Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Statistics): Thank you Mr Speaker. I do welcome this urgent debate on the resignation of the Government Statistician and the report of the independent review into New Zealand's 2018 census because I have been saying for much of the last 12 to 18 months that we should be reserving our judgment about whether the census was a failure or to what extent it was a failure until after we had the independent report. I want to thank the reviewers—Murray Jack who is a management consultant based in Auckland and Connie Graziadei who is a former deputy chief statistician for Canada—for their time and their efforts over the course of the last 12 months to produce what I think is a very comprehensive and very good report. I also do want to acknowledge that the Government Statistician has taken accountability for the failings in the census programme and has tendered her resignation. Dr Smith has made a number of points about the failings that were outlined in the report and they were quite extensive. The report refers to failings in the structure of the census leadership team and found that that was overly complex; failings in governance and oversight of the census operation; and failings in the culture which meant that key information wasn't making it up the chain certain risks were being managed without being escalated decisions were made to vary the on-the-ground operation against the business plan without escalating those either to the Government Statistician or to Ministers and so on. As Dr Smith has outlined there were also a number of on-the-ground failings in the operation particularly to do with things like the failure to print enough paper forms changes in the way that the list-leave process worked—or rather didn't work. Stats NZ did fairly early on in the aftermath of census day itself say that they were quite clear from the early indications that they did not make it easy enough for people to participate in the census. So that has essentially been corroborated and borne out by the subsequent report. Dr Smith asks me to take my share of accountability for the census and I do. I specifically asked the independent review panel to look into my role and into the role that previous Ministers made in respect of the census. I'd just like to enumerate the decisions that were made by previous Ministers and myself in relation to the census.The Hon Maurice Williamson between November 2008 and May 2014 was the Minister. In February 2014 Cabinet agreed in principle for a modernised 2018 census. That was kind of the key part of the business case and I'll come back to the use of administrative data which Dr Smith has raised some questions about. The Hon Nicky Wagner was the Minister between May and October of that year 2014. There were two key decisions made on her watch in Budget 2014—that was the Budget for the first year of the census cycle—and there was also the detailed business case that followed on from that in June.The Hon Craig Foss was the Minister between October 2014 and December 2016 and there were three decisions there: Cabinet agreement for the proclamation of census day and obviously the North Canterbury earthquake had an effect including to reduce the scope of and delay the census test. That's not his fault: obviously the circumstances that were outlined in the report talked about the impact that the earthquake had on the ability to do the test. The Hon Mark Mitchell of course was Minister between December 2016 and May 2017. He oversaw the final census test and one of the really disappointing things that I read in the report was that what got tested was not actually what got delivered on the ground. A number of decisions made about the variance to the plan were made on the ground whilst the census programme was being rolled out which was obviously after the census test. So that was obviously disappointing. The Hon Scott Simpson of course made the final content decision.The decisions that I was involved in as Minister started on census day itself and essentially led to what happened afterwards. So as one of the many many commentators on the census pointed out I might not have created this mess but I am responsible for fixing it and I do take responsibility for that Dr Smith.So what I have committed to is that I will make absolutely sure that the recommendations that are outlined in the independent review will be implemented. I will make sure that I work very closely with the incoming chief executive of Stats NZ and the outgoing chief executive of Stats NZ the new Government Statistician to ensure that those lessons are learnt and that the recommendations will be incorporated in the business case for the next census which will take place in 2023—and of course the background work on that business case has already started and that should happen in the first half of next year.So I think that the accountability for what has happened in the census—the Government Statistician herself takes that extremely seriously and has had a number of conversations with me about that since not long after it became apparent that the numbers weren't coming through. And you know some of those initial concerns were being expressed.Now I want to turn to the question of some of the language that's getting used about the census being a failure. This is actually the point in the debate that I really want to take issue with. There were definitely failings in the census—that is absolutely clear—and they were severe and they were particularly severe in terms of the inputs to the census. Dr Smith has enumerated these in some detail—the response rates that were coming through from people on the ground. So what the report makes clear is that the online component of the census actually was going extremely well; it was well above expectations well above what was planned. There was a target of 70 percent online completion. The actual online completion was above 80 percent—somewhere between 80 and 81 percent—but the problem was that Stats NZ over-relied on the online component of the census and actually thought that people who weren't completing it online would eventually kind of get the message and complete it online.But actually what they should have been doing was going door to door and ensuring that people had not just log-in codes to get into the online but actually that they had paper census packs—and they weren't doing that. That is actually at variance with the original plan that was signed off by previous Ministers. So that was one of the key failings of the census.As a result there were very poor response