CENSUS AND STATISTICS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 2, 2 July 1926, Page 9

CENSUS AND STATISTICS

MAKING LAW MORE WORKABLE.

Further enactments in regard to the census and statistics of the Dominion are proposed in a Bill introduced in the House of Representatives yesterday, and read a first time. One of the clauses in the Bill gives the right of entry to the Statistician or his officers to any factory, mine, workshop, or other place of employment, for the purpose of inspection, at any time during working hours. The right of objection to furnishing information is conceded to those who do not wish to state their religion. _ If a local body refuses -to supply statistical information upon request being made, any subsidy or other amount due that would otherwise be payable from the Consolidated Fund may be withheld. A penalty of £50 is proposed in connection with mutilation or defacement of schedules; also in respect to indecent, obscene, blasphemous, or insulting remarks* or drawings filled in on schedules used under the Act. A lengthy list is embodied in the Bill of subjects upon which the. Government Statistician may call for statistical information. These include social and educational matters, land tenure, occupation, and condition of land, primary and secondary production, wages, hours, and conditions of labour, industrial disturbances, whole and retail prices, stocks of manufactured and unmanufactured goods, transport, banking and finance, transfers of land, mortgages registered and discharged, insurances, etrt. The Minister, of Internal Affairs (the Hon. E. F. Bollard) stated that the Bill was designed to make the law in regard to statistics more workable.