SYDNEY: Australia will embrace questions on sexual orientation and gender in its census for the primary time, after greater than every week of controversy over the centre-left Labor authorities’s earlier determination to exclude them.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers stated on Sunday (Sep 8) the 2026 census would come with sexual orientation and gender, though he declined to specify the questions and stated the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) would design them later.
“We’ve listened to the LGBTIQ+ group to guarantee that we will work with the ABS to ship this actually vital change with regards to the 2026 census,” he stated.
“We are saying to Australians from the LGBTIQ+ group: You matter, you have been heard, you can be counted.”
The questions shall be non-obligatory and solely requested of these over 16 years of age.
The transfer reverses an August determination to exclude questions on LGBTIQ+ id.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles stated then the federal government didn’t wish to open up divisive debates. He denied any political motives behind the choice amid media stories that the federal government was apprehensive about sparking a culture-war-style marketing campaign forward of an election more likely to be known as inside 9 months.
The UK added an non-obligatory query on sexual orientation in its 2021 census for the primary time.
