New Caledonia’s population has shrunk to 264,596 over the past six years, the latest census, conducted in April and May 2025, has revealed.

This compares to the previous census, conducted in 2019, which recorded a population of 271,400 in the French Pacific territory.

To explain the population drop of almost seven thousand (6811), Jean Philippe Grouthier, Census Chef de Mission at the French national statistical institute INSEE, said that even though the population natural balance (the difference between births and deaths during the period) was more than 11,000, the net migration balance showed a deficit of 18,000.

READ MORE

In terms of permanent departures and arrivals, earlier informal studies (based on the international Nouméa-La Tontouta airport traffic figures) already hinted at a sharp increase in residents leaving New Caledonia for good, after the destructive and deadly riots that erupted in May 2014, causing 14 dead and over 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in damages.

The census was originally scheduled to take place in 2024, but had to be postponed due to the civil unrest.

“New Caledonia is probably less attractive than it could have been in the 2000s and 2010s years,” Grouthier told local media yesterday.

However, he stressed that the downward trend was already there at the previous 2019 census.

‘Not entirely due to riots’
During the 2014-2019 period, a net balance of around then 1000 residents had already left New Caledonia.

“It’s not as if it was something that would be entirely due to the May 2024 riots,” he said.

At the provincial level, New Caledonia’s most populated region (194,978), the Southern Province, which makes up three quarters of the population, has registered the sharpest drop (about four percent).

Meanwhile, the other two provinces (North, Loyalty Islands) have slightly gained in population over the same period, respectively +2.1 (50,947) and +1.7 percent (18,671).

The preliminary figures released yesterday are now to be processed and analysed in detail, before public release, ISEE said.

The latest population statistics are regarded as essential in order to serve as the basis for further calculation for the three provinces’ share in public aid as well as planning for upgrades or building of public infrastructure.

The latest count will also be used to organise upcoming elections, starting with municipal elections (March 2026) and provincial elections later that year.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Last week the world population reached eight billion people, at least according to some sources. See these world population clocks, which do not agree: refer Worldometer and the US Census Bureau.

The growth rate of the world population is slowing. Indeed, there is a possibility that it will never reach nine billion; there are demographic ‘headwinds’ affecting both fertility and mortality.

What we do know is that the population age structures are very different in different continents, and different countries. This at a time when extreme ‘territorial fundamentalism’ has made the 2020s the most difficult decade in modern times for most people to get permission to travel to another country, let alone migrate to it. Before the nineteenth century, the main barriers were physical geography and other factors (dangers) which made long-distance travel slow, expensive and risky. The ‘other factors’ include cultural barriers which would have made it difficult for strangers – ‘strange people’ – to settle in places away from their birth localities. And, before modern times, in feudal times people were bonded to their birthlands; they were serfs bonded to their lords’ lands.

Today, as in the past, we live in times when many people of ‘working age’ live in places in which they are not economically productive; yet the barriers to resettlement – from countries with labour surpluses to countries with labour deficits – are huge. Perceived ‘land abundance’, such as territories populated ‘only’ by a few ‘natives’, is a thing of the past; but there are many places of opportunity in today’s world, with labour shortages which can be resolved by a mix of migration and skills education.

Colonisation and Decolonisation: past, future and present

In the European context, the Mediterranean Sea long represented a space around which colonisation could take place; in the context where powerful and growing mini-states could gain economies of scale and living spaces for their growing populations. Important early colonisers were the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans. In early times, migration meant a mix of conquest and colonisation. Settler colonies of these regional superpowers would form, and later would be trashed as power balances changed.

One important later example of classical-era colonisation reached beyond the Mediterranean Sea, namely the Roman colonisation and settlement of the island of Britannia. In the time of Julius Caesar (the ‘discoverer’ of Britannia) – 2,070 years ago – the ‘tangata whenua’ of Britannia, the British, were essentially the P-Celtic people we know today as ‘Welsh’. (There were also the Picts in much of today’s Scotland.)

Military and economic opportunities, and then demographic pressures, led to the creation of a romanised European world. Romans settled in Britannia from the forties (the 0040s that is) and native Britons were substantially romanised. The process was not unlike the nineteenth century britanisation of New Zealand. Roman Britain lasted for over 300 years as a prosperous and relatively stable example of colonisation. Further, the ’empire struck back’, meaning that increasingly the population of Rome itself were romanised non-ethnic-Romans; not unlike the anglicised South Asians prominent in British politics today. Late-Roman emperors were not always ethnic Romans; other Roman leaders were even more likely to be romanised non-Romans.

With the eventual collapse of Rome, in the fifth century, that Empire imploded. This implosion would be equivalent to a coming ‘collapse of the West’ in, say, the twenty-second century. In Britannia it was the romanised Britons who inherited the greater part of the island. Indeed, the legends of ‘King Arthur’ reflect this short and mythologised phase of British history. Times were tough in the sixth century, and not only because of empire collapse. The year CE 536 has been described as the worst ever in recorded history: refer Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’, Science, 15 Nov 2018; and Volcanic winter of 536, and Battle of Camlann, both Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, a combination of the inevitable fall of the Roman Empire and the ‘acts of God’ in the sixth century created demographic spaces. In the larger part of Britannia, the part that became England, the spaces were filled by Germanic people from places across the North Sea: Lower Saxony, Anglia, and Jutland. Most traces of Romans and Roman culture were erased. Latin was erased, and British (‘Welsh’) was marginalised to the western periphery. A new language and new culture filled the void; English (Anglaise).

Looking forward, beyond the present, to the end of the modern era – say the quarter millennium (the year 2250) – this transformation of Britannia signals a possible fate for Aotearoa New Zealand and other far-flung neo-European settlements. In this scenario, the present European hegemony (aka ‘the west’) diminishes (maybe eventually collapses). Anglo New Zealanders continue to leave throughout this late-modern period, leaving anglicised Māori and Polynesian and Asian New Zealanders to maintain an ongoing sense of Britishness. This unravelling southern outpost of the Commonwealth would then represent a demographic opportunity to new groups of colonisers. The ‘south seas’ equivalent of Lower Saxony and Anglia will most likely be places in South Asia or East Asia.

The conquest of Great Britain 2,000 years ago came from relatively afar, Italy. The conquest of New Zealand in the nineteenth century, then a land of opportunity for British people facing demographic pressure, came from as far as it possibly could have come. The next conquest of Zealandia will be from further than Rarotonga, though from closer than Britannia. Human settlement never was and never will be a simple process of one ‘tribe’ arriving in an unsettled land, staying, and fending off newcomers.

In the present era, Britannia and Zealandia represent lands of demographic opportunity, places working people want to go to as economic migrants. Historically, the two main demographic magnets have been lands and cities. In the nineteenth century, people migrated to new lands, and, there, multiplied in huge numbers. And they went to cities – new cities like Chicago and Melbourne (refer James Belich, Replenishing the Earth 2009) – and established cities like London and Paris. Unlike the new hinterlands, which facilitated human fertility, the big cities served as demographic sinks. That, however, did not mean that cities were unattractive places. Cities gave opportunities for people to express themselves through cultural interaction and creativity, rather than through monocultural pastures of human and animal reproduction.

It is urbanisation which puts an end to Malthusian (ie exponential) expansion of humanity. First, cities – especially the bigger cities – tended to be mainly characterised by their high mortality. Today, they are characterised by low fertility. The world’s population may never reach nine million, if our cities are allowed to fulfil their role as demographic magnets, given that they will continue to be demographic sinks. (That said, it only takes a pandemic to create temporary forces favouring urban depopulation and rural repopulation.)

