Why I cannot complete the census

I'm going to not fill in the New Zealand census today, because I cannot do so honestly. By including a question that assumes a radical political-religious conception of gender, and by removing the ability to object or refuse to answer the question, Stats NZ has created a census that is invalid for me.

In the famously repeated words of NZ's single source of truth, "I completely reject the premise of that question".

Yes, it is an offence to not complete the census. But it is also an offence to supply false or incomplete information. So I am duty bound to commit an offence, one way or the other.

This unprecedented stupidity applies to anyone who doesn't accept an ideology that didn't even exist until innovative child-mutilator and paedophile John Money invented it in 1955.

Interestingly he went to the same High School and University as I did. New Zealand academia, healthcare and Government continues to be at the forefront of genital mutilation and promoting sexual perversion.

Everyone is free to object to the census question about religion. But the one religion no-one is allowed to object to, is the woke sexual religion. The religion that rejects truth itself, saying you are whatever you choose to identify as.

Except traditional of course. No-one can identify with traditional beliefs about sex. That would be heresy (or rather, in modern parlance: bigotry).

 

Privacy concerns

Another factor undermining the census is privacy. In theory Stats NZ uses a good system of data privacy, but in practice an OIA request showed 24 breaches of the rules in a three year period. Stats NZ said these were insignificant and not considered privacy breaches, but the details indicate otherwise, and the lack of accountability is concerning.

Geoff Palmer points out that Stats NZ's census website itself uses Google tracking. No Government website should give Kiwis' data to foreign companies, and the census is one of the very last websites that should use third-party scripts, let alone ones with no domestic accountability. [Palmer also explains how to avoid the tracking using the NoScript browser add-on.]

 

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In 2018, one in seven Kiwis didn't fill out their census: ~670,000 people. I don't know that any of them were indicted. Despite the efforts of Stats NZ to increase participation, I believe this year will see many more refuseniks. Journalist Martyn Bradbury agrees; he also talks about how the political bias and racial targeting further reduces its validity.

The next best reason people aren't completing the census

Parliament made it abundantly clear that a similar number of people had no political representation at all during Covid vaccine mandates in 2021 and 2022. Add a million that number to include citizens trapped overseas.

Those who refused to take an experimental drug had most of their basic rights removed. Some were made jobless and homeless, then were beaten and arrested for camping in the most common of commons. Covid policy effectively revoked their right to live, and they only found shelter thanks to generous people who refused to comply with the rules. That's why there was no chance in hell of the Parliament grounds occupation ending without either Government capitulation or police violence.

 

That anyone thought otherwise is proof of just how effective the propaganda was, how dominated by fear so many people were, and thus how unwilling they were to consider the other side of the story. This attitude will destroy everything if it continues. Public servants like Stats NZ are not going to wake up and realise this by themselves because they are part of it.

Rights and duties are two sides of the same coin. Some say the removal of rights entails the removal of duties, a la "no taxation without representation". This is largely true, albeit oversimplified. I don't think it's enough to justify not completing the census now that most of the mandates have been dropped.

But it doesn't matter what I think. The fact is, the trust many people had in our Government has been shattered. This includes trust in the Parliament who treated peaceful protesters as criminals – including the gutless "Opposition". It includes police, the justice system, public servants, and public institutions. The loss of trust is inevitably reflected in a reduction in cooperation.

Trust can only ever be earned. These institutions showed that in crucial ways they do not deserve trust because they do not respect the people they serve. They have forgotten our history and have rejected democracy and rights.

The current Government continues to show this by pushing secretly anti-democratic agendas such as He Puapua. By explicitly undermining local government in their Three Waters reform. By enabling supposedly neutral public servants to push radical political agendas and refusing to enforce rules or laws when that runs counter to their ideology. By attempting to control the narrative and censoring public discussion instead of engaging with it.

They don't care that over 43% of Kiwis do not agree that their Covid response was “well-judged and appropriate”. Rather they launched the most bad-faith Royal Commission of Inquiry in NZ history. A whitewash that’s explicitly refusing to investigate almost all the questions the critics want answered, run by people the Opposition had no input in choosing, chaired by one of the most vocal proponents of those harsh measures now widely considered inappropriate.

Media keeps talking about the evident loss of public trust and increase in division. Yet keeps stoking it by publishing hit pieces as factual articles, denying the right of reply, and refusing to cover the other side of the most controversial events and issues. Thus demonstrating the fundamental conflict of interest that comes with government funding.

No-one can earn trust without vulnerability. So long as authorities value covering their arses more than earning trust – so long as they believe power is by force rather than by consent – they will continue to double down on secrecy, character assassination, and policing in an attempt to prevent alternative viewpoints. This authoritarianism further undermines trust, requiring even more force and control, in an ever-downward spiral.

That is why they call on the public to report their friends and family for opposing ‘Covid measures the Government took’ or ‘other policies that are interpreted as infringing on rights’. That's right, under this Government anyone who is concerned with abuse of power is worthy of suspicion as a potentially dangerous extremist.

That is why they must increase police surveillance, even as police admit they’ve been illegally recording citizens. They must continue to censor disagreement and deplatform opposition ‘in the way one uses a rolled up newspaper to nudge a wayward canine along’. That is why political party leaders must not allow a single dissenting voice within their parties.

The establishment is doomed to escalation for as long as it attempts to deny diversity of thought and refuses to listen to large swaths of the population.

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I don't believe in rebelliousness or tilting at windmills. I'm one of a great many people working to fix things by creating genuine alternatives: more trustworthy organisations. It will take many years – longer than my lifetime.

Revolutions don't work. Reformations do.