Officials fear anti-government sentiment could impact next census
Officials fear that anti-government sentiment will undermine next year’s census.
“Fake websites” are one of 16 key risks identified in the briefings released under the Official Information Act.
Briefings by Stats NZ to ministers show it is engaged in a $100,000 “national trust and confidence marketing campaign – focusing on myth-busting and managing disinformation about [the] census”.
The department cannot afford another poor census: 2013 massively undercounted Māori, and 2018 tried to do the count mostly online resulting in Māori and Pasifika response rates plummeting.
The new threats are emerging several months after the Parliament occupation and protests.
As TDB predicted back in 2018, the online Census was a total failure, let’s remember, Census 2018 was a cost cutting measure to try and make it cheaper, but without a person coming to your door and actually identifying you and prompting you to fill the form in, a lot of NZers didn’t bother.
Back in 2018, months before it was apparent that the online census had been a total failure, Stats NZ were continuing to claim it was a great triumph…
When Stuff asked Stats NZ in July what went wrong, it did not answer the question but instead said: “We’re pleased with the online response and performance of the online system for 2018 census. Eighty two per cent of responses received were online which surpasses our target of 70 per cent.”
…so how did Stats NZ intend to recover from this self inflicted fuck up? Why the good old Compulsory Survey…
Take this survey, or else – Stats NZ threatens busy woman with prosecution
A Statistics New Zealand employee appears to have threatened a Hamilton woman with prosecution for not filling out a survey.
The woman’s partner, who asked to remain anonymous, posted a photo of the threat on Facebook.
“This is a compulsory govt survey. I am the local area leader for Stats NZ and we will pursue prosecution if you fail to comply,” the note reads.
“We are somewhat dismayed at you refusing to talk to [us].”
The threat was scrawled on a note bearing an official Statistics NZ letterhead. The pre-printed message reads: “You have been selected to participate in a Statistics New Zealand survey. Sorry I missed you when I called today.”
..that’s right, Stats NZ will threaten randomly selected families to fill out their compulsory survey or else risk prosecution so they can fill in the enormous gaps left by their online abortion.
The problem now in 2022 post Covid and the disinformation virus is that the feral anti-Government sentiment will see many simply threaten Census workers and will refuse point blank to fill in the forms.
How we choose to punish those who refuse to fill in the Census will matter.
Rather than threatening people, it has to be framed as a positive experience, that is totally safe in terms of the State having all that personal information and how important it is to build for the future.
If the Government come in threatening the stick and pointing out all the painful things it can do to compel you to fill in the Census, it will spark an eruption of fury and radicalisation, remember this will be taken in the deepest, darkest part of the oncoming recession so tensions will be even higher than they are now.
I think a smarter approach will be to simply accept that parts of the community are so Qanon antivax Sovereign Sheriff now that they won’t fill in the Census and that attempting to compel or punish them will be extremely counter productive.
We have to acknowledge that we have lost the trust and faith of parts of our Community, rebuilding that relationship can’t be using the stick.
That won’t work.
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The Census? It’s broken, mate. The immigration and inequality are so high, and the authorities have no idea who’s here, or how many.
@Castro
It’s not broken it’s resting, remarkable creature the census, beautiful plumage.
So, out of idle curiosity, what would work to rebuild the lost faith and trust?
good question!
Easy.
Do the opposite of right now. Stop using terms like misinformation, and stop threatening to police speech. Announce that QAnons and sovereign citizens and whoever else’s free speech will be respected, but that they’re obliged to respect socialists in turn.
I’m on the populist right. The number one thing that vindicates my anti government views is that they really are out to restrict free speech and my other civil liberties.
If my speech is guaranteed to remain free , whoever is guaranteeing it logically can’t be a wannabe socialist tyrant. The opposite is true for the people who want to interpret my right to free speech away. It threatens me. The more you try and police our speech, the worse things get.
Free speech and the left weren’t enemies until the woke mind virus ate you all up inside.
” Stop using terms like misinformation”
I agree, it’s best to be truthful, so simply call them lies.
Why has this government lost the trust and faith of the wider community? Perhaps they’re to blame or at the very least need to consider that they played their part in destroying what had been a decades long tolerance by the sleepy hobbits of NZ
Did the then Minister for Statistics resign as a point of accountability for the failure? I don’t think so….
No one in the Ardern Cabinet resigned for incompetence. For scandals they eventually did, but not for failing at their job.
Quite a few people changed roles after less than positive outcomes. Minister of Police… Nash – failed, Williams – failed, perhaps Chippy has dodged a bullet with that post.
Perhaps it’s time to question why we have a census at all. There must be a better way to make decisions regarding government spending than using a single snapshot of the country once every four years. We live in the age of meta data. Google knows more about me from my search history than the government ever will.(and I hope they keep quiet about it)
We should have a Ministry of Information who have the simple task of gathering together all the information out there that we unknowingly generate just by going about our daily lives. Shouldn’t be too hard there’s only 5 million of us.
“that is totally safe in terms of the State having all that personal information and how important it is to build for the future.”
Are they going to stop storing data on overseas servers, and now colluding with Iwi – which is the entirety of their “trust campaign”?
Notice how every government department now uses anti-government sentiment as an excuse for incompetence. It has replaced CovidCult as the excuse for the inability to do anything properly in New Zimbabwe’s elites.
That said Bomber is right in regards to the approach required. Unfortunately you know they won’t…..
Rebuild trust and faith? You’d have to actually start paying people properly, rebuild the hopeless rust belt economy, stop the mass surveillance of innocent citizens, and stop supporting illegal wars.
