ACT MP Muriel Newman is unfairly using Census data about same-sex couples who live together to count the total number of GLBT citizens in New Zealand, say Statistics New Zealand. Newman earlier this week published a column entitled “The Government's Gay Agenda?” in which she promised to look “at the Labour Government's gay agenda and asks is this what New Zealanders really want.” She refuted Ministry of Social Development data that estimated between 3 – 10% of the population were GLBT by claiming 2001 Census data showed only “0.3 percent of the adult population categorised themselves as same-sex”. Statistics NZ spokesperson Nancy McBeth says Newman's use of its data is unfair. “The information we have provided in the Census is information on same-sex couples, it's not a measure of sexual orientation," she told GayNZ.com. “It's not a measure of the total gay and lesbian community, we don't know what the total size of the GLBT community is." McBeth says that no specific questions on sexual orientation or same-sex couples were included in the 2001 Census, and the figure of same-sex couples from that Census were derived via a calculation, which Statistics NZ admitted last year was most likely an undercount. "We had information which was used to determine that people were partnered, and then we used information on the gender question to derive whether that couple were a same or opposite-sex couple." No question on sexual orientation will be included in the 2006 Census either, although same-sex couples will be included specifically for the first time in the questions, as well as civil unions.