European Centre and Periphery

The ‘Third Reich’ project, which developed in Germany in the 1930s, had two central themes. First was the inspiration from the Roman Empire, with Berlin posited as the new Rome. The second theme was ‘Lebensraum’ (living room) which meant the conquest and settlement of the lands in Eastern Europe by German people, to create a large German hinterland which would favour the multiplication of the German people at the expense of the other (mainly but not only Slavic) peoples of East Europe.

While that project failed, thankfully, it can be argued that the present European Union project is a kind of ‘Fourth Reich’, in which Berlin plays a less overt role as the centre of power. In this occurrent project the demographic forces in play are a centripetal pull towards the economic centre, and a depletion – a de-peopling instead of a re-peopling – of the European periphery. This may be called ‘reverse Lebensraum’. In the Fourth Reich, the ‘King’ (or ‘chancellor’) is a committee – or a nexus of committees – rather than a monarch or republican autocrat. The Fourth Reich is a bureaucracy rather than an autocracy. (Refer Europe’s Forbidden Colony, Al Jazeera27 Feb 2017, for an analysis of the European Union as an ‘ultra-neoliberal’ and ‘imperial’ project. ‘Colonisation’ here refers to the imperial “logic of extraction”, through which we may understand there is a process of people-mining as well as land-mining.)

The European periphery is multi-faceted. (And we note that London has broken away from this Fourth Reich, creating an independent power centre in the region.) The inner peripheries of Europe are the rural hinterlands of each EU partner nation; these are subject to significant depopulation, especially in the member countries which use the Euro currency (ie the Eurozone). As long ago as the 1970s, I recall cycling through French villages not on public transport routes, and hearing about these communities’ losses of services and young people.

Next is the periphery of the European Union itself, which includes the East, the South, and Ireland. Ireland is a kind of boom-bust special case, which is able to trade on its location, corporate tax policies, English language, and high education standards, to become a European front for American-centred multinational businesses. Ireland is a country with a long history of diaspora, and this was a key feature of its experience in the Eurozone crisis which was at its worst in 2012. The other countries which suffered substantial losses of young people and services in the early 2010s were of course the southern countries of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Now, the depopulation crisis is concentrated in the east of the European Union. All of the eastern European Union countries have lost substantial portions of their youth to the central economic hubs of Berlin and northwest Europe. (Indeed if you watch German movies on Netflix you will see many Eastern European names in the credits.) Those hubs themselves are demographic sinks, growing through ongoing human replenishment from the periphery of the Union. The eastern nations have the least financial capacity to retain their young people.

Depopulation in East Europe has been happening for a while. Shifts from rural to urban East Europe implied reduced fertility; this continues to be the main dynamic of population contraction in Russia. Now the main cities of East Europe are increasingly by-passed in favour of the privileged urban zones in the north and west. The United Kingdom was one of the most favoured destinations for East Europeans prior to Brexit. It still is, though the balance is changing with relatively more people from non-EU (Balkan, southeast European) countries risking the increasingly tortuous journey across the Strait of Dover. About twenty percent of those crossing to England in small boats this year have been from Albania, a Balkan country with fewer than three million people.

What also happened around 2015 and 2016, with the mass influx into the European Union of Syrian refugees, was that these new EU immigrants displaced immigrants from the non-EU Balkan nations. Indeed one of the ironies of non-EU east Europe is that, while both the push and the pull the demographic forces they face are the same if not stronger than those within the European Union, the presence of the EU in much of the east has made the competitive disadvantage ever harder for the youth of Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro.

The kind of economy that is emerging in East Europe is of a mix of traffickers and other service providers (many from eastern EU countries) ‘assisting’ the trafficked, meaning would-be immigrants from disadvantaged non-EU countries. The most populous of these non-EU countries feeling the push and the pull are from what might once have been called ‘Asia Minor’ or the ‘Near East’ (in addition to the ‘Middle East’, part of which is the Levant). As well as Ukraine, these include former Soviet Union countries such as Moldova, Armenia and Georgia; and, increasingly, Russia itself (noting the many anti-war refugees who have fled to places like Georgia).

Finally, the European political and economic periphery includes Africa; pretty much all of Africa, although people from southern Africa will naturally gravitate directly to the United Kingdom rather than the European Union.

Many of us of European ethnicity continue to make condescending assumptions about Africa, and Africans. (I feel privileged to have travelled in Africa, albeit a long time ago, and feel that my brief time there gives me a less unbalanced perspective on that part of the world.) At worst, too many ethnic Europeans simply assume that African nations are ‘basket cases’. Some of us continue to see Africa as the “white man’s burden”. While many realise that African countries now have the fastest growing populations in the world, few outside of that continent realise that Africa has been experiencing the world’s fastest economic growth.

Yet we see so many Africans, young Africans, risking all to ‘escape’ to Europe. We don’t bother wondering about why they are leaving Africa; we simply assume that Africa, as a continent, is chronically subject to the three checks emphasised by Malthus in 1798 – warfare, famine, disease. (Refer to this entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, and Are Malthus’s Predicted 1798 Food Shortages Coming True? 1 Sep 2008, by economist Jeffrey Sachs.)

Yes, all three do happen in Africa. But not everywhere there, all the time. What is actually driving people out of Africa this century is the same as what was driving people out of Europe in the nineteenth century; capitalist economic structural change, and the presence of people magnets outside of Africa.

The underlying circumstances of certain groups in history is known to economists as the ‘zero marginal product of labour’. What this means is, if one worker leaves an industry or a farm, the economic output of that enterprise is unaffected. Historically, this principle has been most applied to agricultural workers, especially in a ‘peasant’ context.

When industrialisation takes place in some part of the world, it is typically ‘powered’ by new industries (typically but not only urban) with a high marginal product of labour drawing people from the countryside. From a worker’s point of view, the attractant is higher wages in the new industry. Then, as the city starts to demand more from the country, farms come to be organised more as capitalist production enterprises than as rural welfare communities. Thus, push factors come into play as capitalist farmers divest themselves of unnecessary labour. Once pushed, young workers then survey the scene; if they find that the best opportunities in their own countries’ cities are already taken, they look to better opportunities in other countries.

In the nineteenth century, such people in Europe looked to far-away lands in the ‘new world’ as better bets for themselves. Better opportunities also meant better opportunities to have large families, because the economic security of rural older people lay in their own adult children. In the twenty-first century, it is no longer the availability of foreign rural lands that is the incentive. Rather it’s the opportunities of large foreign cities to provide a personal income with enough left over to remit to families in the workers’ countries of origin. First generation immigrants do have larger families, even in urban settings, than people already in those cities. Nevertheless, on balance, those bigger cities continue to be demographic sinks.

The following is an example of a Zambian radiation oncologist now working in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Stuck in a neocolonialist past: Is the migration brain drain an outdated concept? 21 Sep 2022, which featured on Deutsche Welle. Not only does she – the Zambian doctor – understand that her productivity is higher in New Zealand than in Zambia, she also actively contributes to her community in Zambia through remittances, and through an understanding that her current work in New Zealand represents an investment which, eventually, can be paid forward to her country of origin.

Globalisation versus Deglobalisation

‘Globalisation’ can be a problematic word, because many use it to mean an ideologyof global neoliberalism. That’s unfortunate, because the correct meaning of globalisation is the emergence of a world economy with diminished territorial barriers to the flows of money and especially labour. (I say especially to labour, because, even in the years before 2020, labour barriers were entrenching just as economic forces of demand and supply were creating increased demands for a globally mobile labour force.)

