Re: fiction writers using footnotes, if you really want to see someone not only use them well but make the whole concept of citation an integral part of a work, then IMO you can't go past Mark Z Danielewski's absolutely brilliant House of Leaves.

Just to correct a small error of Peter's : in NZ, since 2003 both Chiropractors and Osteopaths have actually been fully regulated professions under the HPCA, with statutory regulatory authorities and subject to the Health and Disability Commissioner.

No problem - the Ministry actually has a really good portal for data, information, and research on all aspects of the education sector called Education Counts: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/

Well if anybody's interested in the actual data, here's an MoE analysis from 2007 of the transition to different forms of tertiary education:
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary_education/15997
Discussion of ethnicity is on pp13-15 of the full report, and discussion of school decile is on pp18-20 (though note that this is all focused on transition directly from school).

Although that particular rort isn't really working for Company X doing Job A and working for Company Y and do job A - it's more "working for Company X and referring people to yourself at Company Y, where you get paid three times as much for doing something than you would if they'd chosen Company X".

ScottY's right that it is probably a necessary evil though.

In the same vein as Sacha's example, the "write down your ethnicity as New Zealander" campaign at the last Census was probably the biggest example of public attention being paid to what was essentially a protest/spoil your ballot option.

Regarding Matthew's literacy stats above, IALS pretty much has been repeated - or rather it's been replaced by a more refined version called the ALL survey, conducted here in 2006. The findings from ALL, including some limited international comparisons, are here:
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/themes/research/all