Census change — can we make it work for us?

The government is scrapping the five-yearly nationwide census, replacing it with administrative data from government agencies and targeted annual surveys.

Here’s Professor Tahu Kukutai on what that means for Māori.

 

The government’s recent announcement that it will ditch the census and make greater use of government data through an “admin data first” approach has been met with a largely negative reaction.

The concerns range from a lack of transparency and threats to data sovereignty, to increased data gaps and poorer data quality for Māori.

However, for many Māori, the demise of the census may register low on the list of priorities, amid a cost-of-living crisis and rising anti-Māori sentiment. Those who find it hōhā to fill out the census every five years may even be glad to see the back of it.

It begs the question: Should we even care?

The answer, perhaps, lies in understanding both the history of the census and its modern-day usages.

The census has long been a tool used by those in power to count, classify and govern the masses. The word “census” derives from the Latin word “censere” meaning to tax or assess. The census certainly came in handy for Chinese, Egyptian and Roman rulers who used it to help extract resources from the population through taxation, labour and military conscription.

Unsurprisingly, colonial censuses were fraught for Indigenous peoples. In Aotearoa, the census enabled the colonial government to surveil and document the number, location and characteristics of iwi and hapū. Initially, Māori censuses focused on counting people, but later expanded to include stock and cultivations.

Official reports show many instances of Māori refusing to provide information. Many iwi viewed census-taking with suspicion, perceiving it to be linked with taxation or conscription. Resistance was especially marked among hapū strongly affiliated with the Kīngitanga.

By the turn of the 20th century, the government’s motivation to count iwi had receded. Iwi were no longer perceived to be a threat with the bulk of their lands confiscated, stolen or sold.

With iwi out of the way, the bogus concept of blood quantum became the dominant way of counting and classifying Māori. Those deemed to be “more than half Māori” were counted with the Māori population, while those classified as “less than half Māori” were counted with the European population. Those recorded as exactly “half Māori” were allocated to one or the other population depending on whether they followed a Māori or European lifestyle!

This dubious distinction proved unworkable and was abandoned by 1926. Nevertheless, Māori continued to be classified by degree of blood up until the 1981 census, long after it had been stopped in other countries, including the racially segregated United States. One does not have to look far to see how the colonial fantasy of blood quantum continues to shape popular (and racist) notions about Māori identity today.

In more recent decades, the census has come to be seen as a tool of empowerment for Māori rather than one of oppression.

Census data is used for many purposes. It sets the benchmark for national, sub-national and ethnic population estimates, informs decisions about planning and resource allocation, and provides insights into whether life is getting better or worse. It is also of constitutional importance, being part of the statutory formula used to determine the number and boundaries of general and Māori electorates.

Census data is also of economic value. A 2019 report estimated that the net benefit of the census to Māori was around $500 million, with the main benefits coming from the use of ethnicity data to allocate government funding and services. The benefits outweighed the census costs at a ratio of eight to one. Even with the budget blowouts of the 2018 and 2023 censuses, the benefit to Māori far exceeded the cost.

All of this is to say that the census is about so much more than counting people. It is fundamentally about making people count.

Given this, it’s important to understand the implications of replacing the census with administrative data from health, education, tax and birth registrations, as well as targeted surveys. There is no doubt that the “admin data first” approach comes with major challenges. In terms of data quality and data gaps, the most affected communities will be the very ones that need good data to identify, rectify and monitor inequities.

Iwi will be particularly hard hit. Without the census, the quality of iwi affiliation data will rapidly degrade. Stats NZ knows this because they don’t have access to any other reliable population-wide iwi data source besides the census.

This became apparent in the 2018 census when Stats NZ missed nearly a third of the Māori population and had to backfill the census dataset. There was very little usable iwi data in other government datasets, so most of the missing iwi data for individuals had to be pulled from the old 2013 census. Without a future census to keep replenishing iwi data, it will quickly become outdated.

The solution does not lie in getting government agencies to collect even more iwi data. Frankly, they’ve done a poor job to date and, in the current political environment, would iwi even want the government collecting more data about them? Investing in iwi-led data systems is a more strategic and practical response.

The Data Iwi Leaders Group and its operational arm, Te Kāhui Raraunga, have already laid the foundations for a future-focused iwi data system with a suite of initiatives. These include the successful 2023 Census iwi data collection pilot, the iwi data platform Te Whata, and the sovereign iwi data storage platform Te Pā Tūwatawata.

It makes sense that iwi should be the ones to define who they are, not government agencies. Most iwi already define their own populations through iwi registers based on whakapapa. For many Māori, whakapapa is a more culturally valid way of defining belonging than self-identification in a government-controlled context.

Investment in iwi-led data systems will not only improve data quality but also go some way to solving data sovereignty issues and building trust.

Trust is a valuable currency in a post-Covid context. Stats NZ says it has the “social licence” to link and reuse individuals’ information without the need for informed consent. But independent research commissioned by Stats NZ shows that only about a quarter of those surveyed knew the organisation well. If most Māori, or indeed most New Zealanders, aren’t familiar with Stats NZ, how can they trust them to use their data for good?

Some commentators have pointed to other countries that have ditched the census and said, if they can do it, why can’t we? But that’s like comparing apples and oranges.

The Netherlands, for example, uses admin data to produce a virtual census at just a fraction of the cost of a traditional census. However, to do so, Statistics Netherlands is able to draw data from high-quality municipal records, which have no equivalent here. The Dutch public also has a clear understanding of how their data is used, and their government doesn’t collect ethnicity data.

None of those conditions apply in Aotearoa, where Te Tiriti o Waitangi and ethnicity remain critical to public policy, even if some political parties would wish it otherwise.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that, unlike those 19^th-century tūpuna who resisted census taking, there is no meaningful opportunity to say “kao” when data is continuously collected from our daily interactions with government agencies. Such data will continue to be collected and reused for purposes that we may not consent to or agree with. Artificial Intelligence will shape official statistics in ways that are difficult to predict, but which will continue to raise challenges for ethics and governance.

If we don’t start caring about these issues now, we risk having a system that is imposed on us, rather than one that works for us.

Implementing Māori data governance across the public sector will go some way toward ensuring transparency and accountability over how Māori data is accessed, used and shared. That, coupled with iwi-controlled iwi data, could move us toward a system that is more trustworthy and beneficial for Māori than the one currently being proposed.

 

Tahu Kukutai (Ngāti Tiipa, Ngāti Mahanga, Ngāti Kinohaku and Te Aupōuri) is Professor of Demography at Te Ngira: Institute for Population Research, University of Waikato, and the co-director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Centre of Research Excellence. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2022 and is a Life Member of the Population Association of New Zealand. Tahu is also a founding member of Te Mana Raraunga Māori Data Sovereignty Network and has undertaken work for Te Kāhui Raraunga and the Data Iwi Leaders Group.

E-Tangata, 2025