By Lewis Jackson
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will embody 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 choice to exclude them.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers stated on Sunday 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.
“Now we have listened to the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood to make it possible for we are able to work with the ABS to ship this actually essential change relating to the 2026 census,” he stated.
“We are saying to Australians from the LGBTIQ+ neighborhood: you matter, you have been heard, you may be counted.”
The questions shall be elective and solely requested of these over 16 years of age.
The transfer reverses an August choice to exclude questions on LGBTIQ+ identification.
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 reviews that the federal government was apprehensive about sparking a culture-war-style marketing campaign forward of an election prone to be referred to as inside 9 months.
The UK added an elective query on sexual orientation in its 2021 census for the primary time.
