There are concerns scrapping the traditional census won't deliver the desired results.
Stats NZ is moving to a system using Government collected admin-data, saying the current five yearly Census is financially unsustainable.
Census-style questions will still be asked in much smaller annual surveys looking at a small fraction of the population.
Former national statistician Len Cook told Mike Hosking data-wise, this won't cut it.
He says admin-data comes from about a dozen different sources, none of them complete.
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