rates particularly as Dr Smith says from Māori and Pasifika communities and that will have an impact on some of data sets that do come out of the census when they start getting released in September December and then early next year. However there is a difference between saying that there was a failure in the data gathering in the form of response rates and saying that the census as a whole is a failure. And this is a very important distinction and it's one where the Opposition are continually conflating one with the other—that because the response rates were poor the output is equally poor. That is because the remediation work that the census team have done since people were responding—that phase was closed. The remediation work has been outstanding and in this the report says actually that the lessons learnt here are so good that not only should we continue to be using administrative data to supplement the response rates but it looks like that work is so good that not only should it be used here in New Zealand but actually there will be lessons learnt for other countries around the world as well—and that those techniques should be looked at for other countries. In fact other countries are already using administrative data to supplement their response rates.And I want to highlight this point as well—but actually I'll just say this before I move on to the use of administrative data. The response rate is different from the coverage rate; the coverage rate is how many New Zealanders actually got counted in the census and on this this census has greater coverage than any other—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Spin—spinning out of control.Hon JAMES SHAW: It is not spin Dr Smith. It is not spin; it is in the independent report. In addition to this independent report by these two reviewers there is also an independent data-quality review panel with data experts from all over New Zealand and from the UK census office who are verifying the methodology that has been used to create the output. And if you keep saying that the use of administrative data to supplement this is shonky well that is a lie; it is incorrect to say so.And so what we've actually got is a greater coverage rate than we have had before and that is because other parts of Government have got real data about real people from a variety of sources including things like ACC records district health board (DHB) records education births deaths and marriages and so on and so forth. They have supplemented that in an incredibly rigorous way to make sure that we are actually counting all New Zealanders or as many as possible. Therefore because of that what that means is that for the key uses of the census—that is things like the setting of electoral boundaries deprivation indices DHB funding—the very things that Dr Smith was highlighting at the start of his speech about how important the census is for those most important censuses that Statistics NZ have advised and the independent review here has corroborated is fit for purpose and will meet its statutory requirements. New Zealanders need to know that because no amount of spin from the Opposition will actually undermine that.Fundamentally the census will likely achieve the statutory requirements and the quality of the data for the most important purposes will still be available for use. And Dr Smith can dispute that and they can take the Electoral Commission to court to try and overturn the results and they will lose—they will lose—because they will be up against not just Statistics NZ statisticians but independent academic statisticians from all over New Zealand from Canada from the United Kingdom who have taken a look at their methodology and said it is sound—it is sound. And so I would like Dr Smith to maybe just hold fire until the actual census data comes out. The population counts will be out in September there'll be subsequent information out in December and then in the following years. His own leader I have to say—when Dr Smith talks about the need for openness and transparency—has said that one person's fact is another person's misinformation. That is why they're trying to undermine the public's faith in the census because they want an environment in which no one trusts any of the data or any of the information. Don't trust Stats New Zealand. Don't trust any sort of independent review. Don't trust independent experts." so that they can therefore project all of their howling demons into that void and say "Well trust us. We know what we're doing because we used to be Crown prosecutors in Tauranga and our information's way better than all of the academics and all of the experts and all of the independent agencies that we've got here in New Zealand or around the world."Stats New Zealand are using international standards. They're using some of the best practice to remediate the census and it's working. Not only that the business case that that Government signed off on in 2014 called for the use of administrative data. In fact there was advice from Treasury at the time that they didn't even need a census—they didn't even need to go door to door—because the administrative data should be good enough. So that Government signed off on a long-term census transformation plan that called for ultimately three or four censuses down the road the idea that you might not even use a census at all because the Government administrative data would be so good you wouldn't be able to use it. What we could say about the census is that we've actually started to create the future that they were designing as a result unfortunately of the circumstances that we found ourselves in because of the decisions that they had made.So Dr Smith is I think playing fast and loose with the key findings of this report. I have committed that I will ensure that I work with the incoming leadership of Stats New Zealand in the transition to ensure that the lessons will be learnt not just within the census operation but right across the organisation and that we will be looking at leadership and governance and structure and culture and the other recommendations and that we'll be applying those lessons for the whole agency.I do want to say that the Government Statistician has done everything that was asked of her by Peter Hughes the State Services Commissioner who said that he wants his chief executives when there is a problem to own it to fix it to learn from it and to take accountability for it and she has done that. I think that she can hold her head up high for having done that and that the remediation work that she is leaving is in good hands."