From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am. The census is supposed to reflect the country back to us to give vital data on who makes up Australia, but this week it's become a political landmine for the federal government, who first canceled questions on sexual orientation and gender identity, only to partially reverse that decision amid tense backlash.
But the question of data isn't just academic. This debate is coming at a time when the Victorian Coroner has specifically asked for more data on the trans community following a number of young trans women killing themselves. Today, writer and co editor of Nothing to Hide Voices of Trans and gender Diverse Australia, Sam Elkin on the government's decision to exclude trans people from the census and why being counted could save lives. It's Tuesday, September three, and just
a warning. Today's episode discusses suicide. Please take care while listening. Sam, welcome back to seven Am. First, it's great to have you back on the show.
Oh, absolute pleasure. And yeah, welcome back to you as well.
Oh thank you, so Sam. I thought we could start by going back to December twenty twenty to the moment that you heard the news that Bridget Flack, who was a twenty eight year old trans woman, went missing. What details did you have initially?
So, yeah, Bridget Flack was last seen on Lygon Street in Carlton and she was believed to have gone for a walk around Yarra Bend, though she didn't return home later that night. Bridget had been trying to get help for some mental health issues and had been waiting for a bed at the time that she went missing, so you know, her friends and family were really concerned about her.
I got invited to join a Facebook group called have You Seen Bridget, which was, you know, something that was set up sort of at a grassroots level to help gather people together from the transigend diverse community and allies to help conduct the search. I you know, felt a really personally strong sense that, you know, we had to
go out and look for her. It didn't feel like the police were doing enough to search for her, and it felt really really important that we do everything we can as a community to find her.
A tragic again to the search for missing Melbourne woman Bridget Flag after a body was found in Bushland.
Last night.
She was ultimately found by two members of the lgbt IQA plus community.
Sadly, Bridget's case.
Was not an isolated incident, and the Victorian Coroner received orders to investigate the apparent suicide to five transigend diverse people.
The coroner also looked into the suicides of four other transgender women, including Matt Byrne and Heather Perade. The inquest heard several had tried in Vain to access medical and mental health treatment before their deaths.
It was thought that it would be a good idea to kind of look at them as a cluster to better understand what the drivers of all of these tragic deaths were, with the inquest aiming to provide new recommendations to prevent further deaths.
Okay, so what did the inquest find?
Yeah, so the Victorian Coroner, Ingrid Giles, did a really comprehensive job of looking into the failures with the police search, specifically in relation to Bridget.
Flat Today found Bridget's case highlighted a bigger problem that there's a lack of support for the transgender community and police and health officials need to do.
More, and there were a lot of recommendations around the need for improve data collection regarding the transgenitivise community was a really significant thing that the coroner pointed out. The fact that there's no population level data on the number of transigenitivist people nationally or in Victoria means that, you know, it's incredibly hard for policymakers or health services to make a case that they need funding or other resources to support our community when we don't even know how many
of us exist, We don't know where we live. You know, these these are the kind of questions that something like the Australian Census could help us to understand.
Right, So, the coroner specifically highlighted the need for better data to help prevent suicides in the trans community and singled out the census as one way to get that. So, how is information about the trans community currently collected?
So back in twenty twenty one, which was the last census, that was the first time where there was any kind of question that talked about sort of.
Something to do with gender identity.
It was a fairly clunky question in the twenty twenty one census where they asked people to select their sex from three options, So there was male, female, or non binary, but it didn't ask for gender identity in that census, and you know, for somebody like me who is a trans masculine person, so for the avoidance of any sort of confusion like I was assigned female at birth, but I've transitioned and now live in the community and you know, I'm basically read as male all the time.
That left me with a real question of like what do I tick?
You know, if I tick male, that doesn't give the Australian Bureau of Statistics any information about my gender history, which could be an important evidence base for the need for trans healthcare. For example, in that census, almost forty five thousand people tipped non binary, but the ABS found that it wasn't meaningful data and so they kind of
arbitrarily assigned either male or female to those respondents. So yeah, as a result of that census, there are a number of complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission, and following this, the ABS issued a statement of regret where they acknowledged the hurt that some people felt well completing the twenty twenty one census, and they vowed to minimize.
The risk of further harm in future.
And you know, one of the big kind of commitments they made as a result of that conciliation was committing to establishing an expert Advisory Committee which included members of the LGBTIQA plus community, for advice on topics some questions.
For the twenty twenty six census.
So on Sunday, the twenty fifth of August, the ABS was ready to begin testing the new questions and they were going to brief to the media on the Monday, And it seems like the federal government, you know, had a bit of a meltdown about them over that weekend and announced that they would not be including questions relating to LGBTIQA plus identity in the census, despite that having been one of two very explicit election commitments made to
the LGBTIQA plus community in that twenty twenty three election.
Coming up after the break, why did the government pull the.
Pen Comments by the government in the wake of its controversial census omissions are further angry the lgbtqia Plus community.
Labor had promised to update the census to include questions on sexuality and gender diversity, but in recent days has ditched the plan, saying it's trying to avoid division in the community.
