Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I note you closed the debate on the earlier part because you said that there was too much discussion about yourself. I'd like to point out for the committee that statistically there was very little debate about you but I guess we all recall some things more than others—selectively. I just want to ask the Minister about clause 15 and for that matter 19. These are clauses that say that principles of engagement by the Statistician with Māori must begin early and be meaningful" for example and I wonder why that's there. Statistics New Zealand funnily enough has categorised people into a series of ethnic groups: European New Zealanders Māori Pacific Asian New Zealanders and also MELAA—Middle East Latin American and African which I've always found an odd statistical grouping. It seems strange that throughout this Act including in Parts 1 and 2—although we weren't able to debate it—the Data and Statistics Bill repeatedly emphasises that Statistics New Zealand and the Statistician must engage in special ways with Māori which turn out not to actually be that special: "must begin early and be meaningful". Well I would have thought that the objective of Statistics New Zealand would be to engage with all New Zealanders early and meaningfully. I just wonder if the Minister could explain why for example he hasn't said that Statistics New Zealand or the chief statistician should engage early and meaningfully with Asian New Zealanders. The Minister I'm sure will be aware that Statistics New Zealand is the one Government department which has Asian New Zealanders as the largest ethnic group employed according to the Public Service website. I'm not entirely surprised. If you look at the academic results Asian New Zealanders have been doing very well in maths and stats for a long time. But you know it's clearly a group that is engaged with the subject that cares about it and actually I wonder why we aren't including Asian New Zealanders as a group of people that should be engaged with. Over the weekend I had the pleasure of watching the film Whina. I highly recommend it. One part of the film depicts Dame Whina Cooper leading the Māori Women's Welfare League to do their own census of how Māori were living in Auckland after urbanisation in the 1960s. Because Statistics New Zealand didn't seem to care enough to collect—in fact they were mainly using administrative data and the whole problem was that Māori not being engaged with public services weren't part of the administrative data. So they did a survey from outside the State sector by the Māori Women's Welfare League. I also note that during our country's vaccination roll-out during COVID-19 we failed to reach a lot of people because we use healthcare administrative data rather than Statistics New Zealand data to identify the population to vaccinate. There were some people who had been caught by Statistics New Zealand but not the healthcare system. I make these points because while it was critical that engagement with Māori was improved in order that we didn't miss things—like things had been missed that Whina Cooper uncovered with her census. Today as someone who's been responsible for charter schools for example there's a lot of people in the Pacific community that could probably do with better engagement by Statistics New Zealand. There's a lot of people in the Pacific community deeply disadvantaged. There's a lot of Asian New Zealanders who have different needs culturally. There are European New Zealanders who are having a rough time of things. And of course there are Middle Eastern Latin American and African New Zealanders if we're going to use that slightly odd Statistics New Zealand categorisation of humans by ethnic groups. So Mr Speaker Madam Chair Mr Chair—see you're not that important! I want the Minister to stand up and explain why he has clauses such as 15 that say that the Statistician should have early and meaningful engagement with Māori; why that's needed: is he saying that he doesn't want to engage meaningfully and early with every other ethnic group? If he does why doesn't he put those in? And if he's going to start listing every category of human by ethnicity why don't we just say to hell with it take it out and just say we're going to engage meaningfully and early with all New Zealanders?"