Top academic says small towns, regions risk being ‘overlooked’ after Census scrapped

Friday, 27 June 2025

Residents in regional towns like Pātea, picutred here, are at risk of not being counted under the new regime to replace the five-yearly Census, according to a top academic. (File photo)

A top academic says smaller communities and regional towns are at risk of losing out in the wake of sweeping changes which have resulted in the national Census being scrapped.

This month, Statistics Minister Dr Shane Reti announced plans to replace the five-yearly nationwide Census with a targeted annual survey, as part of a drive to save money and time.

The survey results will be combined with administrative data held by government agencies, including tax information, educational enrolments and health data.

Reti said reliance on the nationwide census was “no longer financially viable”.

Statistics Minister Shane Reti recently announced the five-yearly Census will be scrapped and replaced by an annual survey. (File photo)

In 2013, $104 million was spent on the Census but 10 years later, costs had ballooned out to $325m. The 2028 Census, if it had gone ahead, was on track to cost $400m.

“This approach will save time and money while delivering more timely insights into New Zealand’s population,” Reti said.

But Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley, one of the country’s top academics, was “really nervous” about what the move would mean for future decision-making.

“We’re on the cusp of losing the most important data collection system New Zealand has.”

And he signalled regional New Zealand could be affected significantly by the changes.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley says the reach the Census had in New Zealand was unrivalled and he was “nervous” about what the new changes will mean for the country. (File photo)

“I really think that one of the impacts of this will be that smaller, and regional, communities will be largely overlooked.”

Spoonley said the reach the Census had in New Zealand was unrivalled, due to the way it was delivered to households across the country, and how it asked the same set of questions of everyone.

“The new system will struggle to provide enough detail about specific communities, including Māori and small, rural and regional areas.”

Spoonley’s concerns echo those shared by others over the end of the Census, including that it would make the issue of under-counting of Māori and Pasifika communities worse as well as impact on government spending decisions.

The Census worker and their satchel is no more, following sweeping changes announced by the Government. (File photo)

Information collected from the Census is used to determine where government money is spent on basic services and infrastructure, as well as where electorates and their boundaries should be.

“Data is essential to make good, equitable decisions,” Spoonley said.

However, he believed the use of administrative data to supplement the information gleaned from the annual survey, which will be in place by 2030, was not going to be “robust” enough or reliable.

He said government departments in New Zealand were “not good” at data collection or management and there was a “huge assumption” being made they were collecting useful data to begin with.

Spoonley’s recent experience working for the Police Commissioner on a data quality project highlighted this view.

He said while some of the information police collected was “really good”, it was inconsistent in other important areas, such as details around ethnicity and iwi and hapū affiliations.

Spoonley believed it would be “inevitable” that local councils and organisations, like iwi groups, would end up doing their own data collection, independent of the government, to make up for the information shortfall.