[Please find attached this letter in MS Word format, with italics and footnotes intact]

75 Mays Road
Onehunga
Auckland

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

To whom it may concern,

I have a number of moral and legal objections to completing the census.

Firstly and most significantly, no-one has the moral right to demand information of me by force (either morally or legally; I will address the legal argument later). Despite obfuscatory taxpayer-funded advertising to the contrary, the 2006 Census is a programme for information gathering by threat of force. If I do not complete the required Census forms, I am subject to financial penalties according to the Statistics Act 1975[1], a threat that if issued by a market research company or private investigator would itself be considered extortion and punishable by a jail sentence.

Furthermore, the Census discriminates on racial and religious grounds, both of which are immoral, and personally offensive to me. Respondents are ordered to identify their race and their religion, neither of which should play any part in the provision of Government services in a truly free country.

This leads into my penultimate moral objection to the Census: it is one of the key apparatuses of central planning, a political system to which I am strongly opposed. It is bad enough that, as an individualist, an Objectivist, and a Libertarian, my taxes are taken (again, by threat of force) to subsidise programmes, organisations and policies which I consider at best a waste of time, and at worst outright evil; the saving grace of the taxation system is that it also funds such proper services as the Police, Courts, Defense etc. However, the Census has no such saving grace; it is merely a tool with which the Government can justify further central planning and socialist expansion – and worse, to target same on the basis of race and religion.

Finally, I support the separation of Business and State for the same reason, and to the same extent, as I support the separation of Church and State. Crony capitalism, where business interests and Government are intertwined, breeds corruption, growth of Government, and injustice - and yet that is exactly what the Census promotes. As we are tirelessly reminded by the aforementioned taxpayer-funded advertising, businesses will use aggregate Census data for planning purposes. If a businessman wants to learn about the local demographic, then let him engage the services of a market research company to deal with people on a voluntary basis, not force every citizen of this country to participate in a taxpayer-funded Census.

For the above reasons, I consider my position in the matter of the 2006 Census to be that of a conscientious objector. However, beyond my moral objections to participating in the 2006 Census, there are legal issues that prevent my (voluntary) compliance.

Firstly, the 2006 Census violates the Information Privacy Principles[2] provided by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; in particular, Principle 4 (my emphasis):

Manner of collection of personal information
Personal information shall not be collected by an agency-
(a) By unlawful means; or
(b) By means that, in the circumstances of the case, -
(i) Are unfair; or
(ii) Intrude to an unreasonable extent upon the personal affairs of the individual concerned.

The 2006 Census clearly constitutes an unreasonable intrusion upon my personal affairs. If there should be doubt about that, consider that the Statistics Act 1975 makes participation in the Census compulsory; if the Census were not unreasonably intrusive, the Government would not have to collect the information by so threatening the citizenry, and would not have to spend vast sums of money convincing the citizenry of the Census' merits.

Secondly, the 2006 Census violates the Human Rights Act 1993. The questions on race and religion are discriminatory, and can only lead to further discrimination by Government, either in the provision of services or the targeting of funding. This cannot possibly be justified as “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”[3] because no racial or religious discrimination can be so justified; it is anathema to freedom and democracy.

Thirdly, the 2006 Census violates the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights[4], to which New Zealand is a signatory. It violates Article 2, as it discriminates on the basis of race and religion. It also violates Article 29, Section 2 – the limitations upon my rights (the nonsense of 'limited rights' notwithstanding) imposed by the Statistics Act 1975 are not required to “[meet] the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare”.

Finally, there's the issue of punishment for non-compliance; 60 years of refusal to fill out Census forms will (according to figures[5] I was quoted by a representative from Statistics New Zealand) total $2,414,500. One of the principles of justice is proportionality. Even if I were to grant that the refusal to fill out a Census form should really constitute a crime, are fines totaling over two million dollars really appropriate, even for a lifetime of non-compliance?

In closing, I have no intention of being a martyr; if I am forced to complete the Census under threat of penalty then I will do so. But I implore you to consider the points I have raised, and if you intend to force my compliance, that you at least be honest about it: despite the attempts you have made through advertising to appear friendly, voluntary and cheerful, the Census is based upon the threat of violence, and you know it.

Yours faithfully,
Duncan Bayne

[1] http://www.stats.govt.nz/about-us/who-we-are/statistics-act-1975.htm
[2] http://www.privacy.org.nz/people/peotop.html
[3] http://www.howtolaw.co.nz/html/ml073.asp
[4] http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
[5] $500 initially, plus $20 per day of non-compliance