In today’s (sort-of) post-covid world economy, deglobalist nationalist ideologies conflict directly with economic sustainability and the requirements of the nations’ labour markets. We are now starting to understand that, in a high productivity high population world, the urban metropolises – with their economies of scale – are the most sustainable and stimulating environments for most people to live in. And we are about to start understanding that a sustainable city-dominated modern global economy will depend on reverse flows of money – for present purposes, we may call these ‘remittances’ – into the hinterland communities (such as, in the New Zealand context, Tairāwhiti and Samoa). Such remittances are not mere gifts; the hinterlands where people are raised and educated are places of investment; meaning that these ‘remittances’ are really returns on investment. Through their remittances supporting the Philippines’ economy, nurses trained in Philippines enable Philippines to continue to be a ‘nursing factory’ for the world.

The big demographic story today is not the size of the world population; but the huge geographical imbalances between labour supply and labour demand, and the barriers which prevent labour markets from clearing. Powerful global market forces will work to mitigate these; though these market corrections are to a large extent illegal and misunderstood. An activity (economic migration) which for the most of history has been legal – though in some cases has been accompanied by conquest – is now illegal for many (because of the bureaucratisation and excess of national border controls), creating needless cost and tragedy for those who are responding rationally to market forces. The barriers and the bureaucrats create ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities for smugglers.

The European Union has its own tragedy, as we saw with the Greek economic depression after the global financial crisis. This Union needs to be a fiscal union – more like the United States of America – whereby the hinterlands, international hinterlands within the European Union as well as those within each nation, need to be supported by more than private remittances. People resident in Transylvania should have comparable economic rights as residents of Thuringia.

The global economy needs to develop (preferably universal, non-bureaucratic) systems of ‘public remittances’; within its nations, within its Unions, and eventually with a fully global component. People will grow up, gain skills, work in places – commonly in cities away from their places of nurture – where they can maximise their marginal productivities; and a mix of their earnings and taxes can be ‘remitted’ to maintain the health of their source communities.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

We are learning that, in the absence of high levels of natural immunity to Covid19, New Zealand will need extremely high vaccination rates before it can repudiate its growing ‘hermit kingdom’ status.

(It is important to note that the expression ‘hermit kingdom’ dates to a book title from 1882 – ‘The Hermit Nation’, by William Elliot Griffis – referring to Korea under the Joseon dynasty, and in particular during the centuries [17th to 19th] of the isolationist Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. The expression ‘hermit kingdom’ is more of a Buddhist reference than a reference to cold war communism, and has been applied in more recent times to Bhutan of ‘happiness’ fame. The best example of a substantial self-isolating hermit nation today – Hillary Clinton’s reference notwithstanding – is not North Korea; it is Turkmenistan. The most complete contemporary example, though, would be Abkhazia.)

To achieve vaccination rates in excess of 90 percent, we need clearly defined population (and sub-population) denominators. Ninety percent of what? As a matter of definition, we have wavered from 90% of people aged over 16, aged over 12, aged over 5, and aged over 0. Further, while we have a reasonable idea of what our nationwide populations are for each age and ethnicity cohort, we have much less idea of where they are.

The five-yearly census – run since the 1860s in Aotearoa New Zealand – is meant to be a means of calibrating our population data, which otherwise are based on estimates. The 2018 census was an extreme case of us losing sight of this principal reason for holding a census; instead, it became a large-sample survey, not very helpful because the accuracy of survey data depends more on a lack of sample bias than it does on sample size.

We know that in the 2013 census Māori communities in Northland were substantially undercounted. The lack of trust in government agencies indeed goes back several decades. The methodological problems with the 2018 census were already well-established, and almost certainly date back as far as 1991 when, at census time (at least from the 1930s), New Zealand first had highly marginalised population sub-groups. (The 1931 census, during the Depression, was cancelled as an economy measure; indeed, an unfortunate false economy measure.) Inequality as well as unemployment increased dramatically between the 1986 and 1991 censuses; income inequality kept increasing through the 1990s. Further, the 1991 census was politicised, through its radical redefinition of the way unemployment was counted, making its labour force data unable to be properly compared with earlier census data, and substantially understating the actual extent of labour market failure.

Auckland’s Population

There are almost certainly significantly fewer people living in Auckland today than most policymakers believe to be the case. This is even more so for Māori, and is an important part of why published Covid19 vaccination rates for Māori in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau are so low.

This should not be a surprise, because the big story in town from 2012 to 2017 was the real estate bubble. (This bubble followed a similar event from 2004 to 2008, despite these being years of falling net immigration and rising interest rates in New Zealand.) The major demographic impact of the dramatic 2010s’ decade house price inflation was that of people selling houses – realising capital gains – and moving to the hinterland (including a few heading for the South Island hinterland). Not only did many people leave Auckland, but most of us knew they were leaving Auckland. There were more than just anecdotes, there were television programmes highlighting the Auckland exodus. And, no, international immigration was not nearly as focussed on Auckland as most people, especially the mayors of Auckland, imagined.

The biggest gap in our demographic data is our lack of accurate sub-national population estimates. Instead of correcting our increasingly unreliable locality population estimates, in order the fill-out the 2018 census, we resorted to much of these uncalibrated estimates. In principle we know how many people are in New Zealand, and their ages and their preferred ethnicities; but even that was doubtful due to the very sloppy way Statistics New Zealand used to collect immigration data (as a casual add-on to tourism data, based on how people completed exit and entry cards). But we know very little about net migration within New Zealand; that includes people having left New Zealand for a while and later resettling in a different part of New Zealand.

Electoral Data

Electoral data can be a useful way to check on population patterns. In 2014 and 2017, the same electoral boundaries were used. And more than half of these boundaries were retained for the 2020 and 2023 elections. New Zealand has both general electorates (aka constituencies) and Māori indigenous population electorates.

Electorate boundaries are redrawn every five years or so, based on census data. Using a slightly bizarre format which fixes the number of South Island general electorates. A population quota is then calculated for all electorates, based on the population in the South Island who do not identify as Māori. The quota is then applied to the North Island ‘general’ population. As a result, one more North Island electorate was established in 2020, and a certain degree of population reshuffling was required; for 2020, this reshuffling mainly affected the Waikato region, but also affected Northland. Both shuffles impacted on Auckland;  indeed the new electorate was inserted into South Auckland.

Nevertheless, more than half of Auckland’s electorates did not experience boundary changes. Further, the quota system allows for an electorate’s estimated population to be up to five percent below or above quota. The Auckland electorates which did not experience boundary changes found themselves below the quota; in some cases, just within the allowable five percent margin. These unchanged electorates are: East Coast Bays, North Shore, Northcote, Te Atatu, Kelston, Mt Albert, Auckland Central, Epsom, Tāmaki, Pakuranga, and Mangere. Maungakiekie had its boundaries unambiguously extended in 2020, as did the Māori electorate Tāmaki Makaurau. New Lynn and Mt Roskill did sideways shifts to accommodate increased population in Northland and the North Auckland rural (and semi-rural) fringe. A new electorate was created in Takanini, South Auckland, allowing the bloated electorates further south to become a bit smaller.

Māori Electorates

To the constant surprise and frustration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Māori elite, not enough Māori opted to go on the Māori electoral role. This meant that the number of Māori electorates stayed at seven. The target population size for Māori electorates is the same as for general electorates, though the average population base for the seven Māori electorates may necessarily diverge by more than five percent compared to the general electorates.

