Whatever the final completion rate, the 2023 Census would be an improvement on the results obtained in 2018 Census, she noted.

“The overall response rate for the 2018 Census was 81.6% excluding partial responses. In the 2023 Census we’re ahead of the 2018 response rate and we still have until June.”

Watts would not say what he thought had gone wrong with the current Census, saying that was a question the minister needed to answer.

He said the previous Census in 2018, which was plagued by an over-reliance on the internet and problems distributing paper forms, had also been an “embarrassing failure”, but noted this year’s Census had been more expensive.

“Stats NZ has asked Cabinet for another $37 million to try and finish the Census and get accurate and fulsome data.

“That means there is a possibility that almost $300m will be spent on this Census, and it may not deliver accurate results.”

Despite that, he indicated the Census would continue in some form if National was returned to government.

“The collection of the data is obviously critically important to government decision-making.

“If I was a future minister looking at what we would need to in the next Census then all options are on the table, but I think a lot of the issues we have seen here are around failure to prepare and plan,” he said.