Census & New Zealanders

I was very pleased to see 11.1% of us agree that we are all New Zealanders. I hate the dividing by RACE! It doesn't matter who you are, if you are born in New Zealand you are a New Zealander. I am shocked to see that 157,000 of us do not speak english...this is quite bad, I am wondering how some of them survive in a society where the only language spoken in general is English, well ok other languages are spoken, but I mean in businesses, retail, restaurants, bars, etc.
And even though the government is looking at making Maori compulsory in schools only 23 % of Maori actually speak their own language. I am all for equal opportunity, but why force people to learn something when by choice they are choosing not to? I do not see how it will help them in the future.

The whole census and all the stats are brilliant, and hours could be spent intepreting them, but I am going to look at the New Zealander section in more detail. 11.1% put it as their choice this time despite having to tick other and add it to the form a number of these also chose to identify themselves as another ethnicity as well, and much to the shock and disbelief of the statisticians who seemed to think this was a redneck term, there were a large percentage of Maori in these, nearly equal to the 14.7% of Maori in New Zealand as a whole. This is significant in my opinion because it shows that at least 11% of New Zealanders, though I guess if you go by the statistics ALL New Zealanders (god thats a great term) are sick of the divisive policies of Race and being told where they fit by government and other groups. This is a very good sign for the future and I expect that if New Zealander was given its own tick box the number would greatly increase again. The government will not read into this anything at all and will continue to claim that it is just a bunch of Rednecks and White Supremecists, though this makes no sense as they would be more likely to put "European" as this places them 'above' the other races in their opinion, which is why I have never understood why it has been thought to be a redneck term.

Good on you 11%