To effectively use electorates as locational demographic indicators, we need to used votes cast as a percentage of nationwide votes. In New Zealand, we can do the exercise separately for Māori and general electorates.

In 2008, 14.6% of Māori votes were cast in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland); over one-seventh of all Māori votes. In 2011, that fell to 14.4%. The ‘winner’ in 2011 was Te Tai Tokerau (the north) and the loser was Te Tai Tonga (the south, essentially Wellington), reflecting a loss of government employment in Wellington following the election of a National-led government in 2008.

In 2014, Tāmaki Makaurau was reduced in size, and its share of the Māori vote accordingly fell to 13.8%. Then, with the same boundaries as 2014, Tāmaki Makaurau fell to 12.6% of the Māori vote. Te Tai Tokerau stayed top, and Te Tai Tonga increased its share, reflecting a degree of restoration of Māori employment in the Wellington bureaucracy.

In 2020, Tāmaki Makaurau was enlarged in size (reclaiming many South Auckland voters from Hauraki-Waikato), and got 14.1%, while Hauraki-Waikato slumped to 13.2% of the Māori vote. While the combined Auckland-Waikato Māori vote did show a small increase after 2017, evidence from the general electorates indicates that this increase was in Waikato, not in Auckland.

In 2020, Te Tai Tonga increased again, to 15.8% of the Māori vote; reflecting renewed opportunities for Māori employment in Wellington’s government nexus. Te Tai Tokerau, with unchanged boundaries, fell from 15.2% to 14.7%. This last shift would appear to be a reversal of the 2011 effect, and also a shift of Māori out of West Auckland and into the far north iwi homelands (and Whangarei) where houses are less expensive.

As a recently retired lecturer in Unitec’s School of Applied Business, I can affirm that, while Pasifika clearly represented an increasing proportion of student enrolments, Māori enrolments showed a steady decline in the 2010s. This was despite excellent, indeed improved, Māori student support on campus. The most obvious, and almost certainly correct, explanation was that the Māori population within Auckland has diminished; and from an already low percentage base. About 25% of all non-Māori New Zealand residents live within the borders of the Tāmaki Makurau Māori electorate; yet even in its restored and enlarged form, Tāmaki Makaurau only registered 14.1% of Māori votes in 2020, down from 14.6% in 2008.

The total Māori population in Auckland may be ninety percent (or even less) of what the Ministry of Health believes it to be. Thus, even an official 75% vaccination rate of Māori in Auckland might in reality be 90%. To get the nationwide Māori vaccination rate up to ninety percent, Auckland will not be the place to go looking for the unvaccinated.

The General Population

From an electoral point of view, nearly half of New Zealand residents with Māori ancestry have chosen to identify as ‘general’ rather than as Māori. While ten percent of electorates are Māori, 17 percent of the population is Māori.

The 11 Auckland electorates (listed above) with unchanged boundaries, cast 14.6% of all general electorate votes in 2020, while representing 15.3% of general electorates. In 2014, these electorates cast on average 15.44% of votes, while representing 15.49% of all electorates. In 2017, 15.03% of votes were cast in these places, which represented 15.49% of all electorates. This suggests that the relative decline in Auckland’s general population persisted in the 2017 to 2020 period.

Of particular note was the Maungakiekie electorate (not one of the 11 previously mentioned), which cast 1.54% of all general electorate votes in 2014, 1.47% in 2017, and 1.38% in 2020 despite having its boundaries enlarged. This is a part of Auckland which once had a highish Māori population, but has now been substantially gentrified, and emptied.

Maungakiekie is one of the electorates which represent a north and west block of eight which have had boundary shuffles. While together, their boundaries are unchanged, Maungakiekie has unambiguously enlarged, whereas Upper Harbour and Whangarei have unambiguously shrunk. Upper Harbour’s share of the total vote has been consistent at 1.50% of the total, or just slightly under. Whangarei scored 1.63% in 2014, 1.71% in 2017, and 1.63% with reduced boundaries in 2020. Whangarei has clearly grown in its population share, just as Auckland has fallen in its share.

As well as Northland, the other area that has clearly grown much faster than the national average is Auckland’s ‘southern hinterland’ outside of the urban electorates of Hamilton East, Rotorua and Tauranga. Indeed this southern hinterland – a mix of South Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty – contains the one new electorate arising from the 2020 boundary reshuffle. This zone of population growth particularly represents the outskirts of Hamilton and Tauranga, Coromandel, and Auckland’s southern fringe. Mangere and Pakuranga, in the south of Auckland, have unchanged boundaries. Their voter statistics represent the Auckland pattern, not the Waikato pattern. So it seems safe to conclude that, within this ‘southern hinterland’, the population growth has been greater to the south of core South Auckland, and not in core South Auckland.

Where to Vaccinate

While this demographic analysis of Auckland and its surrounds is important for a number of reasons, my main conclusion here is that, if we want to get our Covid19 statistics up towards a rate of ninety percent of people aged over five – and especially Māori statistics – then we should be looking for people in Northland and greater Waikato, and not looking for people in Auckland who are just not there.

And, to the mainstream media, whenever you report percentages, don’t forget to specify the denominators. Ninety percent of what? And ask that the denominators suggested by officials be quantified. (And remember that, when commentators refer to ‘Hermit Kingdom’, they may not be referencing modern North Korea.)

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Last month I noted that Māori voter growth in Auckland (Tāmaki Makaurau) was slower than in all the other Māori electoral districts, and that this almost certainly reflected very low Māori population growth in Auckland. I also argued that Pakeha as well as Māori were leaving (or not arriving in) Auckland in larger numbers than in the past. And I said that the census data would show that Auckland’s population (excluding the former Rodney and Franklin Districts) would be less than 30 percent of the national total.

This month’s chart comes the day after the census data was released. Because the infill process – filling in for census non‑participation – was more comprehensive than for past censuses, the population growth data overall may be slightly inflated. But, on the whole, these growth data are probably as reliable as in the past.

The chart shows that, in Auckland’s inner isthmus suburbs (from Mt Albert and Point Chevalier through to St Heliers, and including the central business district), population growth in 2013‑18 was comparable to Palmerston North and Dunedin. This is in contrast with 2006‑13 when central Auckland grew by ten percent. We may note that residential property prices in these years grew much faster in central Auckland than Dunedin, suggesting that population pressure was not the driving force behind these rising prices. Rather, people responded to inflated property prices by leaving inner Auckland (or not coming).

The rest of the isthmus grew faster in 2013‑18, compared to inner Auckland and compared to 2006‑13. But the growth was not remarkable; it was comparable with Napier and Nelson. Likewise the ‘outer core’ – which includes much of North Shore and Manukau had population growth after 2013 that was well below the New Zealand average of 10.8 percent.

Auckland’s ‘less unaffordable’ outer suburbs grew faster. The ‘outer’ axis includes areas like Henderson and Massey in the northwest, and Manurewa, Otara and Howick in the southeast. In those areas, population growth was comparable with Hamilton.

In the super‑’city’, the fastest growing areas were the fringe – Papakura, Upper Harbour, Hibiscus and East Coast Bays, and Waitakere Ranges – and Rodney and Franklin. Growth there was comparable with Northland (which includs Whangarei) and Bay of Plenty (which includes Tauranga).