The Urban Easy government opted against adding questions on sexuality to the census to avoid divisiveness, but with a wave of internal dissent growing, it may have started a fight of its own. Labor and Peter.
Sam you were watching closely as the government announced that the trans and gender diverse community would not be counted at the next census. What struck you about the reasons that politicians gave about why.
Yeah, there were various kind of explanations as to why the decision had been made which were rolled out across the week. So last Wednesday, on the twenty eighth of August, Deputy PM Richard Miles came out and said that Labour didn't want to inflict a divisive debate on the LGBCHIQA plus community that could.
Be harmful, Which was a.
Very strange and kind of paternalistic argument to make, given that you know, we're a community that have been explicitly asking to be counted in the census and to be given the right to be counted and to participate in society in that way. That leads us on to Friday, the thirtieth of August, which just happened to be where at Purple Day, which is really lovely and your LGBCHIQ Awareness Day, especially for young people.
You know.
That day I was hosting a very kind of like wholesome and lovely trans storytelling event at my local library.
The Prime Minister has confirmed a back down on the controversy surrounding the census.
That day, Prime Minister Albanesi phoned into ABC Radio Melbourne and talked to a journalist to say that Labour Now would be supporting a single question around sexual orientation.
Well, we've been talking with the Australian Bureaus Statistics and they're going to test for a new question, one question about sexuality sexual preference.
But not around the more substantive package of questions that the ABS was working on testing.
Sorry Prime Minister too, in there will be a sexuality preference, sexuality or sexual preference question in the senses. Yes, their will as long as the testing goes okay and a question can be developed in a way that is sensitive and that gets the information that is required and the ABS will be there.
So there was a confusing response from the Prime Minister and it left us feeling quite unclear with transigenitiverse people and non binary people and intersex people would have their correct information recorded or not. It seemed like maybe Anthi Albinsi was trying to kind of carve off sexual orientation
from the perhaps more thorny debate around gender identity. But you know, for me, as a trans person, it felt like an even more targeted insult directed at us in our community by saying, Okay, we'll accept that we can ask about sexual orientation, but we don't want to ask anything too weird or whatever, by asking about, you know, people's experience as transgender people in this country.
Yeah, and I think so a lot of people when they look at this census debate, they see some pretty messy politics. But when you look at it, especially in the context of the findings from this inquest, what is at stake here Sam, beyond the idea of being counted?
Yeah, well, you know the reason that the census is important, right, is because, well, having a precise measurement of our community would you know, help us understand what services we need and where they should be, you know, particularly whether they should be in inner cities or regional of rural Australia. It would help people be able to actually kind of target like mental health campaigns on different parts of the community.
If we don't know where you know, transigenitiverse people live, or what they do or who they're living with, it's pretty difficult for organizations who do really important kind of mental health support work like Switchboard and q life. You know, they need an evidence base to be able to make an argument to government that they need financial support to meet our mental health and emotional health needs. And without that data, you know, we're just relying on kind of
anecdotal information. And we know anecdotally that the lgbt IQA plus community and the transigenditiverse community in particular, is really struggling. Like we're a community that is under employed, is more likely to be homeless, is more likely to have severed tops with family, or have really sort of complex relationships with our family of origin. Like we're generally not going super well as a community, you know, and we really need support and we want that support from our government.
It's incredibly ironic that this long awaited coroners' findings came out explicitly discussing the need for better population level data. You know that that came out at the same time as the Albanesi government was saying that they didn't.
Want to ask these questions.
So yeah, it's been an absolutely wild week and seems like Labor has really created a massive owned goal for itself by creating a national debate around transgender, diverse and intersex rights, which is you know, the very thing that they said they wanted to avoid.
This issue is not going to go away.
This is going to become a real pressure point for the Albanesi government if they don't change their.
Perspective on this.
Well, Sam, thank you so much for talking to me.
Oh, absolute pleasure. Thanks.
The support organizations mentioned today were q Life, which you can call from three pm to midnight on one eight hundred one eight four five two seven, or Switchboard, which provides peer support for the Victorian LGBTIQA plus community. Also in the news today, Senator Linda Reynolds harassed Britney Higgins by engaging with the lawyer representing miss Higgins rapist, a court has heard in closing submissions in Senator reynolds defamation case.
Lawyer Rachel Young sc also pointed to the Senator's leaking of information to the Australian columnist Janet Albertson as evidence of the senator's harassment of Miss Higgins. But despite the alleged harassment, Miss Young said Britney Higgins had a profound and lasting impact on the way in which gendered violence and safety issues are addressed in Australian workplaces. And a woman has been hospitalized after being bitten by a tiger
at Dreamworld. The forty seven year old animal handler was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital after serious lacerations and puncture wounds to her arm and shoulder. Dreamworld hosts tiger presentations where guests are invited to be mesmerized by tigers as they glide underwater. Dreamworld has said that attacks are rare and their focus now is supporting the woman who was attacked. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am THEA tomorrow