The government has backflipped on its decision to not include LGBTIQ+-focused questions in the upcoming 2026 census by declaring that it will include a whopping one question about sexuality.
After a considerable amount of backlash from the LGBTIQ+ community, advocacy groups and Labor MP Josh Burns, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed to ABC radio on Friday morning that the census would include one question about sexual preference.
“We’ve been talking with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and they’re going to test for a new question, one question about sexuality, sexual preference,” he said, per the ABC.
When questioned on why the government decided to reverse their decision, Albanese said that the Labor government was more focused on including questions about the cost of living crisis and noted that the exact questions hadn’t been confirmed.
“We haven’t sat down and gone through, line by line, what questions will be asked in the census in two years time,” he said.
Burns, who called on the Prime Minister to reconsider his stance on including these questions, was happy with the government’s announcement.
“I definitely welcome the prime minister’s comments this morning. I think that they go to making sure people are counted, and I think that they go to the work that we’re doing to ensure that we are collecting the best data possible to feed into government services as part of the census,” he told ABC radio Melbourne, per the ABC.
In case you missed it, the Albanese government came under fire earlier this week for the omission of questions about gender identity and sexuality in the 2026 census. Rather than making an announcement, the government opted to confirm via the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that the census would be the exact same as the census we took in 2021.
This decision went against promises Labor made during the last election to acknowledge and include sexuality, gender identity and intersex status within the next census. As a result, the LGBTQ+ community and advocacy groups spoke out, as they felt that without these questions the census was unable to accurately represent all Australians.
After the decision was made public, Macnamara MP Josh Burns spoke out against his own party to have the voices of his LGBTQ+ constituents heard.
“Macanamara is home to many LGBTIQA+ community members and I love being their MP and as part of that, I feel a responsibility to stand up for them,” he said.
“I’ve made it clear that the way we govern needs to be inclusive and the census is an important tool to gather data and feed that into government systems and services. For that to work the best it can, we need as few blind spots as possible, which is why I am asking the government to reconsider this decision.
“It is not too much to ask for people to be counted.”
As you’d expect, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was against the inclusion of questions about sexuality in the next census referring to them as part of the “woke agenda”.
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