Apparently there are none. As many of you will know, on the 7th of March we’ll be having the 5 yearly census. Everyone who is in the country on that date has to fill out a form. There has been a little bit of debate recently in that us honkies can’t identify ourselves as New Zealanders. My family has been NZ-born for the last 6 generations, we’ve pretty much been here since the treaty was signed. Only, Statistics NZ ask that we identify our ethnicity as New Zealand European.
I agree that we should be able to identify ourselves as New Zealanders, heck, even in Australia we can call ourselves New Zealanders (where we form one of the largest groups of overseas born persons). But the thing that incensed me the most was Human Rights Commissioner Joris de Bres comment on why things shouldn’t change:
We need to know the demographic make-up if you like of the population…the ethnic composition because we need to be sure that people of different ethnicities are receiving equal treatment
To me, if you want to ensure different ethnicities are treated equally then you stop focusing on it all.
