On the night of August 11, every household in Australia will sit down to fill out the same government survey, and for the first time in the census's 115-year history, it will ask directly about sexual orientation and gender.
Held every five years, the census is compulsory for anyone in the country, including tourists and temporary visa holders, and it shapes how governments plan health, housing, education, and infrastructure. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is deploying 30,000 field staff to make sure nobody slips through, including people experiencing homelessness and residents of remote communities. Roughly 80% of people filled it out online in 2021, up from 63% in 2016, though paper forms are still available for anyone who needs one.
What's actually changing
Australians aged 16 and up will be asked to describe their gender, with options including man, woman, non-binary, or another term, and their sexual orientation, with categories such as straight, gay or lesbian, and bisexual. There's also an option to decline to answer. The sex question has been reworded to specifically ask about sex recorded at birth, and free-text responses can be coded into additional categories like pansexual, asexual, and queer. Demographer Dr Liz Allen of the Australian National University has called it, in her words,
Source: The Guardian
Cover photo: RDNE Stock project / Pexels
