The Beginner's Guide to the Census

This edition of TVNZ’s Beginner’s Guide series aims to background New Zealand’s 1986 census. The population survey will be filled in by everyone (including street kids, possum trappers and jailed French secret service agents), generate 5,500 pages of information and influence national planning. Reporter Philip Alpers is the guide and strives to find flaws in the exercise's much vaunted confidentiality as he interviews politicians and statisticians and visits his mother. Leading naysayer The Wizard of Christchurch is a typically colourful dissenting voice.

I am not a real person and I don’t want to be counted by the government.

– Wizard of Christchurch

Key Cast & Crew

Mike Single

Producer

Philip Alpers

Reporter

Bill McColl

Camera

David Holley

Camera

Cheryl Cameron

Researcher

Stephen Tebby

Sound