The corporate political donors have no interest in any of that, of course.
Nobody is angry enough yet to down tools and hit the streets. So instead huge numbers of people will continue to leave the country, and the nation will continue its descent into backwardness.
Briefly misread that as “rebrand trust and faith?” – which sounds more likely. After all it worked for a time with “kindness”…
My partner was a Census co-ordinator in the early 00s in the Far North. Way before Jacinda and Anti vaccination and 5G were ever heard of.
And it was totally clear then, that several thousand people were determined to remain under the radar. Being counted so their infrastructure and other needs could be planned and delivered eventually mattered not at all to some of these people.
So it is pushing the proverbial up hill to try and force this lot into complying. The bright spot I guess is that Iwi organisations achieved a lot during COVID in terms of delivery of basics and capacity building so improvements are happening regardless of the Stats Dept.
Martyn, Labour was cancelling people/groups they disagreed with…people are simply returning the favour
The 2023 census will be the first to replace ‘sex’ (male/female at birth) as the default category for statistics, with ‘gender’ being whatever any individual says it is. And that includes, self IDed ‘male’, self IDed ‘female’, or any other of the ever expanding list of gender categories being devised these days. (demi-boi, demi-girl, neutrois….) Maybe people will be creative and add the equivalent of Jedi? Except, ‘gender’ is allocated priority 1 (as being central to the purpose of the census), while religion is priority 3 (as not being central).
That could totally corrupt gathering of stats that have in the past been based on sex – eg sex pay gap, health & crime stats, etc.
Plus Stats NZ is patting themselves on the back for now including a sexuality question. Except it includes ‘sexual identity’. That means males, who self ID as women even though basically heterosexual, can claim to be lesbian, and females who self ID as male can claim to be gay. That’s because the new ideology claims sexuality is about the (self IDed) ‘gender’ you claim to be, not your birth sex.
Then, to try to make up for any corruption of the sex-based stats, Stats NZ is keeping birth sex as a question, so they can cross-check, I guess, how many people are actually claiming to be the opposite sex. And Stats NZ are planning to use data from elsewhere (not sure where?) if there are any gaps in the data gathered by the census.
So, quite the muddle the gender-ID captured Stats NZ has got themselves into.
Phantom issue – the number who identify as gender different to birth sex is too small to make an identifiable difference.
Depends on the issue. In prisons it counts because there are relatively few women compared with male prisoners. Overseas there are plenty of egs of male rapists or other sex offenders self IDing as female while going through court proceedings or after being sent to prison – and many getting moved to a women’s prison.
Plus, it depends on how many people self ID now the law has changed to allow it.
Furthermore, the intro into the census will promote the idea that people can change sex. And that supports the idea that any male who self IDs as female should be able to play sports, enter women-only spaces and services, etc.
We need the law to clarify the definitions of both ‘sex’ and ‘gender’
It could have an impact on the sex pay gap and sex-based incomes in terms of pushing up the pay gap percentage by a few points, especially if there are some very high earning transwomen.
Plus, self ID could impact crime stats in relation to crimes of violence and sexual offenses as these are very largely committed by males. It will only take a few transwomen sex and violent offenders to make it look like these a high percentage increase in these crimes committed by women.
On the other hand, if you are correct and there will be little impact on statistics, what’s the point of making such a major conceptual change rather than keeping birth sex as the default category and making gender ID as the non-default category? They are making this change to the census without any reliable stats to support it.
Plus they are using a subjective category of ‘gender’, which has no material or scientific validity.
Really, karolyn, I and most people couldn’t give a rat’s arse about this issue.
Elevating things like someone playing in the “wrong” sexual sports code into some sort of existential threat to society is beyond pathetic.
then why bother? Sex being a biological reality and gender being what ever you feels on any given day?
gotta say generally in favour of census buty the last one failed to understand the difference between race, ethnicity and nationality therefore was useless…unless they fix that they can roll it up grease it and insert it.
Definition of race is tricky.
It’s certainly changed over the years and according to who is asserting it.
When I was a child the general rule was four races: Caucasian, negroid, mongoloid and, I think, australasian. That’s almost totally dismissed these days.
Now anything goes, e.g. Martyn Bradbury seems to equate it with nationality, others with ethnicity, so the confusion is not just with the Stats dept.
if they are confused how can they ask me to tick the appropriate box?
I can’t even remember 2018. Was that pre-pandemic? Feels like an age ago. I hear there are new woke questions in this census. All about how we identify and sexual preferences. Yeah nah!
This is all very bad. It’s also hilarious though
Having working with Stats in the 1960s in computing I know how thorough in their insistence on keeping information secure, I am happy with their security. The computer work I did with them in the 1970s leads me to think that their actual data collection work is done on a computer that is not connected to the internet. If that was done by agencies such as the hospitals they would not be penetrated. Keep the internet access and public web-sites isolated from internal work for security.
It’s moot when they store data offshore, subject to foreign law and physically in the control of others. Plus they’ll release raw data for research as they see fit – in fact that’s one of the main purposes of the census.
$100 into the bank account of those who complete it. And a nationwide $1m lottery draw. 10 people $100,000 each.
So you want to build faith in a system that compels people to provide answers to government questions? Good luck with that.
If you think the standard census is bad wait until you are compelled to do the additional, special, we pick a few, economic survey – it is like being violated. No right to silence here. A total stranger comes to your house and asks you searching, intimate questions about your entire life. Just goes to show how toothless the human rights act is (clue: totally toothless). Just hoping that one day a rich person will stand up to this and create a legal precedent.