Tani Newton
The results of the 2023 census are out. New Zealand’s population is now 4,993,923.
Which invites the question: Does that include the million people who didn’t take part in the census?
Come to think of it, if they need a census to find out how many people there are, how do they know that a million of them didn’t answer it?
It’s enough to make your head spin. And this is just what I said at the time: they don’t need a census to find out this information. They already have it.
The StatsNZ website more or less confirms this in the explanatory notes, where it coyly admits that the results “include combined data” from the census and government administration data.
Well, yes. They know how many births and deaths there are and how many people enter and leave the country, so of course they know how many people there are. They know how much money you earn, because they tax you on it. They know how many houses there are, because they tax you on those too.
In a world without privacy, where the internet knows what you eat for breakfast, who your friends are and what you will want to buy next week, it’s hard to process the incongruity of census takers walking around knocking on doors and asking who’s home. It might have made sense a hundred years ago, but in 2024 what actually is the census? A pet dinosaur? A pantomime intended to create the illusion that there is something the government doesn’t know about you? The envelope arrives at your property, blank and anonymous, as if testifying that nobody knows who you are or where you live. But if you don’t answer it and they decide to fine you, suddenly that problem will cease to exist.
That was the conclusion I eventually came to, after staring at the envelope for a long time and thinking a lot of thoughts. Not answering it, evidently, would fulfil exactly the same purpose as answering it; it would just do it by some kind of magic that I don’t know about.
Supporters of the census will solemnly affirm that the government needs this information so they can plan for increased pressure on the infrastructure and services such as hospitals and schools. How, I don’t know, when the information is a year out of date by the time it’s published and the infrastructure is a lot farther behind than that. Oh, well, I can’t really criticise, when I only got around to taking my census papers to the recycling last week.
