LGBTI community angry after being left off New Zealand census

Questions about sexual and gender identity will be left off this year’s New Zealand census, angering the LGBTI community.

Minister for Statistics James Shaw said ‘silly answers’ ruined the chance for the LGBTI community to be better represented on the census.

The census will include only two options for gender. More in depth questions about sex, sexuality and gender will not be in included at all.

Shaw said the Stats NZ tested the questions over the past two years, but they would be too hard to add to the 2018 census.

‘The problem is that people put down different answers and they use different language to describe the same thing,’ Shaw told The AM Show.

‘There’s also a lot of people who, frankly, spoil the result by putting in silly answers.

‘You see in the questions on religion, for example, something like 51,000 people put down that they followed the Jedi religion.

‘There is no other country that has managed to crack this in terms of getting this statistical information.’

‘Gross incompetence’

Statistical information about LGBTI people was necessary to help shape policy and funding for organizations.

‘In terms of health providers, social providers, organisations like Rainbow Youth, policy decisions, you’ve got to start somewhere – currently there is no information,’ LGBTI advocate Steven Oates told The AM Show.

‘There have been lots of organisations that have pitched to the government that this is a good thing to do, especially around gender – there is nothing about how people identify their gender in the census.’

The New Zealand General Social Survey will collect data about the LGBTI community instead of the sentence.

Non-binary activist Aych McArdle said the LGBTI community was ‘flabbergasted’ by the decision.

‘Is it at worst institutionalised homo/trans/intersex phobia?’ they wrote on Twitter.

‘Or at best gross incompetence on a project with no internal momentum with loss of knowledge as staff changes over?’

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