Ex-U.K. leader Johnson turned away from polling station for forgetting
Everyone in New Zealand on census night must take part. Even Harry Styles.
Styles is on a tour of Australia scheduled to end March 4. Last Monday, he did a “shoey” — an Australian trend of drinking out of a shoe — at a concert in Perth, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
He is slated to perform at a stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, on March 7. Like millions of other people in New Zealand that day, Styles must fill out a form with questions including the number of stories in a respondent’s home, whether they have a disability and their smoking habits. New questions this year include those on gender, sexual identity and “variations of sex characteristics.”
New Zealand conducted its first census in 1851. Since 1877, the country has conducted censuses every five years, with a few exceptions: In 2011, the census was delayed due to a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that killed at least 185 people; in 1941, it was canceled due to World War II; and it was called off in 1931 “as an economy measure” during the Great Depression.
Citizens not in the country on census day are not included in the count.
This year, the census appears to be proceeding on schedule, although officials were disrupted by heavy rainfall from Cyclone Gabrielle, which prompted the declaration of a rare state of emergency Feb. 14. Last week, census officials were withdrawn from North Island for safety, the government said in a news release.
The previous census, in 2018, showed that there were 4.7 million people in New Zealand. The population had a median age of 37.4 years.
Styles’s representatives and Stats NZ could not be immediately reached for comment late Friday.