June 12, 2023
Attack on gang census structural racism
An advocate for marginalised communities says the National Party’s attack on StatsNZ for its outreach to gang members is structural racism in action.
The agency funded four hui at a cost of just over $9000 at which 364 whānau filled out their forms.
Black Power life member Denis O’Reilly says it was money well spent.
He says while people in the rich suburbs are lining up to hand over their census forms because they know how the data is used to allocate resources, whanau Maori lose out.
“Our people don’t know how it rolls. They’re suspicious of government and they don’t realise participation in the census menas their kids and grandkids and great grandkids get services because all this rolls out a decade down the track,” he says.
Mr O’Reilly says Stats NZ is so out of touch with Maori it appeared to be happy with a 70 percent participaton rate until the pressure came on it to put in extra resources.
Stats NZ says mainstream census advertising has finished, but there will be a few final targeted census support events before the June 30 cut off date at which Stats NZ community engagement teams will help people complete their census forms.
Auckland parters the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency and the South Seas Healthcare Trust are continuing to work on increasing Māori and Pasifika completion rates.
South Seas Healthcare is running a telethon event from today until Monday encouraging community groups – from churches to school and sport clubs and wider community groups – to get their networks of families and friends along to the Due Drops Event Centre in Manukau City to complete their census forms.