West Island census under threat?

From the Sydney Morning Herald

Asked directly whether the 2016 census would go ahead as planned on August 9, a spokeswoman for the parliamentary secretary to the treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer read from a prepared statement.

It said: “The government and the Bureau of Statistics are consulting with a wide range of stakeholders about the best methods to deliver high quality, accurate and timely information on the social and economic condition of Australian households.”

Asked whether that was an answer to the question: “Will the census go ahead next year?” the spokeswoman replied that it was.

Unlike Canada, it’s suggested they would at least save money in the short term. It’s the longer-term consequences of reduced information quality that are a concern — not just directly for Census questions, but for all surveys that use Census data to compensate for sampling bias. How bad this would be depends on what is used to replace the Census: if it’s a reasonably large mandatory-response survey (as in the USA), it could work well. If it’s primarily administrative data, probably not so much.

In New Zealand, the current view is that we do still need a census.

Key findings are that existing administrative data sources cannot at present act as a replacement for the current census, but that early results have been sufficiently promising that it is worth continuing investigations.