Personal census details protected

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 20

Personal census details protected

Under the Statistics Act the Department of Statistics cannot publish census details of individuals or dwellings, said Mr B. M. Thorne, senior statistician of the Christchurch district office, yesterday.

Mr Thome said the processed statistics were published in a series of volumes after the census and were available to any person or organisation. Mr Thome was commenting on questions raised by a correspondent, Mr V. R. Skellerup, in a letter to the editor of “The Press.” who wrote: “Information given on the census paper is presumed to be confidential to the Statistics Department. In this morning’s paper, in answer to a correspondent, Mr Lewin said it would also be of assistance to transport planners and to Civil Defence authorities.

“No doubt the information in the census paper would also be of use to the City Council for the number of fowls kept per house, building inspectors in respect of amenities and living conditions, and to the tax department in respect of rents.

“Would Mr Lewin state who decides what information will be available to interested bodies or government departments? Also, an envelope should be provided so that the collector cannot read the information contained in the return.”.

In his reply Mr Thome stated: “The correspondent implies that information from individual personal census schedules will be released to organisations such as transport planning and civil defence authorities. This is not so; published information on location of work place will relate only to groups of persons. “The Statistics Department decides, before processing of census schedules, the

extent of tabular information to be produced from aggregated census schedules. "These tabulations of census results are designed to meet general demand from Government and private organisations and the public at large,” said Mr Thome. “Concerning the availability of envelopes. There are directions on the personal census schedule indicating that if additional privacy is desired a person can seal the personal schedule in a plain envelope and, provided the necessary identification is shown on the outside of the envelopes for record-keeping purposes, the occupier, person in charge, or sub-enum-erator, is prohibited from opening the sealed envelope.” The department considered that the use of envelopes for sealing schedules had not, as yet, reached the level which would warrant it leaving envelopes at each dwelling for this purpose. The sub-enumerator (collector) had signed a declaration of secrecy, as had all other persons handling the completed census schedules. They were subject to penalty for any infringements of it, said Mr ’.'home.

Watersiders officers.—Officers elected at the annual general meeting of the Lyttelton Waterside Workers Union, recently were:— president, Mr R. J. Wasley; vicepresident, Mr M. J. Hollander; walking delegate, Mr J. R. Quince; secretary, Mr M. E. Foster; assistant-secre-tary, Mr R. K. Fergus; executive committee, Messrs G. R. Ticehurst, G. Wright, W. C. Thomas, E. L. Taylor, B. P. Ritchie, R. P. Edgeworth.