The census data confirms the election data, showing a substantial demographic shift from core Auckland to (and beyond) Auckland’s fringe. Although Auckland City is growing relatively slowly, the historic Auckland Province now holds 54.6 percent of New Zealand’s population, up from 53.8 percent.

Auckland excluding rural Rodney and Franklin had 30.4 percent of New Zealand’s resident population. This includes the ‘Hibiscus’ area of Orewa which was in Rodney District before the super‑city was formed in 2010. So it looks like I am correct, the combined population of the former Auckland, North Shore, Waitakere, Manukau and Papakura – what most people have thought of as Auckland – is below 30 percent of the national total. The rest of the country continues to have much life and soul.

Auckland’s 2012‑16 real estate bubble was just that, a bubble. It had the substantial consequence of revitalising much of the rest of the country, though creating many of the same social problems as Auckland (especially relating to unaffordable rental housing) in many other cities.

As a final note, Auckland’s unoccupied dwelling count increased by over 6,000 to 39,393. 97 percent of the national increase in empty dwellings was in Auckland. And Auckland province registered a 9,363 increase in empty properties, 151 percent of the New Zealand net increase of 6,201 unoccupied homes.

Is it “Trumpian” to dispute the veracity of the botched census statistics? That’s the question currently dominating the political debate following the release of the official report into how the 2018 government census operation went so badly.

Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges has slammed the handling of the census operation by Statistics New Zealand and Minister of Statistics, James Shaw. More controversially, he is disputing the usefulness of the census data that is about to be released. That’s because, instead of surveying all New Zealanders, or even “nearly all”, the census only had a response rate of 83.3 per cent, meaning that there are some major gaps in the original data. But Bridges’ criticisms have drawn accusations of Trump-like behaviour from Shaw and others on the political left.

The fierce political battle over the botched census really kicked off yesterday when Bridges went on RNZ’s Morning Report and pushed a hard line of accountability for the Government and James Shaw for the census debacle. You can listen to the five-minute interview here: Outgoing Stats NZ boss shouldn’t be scapegoat – Bridges.

In terms of challenging Shaw’s role in the census shambles, Bridges says in the interview that Shaw has to take more responsibility for the outcome: “He was asleep at the wheel. He expressed blind confidence when concerns were raised. To give you the contrast, Maurice Williamson as statistics minister in 2013 for that census had 18 meetings on the census six months prior. Shaw didn’t have a single one. He had meetings on other things, measurements of our feelings, wellbeing and the like, but not the core business of the census.”

Bridges’ RNZ interview is also reported here: Botched census: Statistics Minister asleep at the wheel, says Bridges. According to this, “Bridges said as a result he didn’t believe the data would be robust enough to help redraw electoral boundaries and said these should stay as they were for the time being. He said the 2013 census presented more reliable data.”

Furthermore, in the interview, Bridges questioned the wider credibility of data being produced by the department: “I worry more broadly in relation to Statistics New Zealand. Because we have seen in recent months, whether it’s GDP, whether it’s immigration, vast swings as we revisit data and chop and change them. It doesn’t do a lot for our confidence in statistics in New Zealand.”

Shaw has responded to this interview with alarm, suggesting that Bridges is playing dirty politics. In what has been termed a “blistering broadside” at the National leader, Shaw has responded by accusing him of Trump tactics, especially because Bridges is undermining public confidence in official government statistics – see today’s article by Craig McCulloch: Simon Bridges’ comment ‘a very bad turn for NZ politics’ – James Shaw.

Shaw has parodied Bridges’ position on Statistics NZ like this: “Oh, they made a mistake over here, therefore, I don’t trust anything that they’ve produced”, and Shaw has said this position “is, frankly, absurd”. Fuelling mistrust in the census results is a problem, Shaw says, because “He doesn’t really care what the collateral damage is along the way … and I don’t know how he expects to govern if he totally destroys public confidence in the basis of evidence-based decision making.”

Shaw accuses Bridges of adopting a populist approach: “The lessons of Trump, the lessons of Brexit, and the lessons of the Australian election seem to have gone to Simon Bridges’ head and this ‘burn-the-house-down’ in order to win approach… is a very, very bad turn for New Zealand politics.”

At the heart of the issue is whether the upcoming re-drawing of the electorate boundaries can take place, given the questions about the quality of the census data. According to the above RNZ article, Bridges said “he did not accept Stats NZ’s assurances that the figures used to determine electorate boundaries would be robust. Bridges says: “We’ve got significant numbers of New Zealanders – hundreds of thousands in fact – who weren’t counted. It seems to me on that basis, it would be hard to run new electoral boundaries.”

Shaw disputes that there are any problems with the data for determining any new electorate boundaries saying the quality of the census stats have been verified by “an independent data quality review panel… Experts from all over the country – including someone from the UK Statistical Office as well to provide that international view – and they have put the gold stamp on this… He can take it into a court of law if he likes, but he’s going to lose.”

Shaw is backed up by economist Brian Easton, who is quoted in the RNZ article saying “We haven’t actually seen the data, so we can’t jump to conclusions… What we’ve got is people who are uninformed who are panicking – and quite illegitimately. What they’ve got to do is wait and see what happens.” He adds, however, that “I respect Mr Bridges saying that if they don’t have the confidence in the data, then we should stay with the 2013 electoral boundaries.”

Easton is also quoted in a previous article by Craig McCulloch, in which he elaborates on his fear of a developing Trump-style atmosphere of distrust of authority and “facts” in New Zealand: “We’ve seen in America that people say anything that comes out of Washington is not true, and there is a danger that that sort of attitude could happen in New Zealand” – see: Stats NZ could need years to regain public trust.

The worry is that despite strong attempts by Statistics NZ to fix problems with census data quality, some in the public will doubt that the results and further census work can be trusted: “Statistics New Zealand has done some very high quality work. It has some really good statisticians, but the public may go, shall we say, to a Trumpian position of ‘we don’t trust them’.” Furthermore, “I expect during the 2023 Census that people will be saying, ‘we can’t trust the statistics department’. Trust is a hard thing to build up, easy to lose, and I’m afraid that’s what has happened.”

Another researcher, however, suggests that questions should definitely continue to be asked about the quality of the census data. According to the above article, Massey University’s Paul Spoonley believes that “some scepticism from the public and Opposition” is understandable. He says: “The way in which [the census] was carried out now opens it up for questioning by whoever … and I think they have every right to raise those questions. We should have good experts look at the data and make sure that it is okay”.

Shaw’s alarm with Bridges’ so-called Trumpian stance on statistics is shared by political commentator Chris Trotter, who says today that Bridges’ questioning of the census data is just the latest in a more populist approach taken by the National leader recently, seen in terms of his stance on Ihumātao and National’s aggressive social media advertising. This all shows, Trotter argues, that Bridges and National are emulating the likes of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Trump and the Brexiteers, and taking the “low road to power” – see: Simon Bridges leads National down into the dark.

Here’s his main point: “This is an especially dangerous game to play. From calling into question the reliability of official information it is but a short step to advancing the Trumpian claim that the public is being assailed by “fake news”, or, worse still, that the election is being rigged. That is no small matter. Once truth and propaganda become fused in the minds of one’s followers, debate and discussion become redundant. If one’s opponents are all outrageous liars, then engaging with them in any way is pointless.”

Otago University law professor Andrew Geddis has a similar view, suggesting that we are headed for a Brexit or Trump-style environment if Bridges questions the stats too much – see: Let’s not turn an omnishambles into a clusterf*ck.

