Australians will be asked about their gender identity in the next census, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for the second time reversed his government’s position on including new LGBT questions in the national survey. Source: The Age.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers yesterday revealed the 2026 census would count transgender Australians for the first time, saying the Government had listened to the LGBT community after a backlash followed Mr Albanese’s original decision to scrap new census questions.
The new “sexual orientation and gender” census topic will ask about both sexuality and gender identity, after equality advocates warned that excluding LGBT people from national data worsened policy outcomes for minority groups. The questions will be optional and only asked of people 16 and over.
However, there will be no new questions that count intersex Australians, who have innate sex characteristics that don’t fit medical and social norms for female or male bodies.
Dr Chalmers said the Australian Bureau of Statistics would continue to refine the precise wording of the questions.
“The message that we want to ensure that Australians hear from us today is that we understand the feedback that we got, we listened to that, we took it very seriously, we listened very genuinely,” he said.
The Government announced two weeks ago, on August 25, that it had cancelled the bureau’s plans to trial new questions that would identify sexually diverse, transgender and intersex Australians.
Mr Albanese wanted to avoid a culture war at a time Labor was pitching to voters on the cost of living, and senior ministers, including Dr Chalmers, backed him in public by saying that questions about sexuality or gender in the next census would lead to a divisive debate.
Mr Albanese reversed his stance and said there would be one new question on sexual orientation. However, he came under fire for splitting the community by refusing to count transgender Australians.
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Census to ask about gender identity after second government backdown (By Natassia Chrysanthos, The Age)
