Australians can now disclose their sexual orientation and whether they identify as a different gender than the one recorded at birth in the latest census, a 66-question exercise the state runs every five years and then uses to sort the population into its own categories. The census was held on Tuesday, Aug. 11, and it’s the first under a center-left Labor Party government since 2011.
Who Holds the Forms
The questions on gender and sexual orientation are optional, and both are open to members of households 16 years of age and older. The answer options for sexual orientation are straight, gay or lesbian, bisexual, don’t know, prefer not to answer or a term of the respondent’s choice that can be written in a designated blank space. The options for the gender that the respondent currently identifies with that differs from that registered at birth are man, woman, nonbinary, prefer not to answer or another term that the respondent can provide. The gender and sexual orientation questions are optional, along with a question on religion that has been included since the first census in 1911.
The Australian government determines the topics for each census, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics decides the wording of questions. That’s the apparatus at work: the government sets the menu, the bureau writes the script, and everyone else gets handed the form. People in Australia were asked to submit their census answer forms as soon as they received their instructions in the mail if they knew where they would be on census night. The ABS expects 85% of responses will be made online, up from almost 80% in 2021, when almost half the population was in pandemic lockdown. The ABS also provides paper census forms on request. Field staff help homeless people and people living in remote areas participate.
The bureau said more than 5 million forms had been submitted by Tuesday morning. Almost 11 million forms are expected to be completed. The state wants its numbers. It always does.
What They Call Inclusion
The Labor government had promised such questions about sexuality and gender would be included in the next census while campaigning ahead of the 2022 elections that brought the party to power after nine years out of government. In 2024, the government decided against deviating from the 2021 census questions in the interests of maintaining social cohesion. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said in August 2024, “We do not want to open up divisive debates in the community now.” Two days after Marles spoke, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a heterosexual who has marched in the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras twice since he took office in 2022, confirmed in a radio interview that a question about sexual orientation would be included in the next census.
That’s the reform trap in plain sight. A promise made during the 2022 elections, a retreat in 2024, then a managed return to the same question set once the political weather changed. The language of “social cohesion” does the usual work: smoothing over conflict while the state decides what can be asked, when, and how. Elections brought Labor in after nine years out of government, but the census still belongs to the same hierarchy.
ABS Chief Statistician David Gruen said his bureau discovered a “substantial level of interest in asking questions on gender and sexual orientation” during public consultations ahead of the census. “For a proportion of the population … collecting this information is very important. But for other people, it’s information that they simply don’t want to share,” Gruen told Australian Broadcasting Corp, referring to the decision to make the questions optional. The bureau frames this as responsiveness. It’s still a state form, still a state count, still a state decision about what gets recorded and what gets left out.
Who Pays for Compliance
Failing to comply with a direction to complete the census can result in a fine of up to 364 Australian dollars ($257) a day. That’s the hard edge behind the polite language. The census may ask about identity in softer terms than before, but the obligation to answer sits under penalty. People can choose “prefer not to answer,” yet the state keeps the power to compel participation and punish refusal.
Liz Allen, an Australian National University demographer, said Australia lagged behind some like-minded countries in dealing with gender and sexual orientation in the census. Britain asked similar questions of its population in 2021, New Zealand in 2023 and Canada three months ago. Allen said the questions need to go further into the issues of sexuality and gender by asking respondents if they were intersex, a term for people born with biological sex characteristics such as chromosomes, hormones, or genitals that do not fit typical definitions of male or female.
So the count expands, but only on the state’s terms. The forms now include more categories, more blanks, more managed recognition. The machinery remains the same. It still sorts, still records, still disciplines. And on census night, the people at the bottom are the ones expected to make it all legible.