Abstract

The indigenous Māori population constituted almost twenty per cent of New Zealand's population in the last Census in 2023. With a few interruptions for war or natural disasters, New Zealand has had a regular 5 yearly Census of Population and Dwellings since 1881. The Census has a key role in shaping the opportunities for self-determination and advancement of the indigenous Māori population. It provides information about and for the Māori population, provides information essential for the redress process for settling Treaty of Waitangi claims against the government and is a central information source for the determination of the number and shape of the Māori-specific electorates within New Zealand's political representation system.
How the Māori population is enumerated, the involvement of Māori in that process and the accessibility Census data for Māori has changed markedly since 1991. The most recent two decades have seen different approaches for engagement, an incremental decline in participation and the increased use of data linkage to improve the quality of Census population counts. The emergence of a strong Māori data sovereignty movement and a mandated tribal nation (iwi) Māori data advocacy organisation have generated pressure on Stats NZ to improve the quality of and access to Māori data from the Census. This resulted in some changes such as a Māori data access portal and pilot projects for Māori community-led Census data collection in 2023. However, these improvements were overshadowed by the 2025 government decision to replace a full enumerated population Census with a combination of routinely linked administrative data and a smaller annual household survey. This decision went against strong advocacy from Maori governance bodies, legal and statistical expertise and Maori community organisations. This approach would also remove the legislatively-required source of the Māori population count for the electoral process when there was no other quality source available. This decision for change has yet to gain parliamentary approval and may not do so. The potential impact of the Census change on the Maori population and the promotion of the change by government against the expressed wishes of Maori during the consultation process has likely resulted in a loss of trust in the national statistics office and its ability to meet Māori data needs. The pressures to change Census practice, the value of quality data to Māori self-determination and the successes of the Māori community-driven census pilots have given rise to alternative models of Census data collection and storage which align with indigenous data sovereignty and governance principles.