Just as NZ began collecting meaningful data on rainbow communities, census changes threaten their visibility

New Zealand’s 2023 census was the first to collect data on gender identity and sexual orientation, showing one in 20 adults identify as LGBTQIA+.

But just as reports from this more inclusive census are being released, Minister of Statistics Shane Reti announced a change to existing administrative data collected by government departments as part of their normal business, scrapping a 150-year history of the census.

Currently, there are no sources of administrative data that include adequate rainbow demographic markers such as sexual orientation, gender, transgender experience or variations of sex characteristics.

Without high-quality data, the policy reforms needed to address underserved and historically marginalised populations become harder to make. How can we create evidence-based policy with no evidence?

A snapshot of homelessness in rainbow communities

The slogan of the 2023 census was “tatau tatou – all of us count”.

Rainbow communities had been invisible in the census since its inception in 1851. The 2023 Census was a watershed moment, born out of decades of determined activism and advocacy from the community.

For us, as housing and homelessness researchers, it was particularly important to finally have whole-of-population data about rates of homelessness among LGBTQIA+ communities. Data on housing showed rainbow communities pay higher rents, live in mouldier housing and move more frequently than non-rainbow communities.

Adding LGBTQIA+ data to the census meant we were the first country in the world to have such data on the housing experiences of these communities. We were applauded internationally by colleagues who have long been wanting similar homelessness and rainbow data from their own national censuses.

This data will be a great advocacy tool, but it is bittersweet that we will never have such information again.

History of advocacy

There is a nearly 50-year history of various community movements, from boycotts to activism, chronicling the queer struggle to be appropriately counted in the census.

In 1981, a group of Wellington lesbians held a “dykecott” of the New Zealand census to protest their exclusion. This included sending blank census forms to the Human Rights Commission with various explanations essentially saying “no rights, no responsibilities.”

Then, in the 1990s, the Wellington City Council’s lesbian and gay advisory group came together to lobby Stats NZ about the need for inclusive census data. In 1996, census forms were changed to be able to count same-sex partners.

In 2002, the former editor of the New Zealand LGBTQIA+ magazine Express Victor van Wetering went so far as to lodge a formal complaint against Stats NZ, stating the agency was in clear breach of the Human Rights Act. He alleged it was failing to meet its statutory requirements.

Stats NZ’s present and historical stance towards sexual orientation data amounts to a consistent denial that any imperative exists for it to develop a statistical picture of our queer communities. This statistical invisibility deprives queer communities of knowledge and power.

Advocacy continued throughout the 2000s and 2010s, and in 2018, Stats NZ released their statistical standards for measuring sexual orientation. The possibility of inclusive census data started to become more of a reality.

The decision to halt the census as we know it means there will be no longitudinal comparative data for rainbow communities. Just as the community has been allowed out of the statistical closet, people will be put back in.

It had long been argued that accuracy of rainbow data would improve over subsequent censuses. Now we will never know what developments might have emerged.

A short-lived win

Community advocates and the Human Rights Commission continued to raise the lack of rainbow data collection at the population level.

In 2020, the Human Rights Commission released a report which found New Zealand’s data collection processes fail to accurately count the country’s rainbow community members.

Stats NZ had already started significant work to evaluate and update their sex and gender identity standards. Weeks after the report, the agency committed to what would become the 2023 census. Rainbow community groups applauded, felt finally listened to and called the shift a major win.

This sense of pride continues as reports and data are released from the census.

Research and survey data consistently show rainbow communities in Aotearoa New Zealand experience multiple forms of discrimination. This includes violence, family rejection, bullying and social exclusion.

These experiences contribute to disproportionately high rates of serious negative outcomes such as suicidality, health inequities, homelessness and substance use. Despite this, we continue to lack data comparing the experiences of rainbow communities with those of the general population.

As a result, health and social disparities affecting LGBTQIA+ people are systematically under-recognised in government strategies and across health and social service systems. Efforts to address these inequities are also frequently under-resourced and inadequately prioritised.

Former government statistician Len Cook said:

There is no time over the past 50 years when the scope and quality of population statistics has been of such importance in public life in Aotearoa New Zealand as now.

Scrapping the census is a cost-cutting exercise. But what is the real cost of losing data and which communities will disproportionately bear this cost? The decision renders LGBTQIA+ people, once again, invisible.

Lori Leigh is affiliated with the Trans Health Research Network, Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa and receives funding from MBIE's Endeavour Fund programme as part of their work for the University of Otago, Wellington.

Brodie Fraser is affiliated with the Trans Health Research Network and currently funded by two MBIE Endeavour Fund programmes, and has previously been funded by the Health Research Council and the University of Otago.