Census shake-up raises fears disabled people will slip through data gaps
Tuesday, 6 January 2026
A disability advocate is warning that when Aotearoa scraps the census, disabled New Zealanders risk slipping “between the cracks”.
But Statistics New Zealand says it is confident people who need to be counted still will be.
The Government has decided the five-yearly census is “no longer financially viable” and from 2030 it will be replaced with a mix of administrative data from government agencies and smaller annual surveys completed by a sample of the population.
Disability advocate Nick Ruane says that approach leaves disabled people vulnerable, because disability data held by government is incomplete, inconsistent and full of “black holes”.
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That matters because major funding decisions - particularly in health and social services - are driven by population counts, and Treasury uses official headcounts of groups such as Māori and Pacific peoples to justify targeted spending.
Ruane, also a Labour member, fears that without an accurate, official count of disabled people, it becomes much harder to argue for disability funding.
“If you don’t have an accurate headcount for your population, it becomes very difficult to make an argument to Treasury that we need to drive funding into outcomes for that population group,” he said.
Statistics New Zealand itself has previously flagged similar concerns.
In a Cabinet paper prepared while officials were considering options to modernise the census, Stats NZ warned there were “critical data gaps” where administrative data was not of “sufficient quality” for smaller population groups - including disabled communities, Māori and Pacific peoples.
Addressing those gaps would require “support and collective responsibility from across government”, officials said.
However, the census also has significant shortcomings.
In a briefing, officials said the current approach no longer delivered data at the frequency people and organisations needed and was no longer financially sustainable.
“It relies on a large survey (where every person in New Zealand receives a form to complete) every five years,” the briefing said.
“Like many other countries in the world, there is growing resistance to completing census forms and rising costs to maintain survey data quality.”
As a result, officials said, the existing census model actually puts the quality of some data at risk - particularly for smaller populations including Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people and rural communities.
“Treaty partners, Pacific and disabled communities have called for new and different types of population data, better data governance, and new approaches to data collection to address unmet needs and values,” the briefing said.
“While the census and social surveys provide vital information for many communities, they often fail to meet all information needs, and data quality is inequitable across different groups.”
Stats NZ general manager of statistical delivery Sean Broughton said he was confident the agency would “continue to produce good quality data and statistics about New Zealand’s disability communities” under the new model.
The main way Stats NZ currently estimates how many people in Aotearoa are disabled is through the Household Disability Survey, which runs every 10 years.
One option under consideration is whether that survey should be run more frequently.
“Now that we’ve got this new census model and we’re looking at what it means for our broader population and social statistics system, we’re starting to think about what the future of the Household Disability Survey is, and what frequency it needs to be on,” Broughton said.
He said other major surveys — including the Household Labour Force Survey, the General Social Survey and the New Zealand Health Survey — also collected the Washington Group Short Set, a set of six internationally standardised questions used to identify disability.
The current public consultation on the new census model was an opportunity to understand what disabled communities, policymakers and advocates actually needed from the data, Broughton said.
“We’re trying to understand what decision-makers or policy folks want to know about disabled people, or what those communities want to know about themselves, to help with advocacy, decision-making and policy development.”
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