Tonight, millions of Australians will sit down to fill out the same 66-question form, and for the first time in the census's 115-year history, some of those questions will ask about sexual orientation and gender identity.
What's actually changing
The census has always tracked sex recorded at birth, but until now it has said nothing about how people actually identify or who they love. That gap left trans, non-binary and LGBTQ+ Australians largely absent from the country's most comprehensive demographic snapshot. This year, anyone 16 or older can answer a question on sexual orientation, choosing straight, gay, bisexual, another written-in term, or declining to answer. A separate gender question lets respondents identify as man, woman, non-binary or another term, while the existing sex-at-birth question stays on the form.
Demographer Dr Liz Allen of the Australian National University has called it "probably the most progressive census Australia has ever seen." She put the stakes in blunt terms: for many people, filling in a box that finally fits will be a first.
Imagine being born into a body or orientation that you have absolutely no control over and yet you are forced to put yourself in a box you simply don't fit in.
Dr Liz Allen
A reversal two years in the making
This didn't happen smoothly. The questions were part of a Labor Party pledge from the 2022 election, but two years ago the government pulled them from planning, with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles saying officials didn't want to "open up divisive debates in the community." That decision drew immediate backlash from LGBTQ+ groups and statisticians who argued the omission would simply extend years of invisibility in official data. Within days, the government reversed course, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed the questions would go ahead for 2026.
Chief statistician David Gruen framed the balancing act the Australian Bureau of Statistics had to strike: some people genuinely want this information collected, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp, while others simply don't want to share it. That's part of why both questions are optional and include a
Sources: The Guardian, PinkNews
Cover photo: Leeloo The First / Pexels