Here’s Geddis’ main worry: “when Statistics NZ assures us that this process will produce some (but not all) census data that is as good as (if not better than) that from previous censuses, why wouldn’t we believe this? Because if we’re not prepared to believe it, then we’re solely left with a world of ‘alternative facts’ and individual reckons in which there is no common basis for either agreement or dispute. The international news pages of our newspapers (ask your parents, kids) are giving us a good, real time look at how societies that make decisions based on such assumptions work out. They don’t look all that great to me. And it would be nice if we could avoid importing the worst of their mistakes to our shores.”

Geddis agrees that the census was a disaster, and suggests that Bridges might be right to go hard against Shaw in the search for accountability, but says the politician should pause before threatening long-held arrangements on electoral matters. He’s particularly unhappy with the idea that National might dispute or wreck the process by which electoral boundaries are reconsidered. He argues that Bridges is wrong that the census data isn’t good enough, and that he should trust Stats NZ and the various experts when they tell him this.

There are others who are also questioning the quality and use of census data, however. Today, The Press newspaper has an editorial that is probably as scathing as Bridges, describing the census process as “Bungled, botched or butchered” and criticising James Shaw as being “remarkably blase over the data collection failure” – see: Māori have been let down by census botch-up.

Although Shaw has tried to paint the results in a positive light, saying they constitute a “mixed bag”, the editorial stresses the problem: “The results were much worse than merely ‘mixed’ for Māori. The response from the Māori community was 68.2 per cent, which means almost a third of the Māori population missed out. That figure is 20 percentage points below the 2013 response. Responses were also much lower than targeted in Pasifika, Asian and younger communities.”

The editorial laments that for Maori, this poor-quality data will be an “impediment on self-determination and progress that will have an impact for up to a decade”. It points to sociologist and statistician Andrew Sporle calling it “an information shackle” on Māori, saying “especially as the census is the primary source of iwi numbers. Those iwi engaged in Treaty negotiations will be hit especially hard.”

Another social scientist, Polly Atatoa Carr, is quoted, saying the “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”.

So, how did Maori get so under-counted by Statistics NZ? According to Raniera Tau, the chair of Te Rūnanga Ā Iwi o Ngāpuhi, “They failed to do the job, I mean they didn’t listen, the big thing is they didn’t listen to Māori and now we find ourselves in this situation and it is going to take another three years until we find out exactly where we sit” – see Meriana Johnsen’s ‘They didn’t listen’ – Iwi leader on botched census.

Finally, for the best examinations of this week’s official report into the census debacle, see Thomas Manch’s Census 2018: Review shows you could almost count on census failure, and David Williams’ Pulling apart the butchered census.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

New Zealanders should have less faith in many of the vital decisions of government agencies, due to serious problems with the way last year’s census was carried out. It’s a multi-billion-dollar problem. And the Government and officials appear to be doing little to assuage concerns. In fact, the recent decisions of the Minister of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand are giving the public more reason to be suspicious.

I covered this a month ago, on the anniversary of the 2018 census, pointing out the many problems – see: The absolute debacle of the 2018 Census. The “digital first” experiment had gone horribly wrong, leading to a suspicion at the time that about one-in-ten citizens hadn’t completed the census – something that would lead to all sorts of problems for government decision-making. Since then, the full extent of the debacle has become clearer, but accountability has not.

Most significantly, despite Statistics NZ’s reluctance to let the public know, it’s now clear that there was also a problem with those who did fill out the census forms – about 240,000 never finished filling in the forms. This is on top of the 480,000 who didn’t even start filling them in.

Yesterday’s Otago Daily Times editorial quite rightly labels the most recent census a “a failure of epic proportions”, saying that “Long delays in the release of information rang alarm bells, but that one in seven New Zealanders have not had their information recorded is truly disheartening” – see: When it all goes horribly wrong.

The editorial explains why it’s such a problem: “This matters because it means the census is going to deliver skewed and incomplete results. The census, held every five years, provides vital information – a snapshot of the nation – that is used primarily for allocating funding for core services, for future planning, for the drawing of electoral boundaries, for so many things. It must be done, and it must be done right.”

There are billions of dollars at stake, because so much of what the government spends is affected by the detailed knowledge of New Zealand society that the census produces. Financial journalist David Hargreaves explains this in his column, Maybe we should scrap the 2018 census and start again.

Here are his examples: “In the case of migration, obviously if thousands less people have come into particularly Auckland this has big ramifications for housing and infrastructure. Having pristine statistics is not some ‘nice to have’ fanciful thing. It’s actually absolutely vital and therefore should not be subjected to Government penny-pinching”.

Although Statistics NZ is currently attempting to “backfill” the gaps in the census data with a “patching” process that uses other government agency statistics, there doesn’t seem to be much confidence amongst commentators that this will be adequate.

Hargreaves discusses this: “however well they do in patching this up, there will, always be a suspicion over the information and whether it is of the quality on which big spending Government decisions on things like infrastructure can be confidently committed. Where we want information as gold, we might end up with copper. Which ain’t good enough. Anything where information has to be extrapolated, say from a sample size, is always subject to some question marks.”

Similarly, Massey University’s pro vice-chancellor Paul Spoonley is unconvinced that the patching process will work, saying “I’m still very, very sceptical” – see 1News’ Massey University official calls on Stats NZ head to ‘front’ on ‘failed’ 2018 Census.

According to this report, Spoonley believes it still “leaves the serious question of whether New Zealand can have confidence that the replacement data will be correct”. Spoonley says, in terms of government decision-making, “a whole lot of systems are actually breaking down because we don’t have Census data available”.

For the best discussion of the quality of the data, see David Williams’ Census ‘disastrous’, but not useless. Of particular interest in this article, is the evaluation of Richard Arnold, a former Statistics NZ analyst and now a statistics lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. He says the latest census is “absolutely not up to spec”.

Arnold explains the importance of a full national census over simple sample surveys, saying a census “gets in everywhere” in terms of the smaller demographic groups. And because only about six out of seven citizens have been properly recorded in the census, all sorts of minority groups will have a reduced profile in the snapshot of the nation.

He says: “It’s interesting to see how they are growing and changing over time. There’ll be people from minority religions who want to see how many they are and how they’re changing. There are little groups everywhere. Even regional areas, where people want to know how the rural population is changing.”

There will now be significant errors and bias in the information the government is relying upon. Whereas very small amounts of missing information can be patched up, in this case Arnold suspects “when it gets out to this kind of level, it’s a really big problem” and “You just don’t know because you haven’t measured”.

Similarly, economist Brian Easton lacks confidence in the ability of Statistics NZ to patch up the problems, especially given what he’s learnt about the process: “We have been told that the patching will not all cover all questions which researchers use, while the patching is likely to invalidate many of the issues which researchers want to explore” – see Thomas Manch’s One in seven failed to complete Census 2018, a back down from Govt Statistician reveals.

According to this article, “Easton said the gap in census response was now so large the data may be useless for research.” National’s state services spokesman Nick Smith says the problems with the census data “will create problems for years in allocating tens of billions of dollars in funding”. While New Zealand’s chief statistician Liz MacPherson is reported complaining that “misunderstandings have resulted in unfounded comments regarding the integrity of the official statistics system and Stats NZ.”

MacPherson has been in the firing line for her role overseeing the whole post-census debacle. And she’s come under even more scrutiny recently due to her extreme attempts to withhold information from the public and politicians about the unusually high number of people who only partially completed their census forms. This is best covered in Thomas Manch’s article, Chief Statistician ordered by MPs to produce information on Census 2018.

