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Stats NZ
ACT Party spokesperson Damien Smith noted Stats NZ could not be sure how successful the incentives had been.
More than $1 million was spent on incentives to persuade people to complete the Census, according to Statistics Minister Deborah Russell.
The incentives comprised supermarket, petrol and movie vouchers that were provided to just under 12,000 people at a cost of $934,130, and Warriors tickets and vouchers offered to thousands more at a cost of $96,040.
The incentives, which ACT Party statistics spokesperson Damien Smith labelled “bribes”, may have helped Stats NZ just achieve the Government’s target of garnering census responses from at least 90% of people.
But that won’t be known for sure until Stats NZ completes its tally next year, and there appears a risk that the push to get the census over the line may have come at the cost of reducing participation in any future census.
READ MORE:
* Stats NZ boss explains why this year’s census survey could be the last
* Census closes with ‘raw’ response rate just short of 90% target
* Inside Stats NZ’s gaping money hole
Some people who missed out on the vouchers and tickets have insisted on social media that they would not take part in the census again, unless they were offered similar incentives.
That may be a moot point.
STUFF
Stats NZ chief executive Mark Sowden believes the census will have to change.
Stats NZ chief executive Mark Sowden said earlier this month that he believed Stats NZ should consider alternatives ways of gathering census data in future that might not involve it going out to all households, potentially signalling an end to the census as we currently know it.
“That model of sending people out to knock on people’s doors and asking them to fill in forms when they know that we’ve got a lot of that information I think has past its date,” he said.
The 2023 Census is currently expected to cost $320m in total, but Sowden said that bill would rise if Stats NZ attempted a similar exercise again and one question was whether that would be the best use of its resources.
Stats NZ has faced growing calls to improve the timeliness and usefulness of other statistics collects, in particular to assist with the consideration of monetary policy.
The Reserve Bank and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand have said it would be useful if Stats NZ updated the consumer price index each month, rather than each quarter, but Stats NZ has said it is not currently funded to do that.
Reserve Bank deputy governor Christian Hawkesby has also queried the current reliability of Stats NZ’s migration data in informing monetary policy, saying the bank sometimes chooses instead to make it own estimates.
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