Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Rhema Vaithianathan: AUT Professor on 5 year census getting scrapped
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Gone.
- 0:00Speaker 2: The days of the five year census yesterday it was
- 0:03Speaker 2: scrapped by the government and instead agencies will use data
- 0:06Speaker 2: they already collect, like ird numbers that will be provided
- 0:10Speaker 2: by smaller scale surveys. Rema vy THEA. Nathan is the
- 0:14Speaker 2: director of the Center for Social Data Analytics at Analytics
- 0:17Speaker 2: at aut And that's with me this morning. Remember, good morning,
- 0:20Speaker 2: good morning man. Did we need the census?
- 0:24Speaker 1: Well, not at that price, my goodness, only twenty five
- 0:28Speaker 1: million dollars to do a census of two million households.
- 0:33Speaker 1: My eyes were watering when I saw the number. So
- 0:36Speaker 1: that is incredibly expensive and I think that that needs
- 0:41Speaker 1: to be looked at, frankly. But yeah, given the price,
- 0:45Speaker 1: given its every five years, and you know, we can
- 0:49Speaker 1: use that beIN data now to do an annual census,
- 0:52Speaker 1: and that's much more useful than waiting, you know, for
- 0:55Speaker 1: five years to find out what's happening. So I think
- 0:58Speaker 1: this is a really good move.
- 1:00Speaker 2: Lots of other countries have already done this, haven't they.
- 1:02Speaker 2: They're using administrative data, and lots of other countries would
- 1:05Speaker 2: only do it every ten years anyway.
- 1:07Speaker 1: Not five exactly. And you know, it's it's kind of
- 1:12Speaker 1: really people think, oh, the census is accurate. Well, it's
- 1:15Speaker 1: accurate for you know, the twenty fifth of March twenty
- 1:18Speaker 1: twenty three, and then you know what, people left the country,
- 1:22Speaker 1: other people were born, you know, people moved house, and
- 1:25Speaker 1: it's not accurate anymore. So you know, the degree of
- 1:29Speaker 1: accuracy is how close to in time you are to
- 1:33Speaker 1: the snapshot of your population. So I think that moving
- 1:37Speaker 1: to admin data that can give us real time information.
- 1:42Speaker 1: You know, I sort of call the census as if
- 1:44Speaker 1: my bank gives me annual bank balances for me to
- 1:48Speaker 1: decide on what I'm going to buy, and I'm going
- 1:50Speaker 1: to you know what I earn. It's I think it's
- 1:53Speaker 1: time has come.
- 1:55Speaker 2: Appreciate your input this morning. That's remor viy thea Nathan
- 1:59Speaker 2: Who's with aut For more.
- 2:02Speaker 1: From Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.
- 2:04Speaker 2: Listen live to News Talks it be from five am weekdays,
- 2:07Speaker 2: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.