Census forms found at marae in 2024
Thursday, 20 February 2025
Dozens of completed census forms were discovered at Manurewa Marae a year after the census closed, a report into the handling of data has revealed.
That was despite a Stats NZ staffer raising concerns after finding boxes of forms at the marae in the weeks following the national survey. The agency never followed up.
Two damning inquiries into the alleged misuse of census and Covid-19 vaccination information were released on Tuesday, and found a raft of poor data-handling processes by government agencies.
The reports were spurred by allegations reported by The Post and Sunday Star-Times in June last year.
One of the reports, detailing an investigation by former state services deputy commissioner Doug Craig, reveals a whistleblower obtained 33 completed original paper census dwelling forms and 39 original individual forms from a marae employee.
The employee was said to have found the forms “as part of a large volume of completed forms stored at Manurewa Marae in May or June 2024”.
The census closed at the end of June 2023.
Craig said an analysis of the forms showed they were “from locations consistent with areas potentially collected from by Manurewa Marae kaimahi [staff]”.
He went on: “While there is insufficient evidence to be definitive about the level of retention of census forms by Manurewa Marae, we think it is more likely than not that, at least to some extent (and particularly for forms collected after 19 June 2023), Census forms were retained beyond what was allowable under Stats NZ policy.”
Paper census forms are supposed to be sealed in front of the individual and placed immediately in the nearest post box.
But after June 19, Stats NZ would only accept online completions. So marae staff began collecting hard copies and entering the information via the Government’s online census link.
The marae said they were then placed in a secure destruction bin.
Craig said this “demonstrates that for at least this phase of collection, Manurewa Marae kaimahi did not seal census forms in front of the individuals who completed them and instead returned the forms unsealed to the marae and double-handled them by entering the confidential information into the Census link”.
“This was contrary to Stats NZ policies.”
The marae was sub-contracted by the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency. WOCA said it did not know this was happening and did not comply with its training instructions, which stated, ‘you cannot fill out a form online for whānau’.
Whistleblowers also told the inquiry “they observed open census forms being stored insecurely for many weeks”.
A Stats NZ staff member also raised concerns after finding boxes of completed forms at the marae after the census closed.
Craig said this was noted in a meeting with the then regional manager community engagement for Census and the Stats NZ privacy officer on July 6, 2023 and raised with Māori census director Atawhai Tibble the following day.
The agency did raise the issue with WOCA, who said they would send out instructions to destroy forms.
But Craig said: “There appears to have been no further follow up by Stats NZ in relation to this significant report of concern about the boxes of completed Census forms.”
Stats NZ's acting chief executive and government statistician Mark Sowden will stand down next month.
The Privacy Commissioner, police and Serious Fraud Office are carrying out further investigations into whether Census and Covid-19 vaccination data shared with Manurewa Marae was misused for election purposes.
The marae’s chief executive was Takutai Tarsh Kemp, now Te Pāti Māori’s Tāmaki Makaurau MP. WOCA is headed by the party’s president John Tamihere.
“Was any census data used by Whānau o Waipareira or the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency in regard to the 2023 general election? And the answer is no,” he said on Wednesday.