As head of Stats NZ, MacPherson has had to appear twice this year at a select committee, where both times she has declined to provide details on the census completion rates, stating last week “Without the appropriate context, these individual numbers would be open to misinterpretation”. Commenting on this, constitutional expert Andrew Geddis says “I can’t remember a time a public servant has refused after being told they must answer”.

MacPherson eventually yielded, after the select committee MPs unanimously decided to threaten her with contempt of Parliament. But the episode was enough for blogger No Right Turn to call for her to be sacked, saying her disobedience was an alarming defiance of the public’s democratic rights and of accountability – see: This is not how our public service should work.

According to Friday’s Press editorial, the whole episode needs more investigation: “Statistics Minister James Shaw’s claims that the gaps in the data are not a concern, and a chief statistician who was almost dragged kicking and screaming by politicians to present a fuller picture of a shambolic process and a poor result, are both worthy of greater scrutiny” – see: NZ census: A black hole of big data.

The editorial joins a host of commentators and experts who are calling on the Government to fix the problems of last year’s census debacle by bringing forward a new census for 2021 – something that James Shaw will not countenance.

And the blame game will continue – with arguments about whether the census debacle was due to initial decisions made by the last National Government, or mismanagement under the Labour-led administration. But regardless, Oscar Kightley wrote on Sunday, it’s Shaw’s “job to fix it, and he could start by admitting that this is an embarrassing disaster that could have serious consequences for the country” – see: Why the census debacle is so serious.

There will also be consequences for some of the 700,000+ who failed to start or finish completing the census last year. Jono Galuszka reports that, so far, “60 court cases were being lodged in relation to people not completing the census” – see: Stats NZ starts taking people to court over non-completed census forms. But not everyone is being prosecuted: “Criteria for prosecution included actively refusing to do the census, being strongly negative, or being abusive towards census staff”.

Finally, although many are calling for a return to a paper-based census process, is it actually time to further embrace digital data? In the age of “big data” there are a huge number of other possibilities for innovation in terms of measuring and understanding what’s going on in New Zealand. With the use of greater technology, government policy making could actually become much more reliable and effective according to Pattrick Smellie, who asks: In a world full of big data, is it time to rethink the Census altogether?

Exactly a year ago, on 6 March 2018, the government census was carried out. It was a “digital-first” census, with citizens expected to primarily use the internet to answer the compulsory questions about their lives. And it was soon apparent that huge numbers of New Zealanders had been missed out by the exercise – likely to be at least one in ten. 

But we are only now finding out how much of a debacle that event was, along with increasing knowledge of the seriously negative implications for our society and democracy. And to make matters worse, there’s a distinct lack of political or bureaucratic accountability for what has happened.

A number of newspaper stories have been published today about the anniversary of the 2018 census debacle. The most important is Thomas Manch’s 365 days and still counting: Census 2018 results nowhere to be seen. In this, he explains that “The 2018 census data release has been delayed three times due to low response rate” and “Statistics New Zealand remains tight-lipped about when the long-delayed results will be available”.

The article explains that the census operation resourcing was inadequate, especially in terms of the number of field staff hired to help people get their census filled out: “Newly released information shows Stats NZ employed 1800 enumerators, or field staff, to knock on doors and uncover those who failed to complete Census 2018. This was a substantial drop from the 7000 boots on the ground during Census 2013”.

A number of economists and statisticians explain the growing awareness of the severity of the “shambolic” census operations. For example, University of Auckland statistician Andrew Sporle is quoted saying: “It’s a bit of a disaster, we don’t know how bad, but we know it’s a disaster.”

Sporle explains that the data, once it’s eventually released, “will provide increased uncertainty in matters from the Government’s wellbeing targets to the number of Māori electorates.”

Manch looks at the Māori electorates in another article today, Māori electorate seat at risk due to Census 2018 debacle, and says that, due to the way Statistics NZ have run the census, there are likely to be much fewer respondents reporting that they are of have Māori descent, which could lead to one of the Māori seats disappearing.

One specialist is cited as saying that although the 2018 census participation rate is estimated to be about 90 percent for the general population, “the response rate of Māori may be as low as 80 or 70 per cent in some corners of New Zealand”. In addition, “more than 20 new iwi won’t be properly counted” in the census, and this is a problem because “census data was particularly important for smaller iwi trying to do good with fewer resources”.

Societal consequences of the census debacle

There are plenty of other serious implications if the census 2018 data is unreliable, as is increasingly expected. For example, planning and funding for health and education is highly reliant on this population data, and some hospitals and schools might receive inadequate resourcing as a result. Much of this is explained in Cate Broughton’s article today, Health boards, schools may lose funding as Ministries forced to use 2013 census data.

In this, University of Otago’s health systems expert Robin Gauld explains how hospitals might be negatively impacted: “It could have fairly profound implications for a DHB off a $1 billion dollar budget – if you’re a per cent or two off, that’s $10 or $20 million dollars, the difference between surplus and deficit.”

The article points out that this is likely to have a particularly adverse impact on poorer communities, with Child Poverty Action Group’s Alan Johnson quoted: “What you will get in places like South Auckland is there might be 10,000 – 15,000 people missing from the count – well the DHB won’t be getting funded for them so them and everyone else in that area will struggle with less funding.”

Currently the problems with the census data means that government departments are having to rely on 2013 census data. In terms of schools, the president of NZEI, Lynda Stuart, says: “If they are looking at using 2013 census data then yes potentially schools’ [funding levels] could stay the same and yet communities do change so it’s obviously highly problematic”.

So will the census debacle have a negative impact on social wellbeing? Certainly, the Government is making much of putting “wellbeing” at the centre of Grant Robertson’s upcoming Budget, but there must be questions as to the credibility of an approach that emphasises the need to measure social indicators when measures are so inadequate.

Furthermore, the Government has admitted that Robertson’s Budget won’t make use of the latest data: “Crucial funding decisions in Budget 2019 will be made without data from Census 2018” – see Thomas Manch’s Census data won’t make Budget 2019. National’s finance spokesperson, Amy Adams, says that this is “highly unusual”, but the Government has claimed that they never intended to use the new census data in the Budget.

Adams has also asked whether hospitals and schools which receive inadequate funding based on old data will eventually have their correct funding restored and backdated once the new data arrives.

Electoral consequences of the census debacle

The other major census headache is the upcoming general election, which is constitutionally-mandated to be run on the basis of electorate boundaries being redrawn in light of the census. The exercise of the boundary re-drawing is carried out by the Representation Commission (which effectively involves the Electoral Commission and representatives of the Labour and National parties). But if they don’t have access to the latest census data, or if the census data is deemed unreliable, then the whole exercise could collapse or lead to messy court proceedings.

This is best covered by Henry Cooke in his article, Statistics New Zealand confident census data will be ready for 2020 election boundaries. In this, National’s Electoral Reform spokesman Nick Smith challenges the robustness of the likely census data for the election, and says: “It is totally unsatisfactory to be determining electorate boundaries that can effectively determine who will be the next Government on the basis of guesswork”.

If National doesn’t have confidence in the census data being used to re-draw the electorates then the party could take legal action or simply pull out of involvement in the Representation Commission, which would collapse the whole process. This article says that National want the 2013 census data to be used instead, and “National was not ruling out ‘alternative action’ if this did not happen”.

