PRIME Minister Anthony Albanese ordered the Australian Bureau of Statistics to cancel testing of new Census questions around sexual and gender identity last week before reversing his decision after criticism from advocates and members of his own party.
As it stands, the Census will include questions on sexual and gender identity, with the caveat that answering them would be optional.
Australian Catholic University sociologist Bryan Turner said optional questions were useless for data collection.
Optional questions pose many problems to researchers like non-response bias, low response rates, incomplete data sets, skewed results and inconsistent comparisons.
Prof Turner said the media often dubbed the Census a “snapshot of Australia”, but its most useful purpose was to track trends over a long period.
“The Census is a conservative document,” he said.
“You have to convince the government that you’re addressing an important and neglected issue.
“There have been modifications to religion questions over time, and health issues have been dominant for new additions.
“But overall, the census doesn’t change rapidly because we need to track data over long periods—10, 20, or even 50 years.
“If you keep changing the questions, you lose the ability to track trends.”
He said advocates needed to have good reasons to include questions on sexual and gender diversity over the course of decades.
“The census, after all, helps the government with basic planning for housing, employment, retirement benefits, and so forth, as well as providing data for interested groups like universities—information such as age profiles of people who do or don’t want to attend university,” he said.
A joint statement signed by numerous institutes studying, in part, sexual and gender identity at the University of New South Wales said there was an urgent need for accurate data on sexual and gender diversity.
“An extensive body of research shows that both sexual orientation and gender diversity are strong predictors of specific adverse health outcomes,” the statement said.
“People with innate variations of sex characteristics also experience significant health disadvantages but are not visible in standardised and national datasets.”
Prof Turner said if it were up to him, he would want to include questions about the state of older retired Australians or even a question on the happiness of Australians.
“Happiness isn’t just a frivolous emotion; it’s about feeling safe, knowing where your next meal is coming from, or whether you have job security,” he said.
“Those basic things make people happy.
“I am also interested in the survival of churches—not just for their religious role, but because they’re important for the continuity of families.
“To me, that’s critical.”
The Census had its limitations too.
ABS faced criticism in the past for its failure to adequately count First Nations people as well as people experiencing homelessness.
The next Census night will be in August 2026.
