Australia adds optional gender identity and sexual orientation questions to census

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australians for the first time can reveal their sexual orientation and whether they identify as a different gender than the one recorded at birth — contentious debut questions in the latest census that occurs every five years.

The 66-question census, held on Tuesday, Aug. 11, is the first under a center-left Labor Party government since 2011. The current Labor government backflipped to allow the questions after having dropped them temporarily two years ago as “divisive.” Both questions 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.

Labor 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.

The Australian government determines the topics for each census. The Australian Bureau of Statistics decides the wording of questions.

In 2024, the government decided against deviating from the 2021 census questions in the interests of maintaining social cohesion.

“We do not want to open up divisive debates in the community now,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said in August 2024.

The government soon relented after almost a week of backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates and criticism from some Labor lawmakers.

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.

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, referencing the decision to make the questions optional.

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.

“We’ve been talking about these questions for some time, but the previous government, it didn’t look like they were going to budge on the evidence and enable it to be in the census. So the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) really didn’t put it to them,” Allen said.

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.

The last U.S. census in 2020 allowed only two responses to its gender question: male or female. That census, which is held once a decade, did not specifically ask about sexual orientation. But same-sex relationships were for the first time allowed to be listed in the household relationship field.

In Australia, people 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. Failing to comply with a direction to complete the census can result in a fine of up to 364 Australian dollars ($257) a day.

The ABS said more than 5 million forms had been submitted by Tuesday morning. Almost 11 million forms are expected to be completed.