A big issue is the matter of when Statistics NZ manages to get the data to the Electoral Commission, which is currently unknown. National’s David Farrar explains the problems with the timetable: “This would normally have been September 2018, so we’d have new boundaries by March 2019 – well before the election. If Stats NZ can’t release census data before say December 2019, then we’d have final boundaries in June 2020. That would be a disaster. Selections would have occurred by then. You can’t change boundaries just three months before an election. Parliament would probably have to legislate to delay the new boundaries until after the 2020 election. Ideally new boundaries should be finalised before election year. That means Stats NZ really needs to get the data out by June 2019. Any later than that and it will create a real headache for the boundaries review” – see: The census disaster gets worse.

Blame game and unaccountability

Given the anniversary of the 2018 census debacle, there is now a renewed interest in working out exactly what went so wrong a year ago and who is to blame. Journalists have had great trouble getting answers on any of this, because both the Government and Statistics New Zealand have been uncooperative and uncommunicative about what has happened.

But with the help of the Official Information Act, Newsroom’s David Williams has accessed 189 pages of information from Statistics New Zealand, which help illustrate the process during which the disaster unfolded – see his must-read account of “a digital-first experiment gone wrong”: Bungled, costly census to produce less ().

Williams has also been seeking comment from officials and politicians. He says “Stats NZ said no one was available for an interview.” And the Minister of Statistics James Shaw is asked “about his confidence in the integrity of the census data”, to which he rather weasily replies: “I am confident Stats NZ is making every effort and applying as many options as possible to deliver robust Census data.”

And a Statistics New Zealand official is interviewed, who says: “There is no accountability or responsibility being taken internally for what is turning out to be the worst census in over 50 years.”

For a very in-depth and interesting account of the census debacle, see the Otago Daily Times feature story, And then there were nine, by Bruce Munro, which was published in the weekend. This is, so far, the ultimate exploration of what went wrong.

Kathy Connolly, Stats NZ’s census general manager, answers questions put to her about whether the debacle was a result of the previous National Government running down the public service and replies “no comment”. Was the debacle due to Stats NZ being asked to “Go do a cheap census”? Again: “No further comment”.

There is also great debate in the article between Labour and National politicians about underfunding and oversight. They both blame each other, of course.

Munro also reports: “What exactly happened is hotly debated, but not loudly. Most of those close to the action will not talk on the record. At an operational level, when it came to rolling out New Zealand’s first largely online census, several wheels fell off, they say. There wasn’t enough publicity. Statistics New Zealand relied on the diminished postal system to get initial information to people. There were not enough forms. Fewer people were employed to follow up on those who had not filled out their form.”

In the end, the results of the census debacle are likely to impact negatively on the marginalised of society. In this regard, the views of the University of Otago’s professor of public health, Peter Crampton, are reported: “those for whom good social policy is of the highest priority” will be undercounted. The result will be a worsening of their position: “If these groups become invisible in the census then policy-making becomes doubly difficult and some of the least advantaged communities are at risk of becoming further marginalised.”

The decision by Statistics New Zealand to slash the number of census field workers is “beyond comprehension” according to economist Brian Easton – see his opinion piece today: Census mess can be resolved with a new one in 2021. But Easton argues that it’s quite feasible for the Government to get a robust new census up and running for the early date of 2021.

Finally, have Statistics NZ staff been spending too long “checking their privilege” instead of checking the pulse of the nation? Just before Christmas it was discovered that the government agency had their staff carry out a game to determine who was ‘white’, ‘Christian’, ‘able-bodied’, ‘male’, ‘heterosexual’ and had ‘no speech impediment’ – see Dan Satherley’s Stats NZ defends hosting ‘Check Your Privilege Bingo’ game.

I did an anonymous survey of my first year (tertiary) statistics and economic students. In West Auckland, while we have some international students, the biggest demographic is New Zealand residents born outside of New Zealand. Many students, though not most, are over 25 years old.

58 students attended classes from 8-13 March. The quinquennial population census was held on 6 March 2018. 36 of the 58 students completed the census; that’s  62 percent.

This is a bit of a worry. Rather than taking a census, we seem to be gathering a large non-representative sample; a biased snapshot of New Zealand in 2018.

Of the 22 who had not completed the census, 13 clearly answered ‘Yes’ to ‘My household has not received an online census code’.

From these 13, the following comments were made:

• “I have received a census to my address for the old tenant who used to live there, but not for myself”.
• “Don’t know what to do without a census code”.
• “I am not a New Zealander. So I don’t know this census survey.”
• The system didn’t have my address in it. It also does not allow for unknown separate households at one property, requiring ringing for more codes” (This student plans to complete the census when/if the codes arrive.)
• “I did not receive the form”. This student ‘could not contact the Statistics New Zealand helpline’ and is ‘waiting for Statistics New Zealand to contact me’.

So, it’s not entirely apathy.

Among the other 9 who did not complete the census, comments given were:

• ‘The online Census code for my household did not work’. ‘I could not contact the Statistics New Zealand helpline’. “Delay in reply”.
• “I received the form but keep forgetting to fill it up”.
• “I was not informed”.
• “I live with my landlord and I don’t know if they do it or not”.
• “I have no idea if my household has received an online census code”.

I also note, from colleagues, that some parents filled in the census for their adult ‘children’. This suggests some erosion of civic culture; and suggests that future censuses may be little more reliable than this one.

I understand that there will be an extensive follow-up process from Statistics New Zealand. Perhaps I should survey my students again in May, to learn if the after-census service has been effective.

Regional population estimates are unreliable. The government should know (and publish) reliable quarterly population data for the country as a whole, and accurate breakdowns by age and sex. All that is required is birth and death registration, accurate immigration and emigration data (age and sex are determinable from passports), whether a person passing through the border is a visitor or a resident, and when a visitor’s status changes to resident status.

In March 2014, Statistics New Zealand was still publishing population data (eg for March 2013) uninformed by the 2013 Population Census. By March 2015, these estimates had been corrected.

My analysis uses the Working-Age Population (population over 15), published as part of the Household Labour Force Survey. The 2014 estimate of the March 2013 aged-over-15 population was 3,508,000. After the census results came through, this was revised down by 39,000 to 3,469,000. New Zealand’s working‑age population had been overstated in 2014, by over one percent. The discrepancy should have been much smaller, and may be due in large part to poorly-collected immigration statistics, based on travellers’ stated intentions rather than their actual movements.

Some of the regional discrepancies were much bigger than the one percent nationwide discrepancy. (The regions given in this chart approximate closely to the six provincial cricket associations in New Zealand.)

The population increase in the Northern Districts (Northland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty) was much bigger than anticipated by Statistics New Zealand in their pre-2013-census population estimates. My analysis of 2017 election statistics suggests that this relative growth of the Northern Districts has continued apace.

Between 2006 and 2013, Auckland grew slightly faster than projected by Statistics New Zealand. My 2017 analysis suggests that since 2013 – that is, considering March 2018 – the Auckland population will be significantly less than Statistics New Zealand’s current projections for Auckland.

From the central North Island to Southland, the 2013 censuses showed a much greater loss of population than expected. While the population loss in Canterbury was no surprise, the surprise is that Statistics New Zealand were doggedly publishing Canterbury population estimates in March 2014 as if the earthquake had never happened.

I’m guessing that the 2018 census will be close with respect to New Zealand’s overall population. With respect to the regions, however, I suspect that all regions except Auckland will show higher census‑informed populations for March 2018; higher than the March 2018 estimates for March 2018 will show. My analysis in 2017 suggests that the 2018 Census will show that there has been a population redistribution since 2013, in favour of the regions and against Auckland.