Yang JianDr JIAN YANG (National): Mr Chair thank you very much. Now I talked about Census 2018 in the general debate but now I want to focus on the costs the funding and the budget for Census 2018. Look at this committee report about Statistics New Zealand—two and a half pages but one and a half pages are about Census 2018. Why? Because the census has always been the most important job for Statistics New Zealand and Census 2018—last financial year it was the census year. So that's why the census should be the key job for Statistics New Zealand and they botched Census 2018; it became a disaster for the Government.Now how did Statistics New Zealand perform in terms of conducting Census 2018? As I said it was a complete failure a shambles a disaster. The response rate—as I repeatedly argued—officially was 90 percent but it includes the 5 percent partial response rate. In the past in previous censuses this 5 percent would be considered non-responses but they changed the definition this time to make the response look better. So the reality is 85 percent responded; 15 percent of New Zealanders did not submit their individual forms—10 percent of them did not do any census form at all. So this is what we had for Census 2018. Then the Government has not accepted any responsibility. They blamed the previous National Government first of all saying This decision was made by the previous National Government." implying that the decision might have been the wrong decision. But the decision was made after a thorough study and internationally countries are moving towards online censuses—we call it modernised census—and these countries are doing very well. In 2016 Australia did a census mainly online—94.8 percent response rate. Canada—same year 2016—98.4 percent response rate. New Zealand: 85 percent actually if we look at this.So the decision was made in the broad context—and it was the right decision—but then the Government is arguing "Census 2018 was underfunded because on the one hand the Government wanted to move the census online and on the other hand it tried to cut the spending by 5 percent over two census cycles." That is not true—that is not true. The previous National Government was anticipating the modernised census would be cost-effective and therefore generate savings. The 2014 Cabinet paper says "The modernised census model is estimated to produce savings (compared to 2013 costs) of at least five percent over the 2018 and 2023 census cycles". Its cost is the savings; they are not saying cut the costs. So this is why we say that to accuse the previous Government of underfunding is absolutely wrong. The fact is that the 2018 Census had a budget of $113 million—and it increased to $117 million. Compared with the 2013 census $72 million—that's a 63 percent increase. At the end of the day Stats New Zealand did not spend all the money. They underspent the census budget by $758000 in a census yearKanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much? Dr JIAN YANG: —$758000 they didn't spend—they could not spend. So there's no reason to believe or to argue that Census 2018 was underfunded. The Government should face up to the challenge face up to the failure and try to acknowledge their responsibility."