The Briefing Room

The bigger picture: obviously Stats was running no criminal record checks on anyone collecting private information from householders around the country.

He used a false name, so a criminal record check wouldn't have found anything!!!

Yeah...although Stats did not say they had actually run a criminal record check...merely that he had not disclosed them, which tends to indicate that they were relying on voluntary disclosure primarily.

"tends to indicate"

I thought your magazine was called Investigate?

Good on ya...does this look like a story in our magazine...?

My working job is chasing up stories for the print edition...if i spent my time doing a daily paper's job as well i'd never get anything done.

so yeah, going from my experience in the public service, i'd say there was no mass criminal record check of all the census staff...and how did his references check ok with a false name?

more to this than meets the eye.

Nice response Ian (giggle).

I find this just a tad disturbing to be honest. Some of the Census Collectors may get past the door step if they're lucky, or, they may very well be met with a certain level of hostility. Neither of these posibilites are ideal for those who have a history of becoming unhinged.

I would have thought also that it poses a security risk in terms of opportunity to case a place for either property or potential human victims - females or children.

Additionally, there's the question of what a crim would do with the information on census forms before handing them into his supervisor.

Maybe it is worth a phone call to Stats department on Monday after all.