Australians failing to complete the latest census face daily fines of up to 364 Australian dollars ($257), a coercive measure underscoring the state's power to extract information from its populace. This mandate applies to all, yet field staff are specifically deployed to assist homeless people and those in remote areas, highlighting the uneven burden of compliance across class lines.
This 66-question census, held on Tuesday, Aug. 11, marks the first under a center-left Labor Party government in 15 years. It introduces optional questions on sexual orientation and gender identity for household members 16 years and older. The options for sexual orientation include straight, gay or lesbian, bisexual, don’t know, prefer not to answer, or a write-in term. For gender identity differing from that registered at birth, respondents can select man, woman, nonbinary, prefer not to answer, or provide another term.
The State's Expanding Gaze
The inclusion of these optional questions follows a campaign promise by the Labor government ahead of the 2022 elections, which brought them to power after nine years out of office. However, the path wasn't straightforward. In 2024, the government initially decided against deviating from the 2021 census questions. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles stated in August 2024, “We do not want to open up divisive debates in the community now,” revealing the state's priority for managing perceived social stability over comprehensive data collection on marginalized groups.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has marched in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras twice since taking office in 2022, later confirmed the inclusion of a sexual orientation question in a radio interview, a concession made two days after Marles' remarks. ABS Chief Statistician David Gruen acknowledged a “substantial level of interest in asking questions on gender and sexual orientation” during public consultations. He noted that while collecting this information is “very important” for a proportion of the population, for others, “it’s information that they simply don’t want to share,” justifying the optional nature of the questions.
The Limits of Liberal Reform
Australian National University demographer Liz Allen pointed out that Australia lags behind countries like Britain, which asked similar questions in 2021, New Zealand in 2023, and Canada just three months ago. Allen argued that the questions should go further, specifically by asking respondents if they were intersex, a term for individuals born with biological sex characteristics that don't fit typical male or female definitions. This critique underscores the limited scope of the reforms enacted by the Labor government.
The Australian government retains ultimate control, determining the topics for each census, while the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) decides the exact wording of questions. The ABS expects 85% of responses to be submitted online, an increase from almost 80% in 2021, when nearly half the population was under pandemic lockdown. Despite the digital push, paper forms are available upon request, and field staff are deployed to ensure participation from those without stable housing or in remote areas, demonstrating the state's comprehensive reach in its data collection efforts. By Tuesday morning, over 5 million forms had been submitted, with almost 11 million expected in total, solidifying the state's vast repository of personal data on its citizens.