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Oh now it makes sense. Hello, and welcome to the Dahlias. I'm emma, i'm zara.
The federal government has backflipped on its decision not to include questions about sexual orientation in the next census.
It follows mounting pressure from.
LGBTQ plus advocates and several government MPs.
In today's deep dive, we're going to take you through the census controversy, the backlash, and most recently the backflip. But first, m what's making headlines today.
The bodies of six Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October seven have been recovered in Gaza. According to Israeli officials, defense forces were led to the bodies of three men and three women following an operation lasting several hours on Saturday afternoon. One of the hostages, kidnapped Baijamas from the Nova Music festival in southern Israel last year, was a US citizen whose parents recently spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It's not yet clear when and how
the hostages were killed. It comes amid continued efforts to negotiate a hostage release and cease fire deal.
Senior European Union officials have refused to recognize the legitimacy of Nicholas Maduro as Venezuela's leader. Protests and political tensions have continued in Venezuela since claims of election interference After its recent vote. The Venezuelan government has insisted Maduro won the election. However, opposing candidate Edmundo Gonzalez declared victory after an independent vote count. The Supreme Court has been accused of corruption after it ruled in favour of Meduro's victory.
During a meeting of EU officials, the union's vice president said, quote clearly Madua cannot be recognized as a legitimate winner of this presidentidential election, that the situation in Venezuela was quote critical.
X has been banned in Brazil after a Supreme Court decision to suspend the platform. The country's top court ordered Telco's to block access to the popular platform formerly known as Twitter, over concern around right wing content and misinformation. It comes after Elon Musk's refusal to comply with local laws. Several months of negotiations ended in the mass outage when Musk failed to meet a deadline to put forward a new legal representative for x in the region. Brazil has
the fifth largest digital population in the world. Musk has condemned the suspension order as quote illegal political censorship by what he called an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.
In today's good news, the FBI has returned stolen artifacts, including sacred human skulls, back to Vanuatu. The sacred artifacts were returned through the US Embassy in Canberra. An FBI representative in the pacifics said, quote, there's no better feeling than returning these artifacts to their rightful owners. We are still a couple of years away from the next census, and I forgive you if you don't know when that is,
because I can't say that. I think about when the next census is very often, but it's in twenty twenty six. And last week it really dominated the headlines. Emma, why was that the case?
That is right?
The headlines have related to whether or not the twenty twenty six census would include questions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations in sex characteristics.
It felt like there were new updates.
And twists and turns rolling in by the day on this one culminating in a backflip from the government.
But we're going to make sense of all of it for you today.
Yeah, well, I think that a good starting point is to just explain what we're talking about when we were referred to the censors.
So let's start there. What's the census.
So every five.
Years, the Australian Bureau of Statistics that's the ABS conducts a national survey known as the Census. It captures details and trends about Australia's population, so things like health, age, housing, cultural background and religion. Now, the ABS says that governments use that data from the Census to make important decisions,
but it goes even further than that. Census data really provides a snapshot of life in Australia at a certain moment in time, and those findings are used to inform all sorts of decision making, so they're used across community groups, not for profit organizations, businesses, and the data is also interpreted by researchers and academics to support various studies into different research fields.
So census data.
Provides information to inform all of that, but it also provides a really important comparison tool. So you know what changes between each census, What do we learn about how Australia is, changes.
From demographics, changes all of those sorts of things.
But and this is really at the heart of what we're talking about today, the census has never included questions or has never captured data on sexual orientation or gender identity.
When this story started to dominate headlines, I was a bit confused because I remember the last census was in twenty twenty one. It was in the throes of a very dark lockdowne and I remember there being this similar concern at the time about a lack of LGBTQ plus representation in that sensus. What happened from all of those conversations happening back in twenty twenty one to it now being in the headlines again.
Exactly so, like previous surveys, the twenty twenty one Census didn't include questions about sexual orientation, gender identity, or variations in sex characteristics so for example, intersex people. And in August twenty twenty three, two years later, the ABS issued a statement of regret.
What's that presumably quite literally, just means they regret something.
Yeah, Well, as you kind of touched on there were numerous complaints about the lack of LGBTQ plus representation in the questions of the twenty twenty one survey. So following those complaints, the ABS said, it recognizes that some members of the lgbtiq plus community experienced hurt, stress, anguish, and other negative reactions to some census questions.
Okay, so that was in twenty twenty three, that statement of regret by the ABS. What happened after that, Like, was there any process to I guess remedy If you regret something or issue a statement of regret, one would presume you then intend to remedy it moving forward. What did that process look like?
Well, that process certainly looked as though a kind of remedy was underway. Towards addressing those concerns, the ABS launched an lgbtiq plus Expert Advisory Committee for the twenty twenty six Census to quote provide guidance an input into the census topic, review and framing of census questions and the way that census data is processed and disseminated. By the end of twenty twenty three, the ABS ended up consulting with more than one thousand people and organizations on future
census questions from that. The ABS also said it was considering a question about sexual orientation due to a quote lack of a reliable evidence base. It also said it was considering adding sex recorded at birth as a question to the twenty twenty six census and updating response categories to quote improve data quality.
You mentioned there this question of sex recorded at birth. Can you just elaborate a bit on why that was an important thing to have captured, or at least why the advice was that might be important to capture.
Yes, so separate questions about sex assigned at birth and gender would give us a specific data set relating to transgender people and the number of transgender people in Australia. So the twenty twenty one census did include dude one question about sex that had three gender options male, female, or non binary sex, and that was the first time
a non binary option was included in the census. The ABS said that that was to allow respondents to participate in the census when the male and female sex categories might not accurately describe their sex, but that new category was not intended or designed to collect data on gender, so therefore the number of people who reported a sex of non binary on the twenty twenty one census. Quote could not be used as a measure of gender diversity, non binary, gender, or transgender communities.
Now.
According to the ABS, sex is defined as being based upon a person's sex characteristics, such as their chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. A person's gender is about social and cultural differences in identity, expression, and experience as a man, woman, or non binary person. As gender is not currently listed as a topic on the Sense and Statistics Regulation, the ABS said it did not ask this question on the twenty twenty one census.
Okay, so let's just recap where we're at.
Yeah, because I feel like.
You know, every single one of these is a huge point to dive into. But essentially what happened was the last time that there was a census was in twenty twenty one. In that census, there were a number of things that different groups felt were not included and therefore they did not feel represented members of the LGBTQ plus community.
Following that survey, the ABS did issue a statement of regret and said that they were embarking on a journey in which I guess address these concerns, and one of them was about the fact that the true number of transgender people in this country was not being adequately or accurately represented in the census. Okay, so the ABS said it was considering adding a sex recorded, a birth question,
a sexual orientation question. Was there anything else that you know leading up to the next census we heard from the ABS they were really looking.
At There was a third proposal, and this will become important when we talk about the government's latest position on the twenty twenty six sensus. The ABS noted a significant data gap on those with variations of sex characteristics, like intersex people. It said understanding the number of people with differences to their innate, genetic, hormonal, or physical sex characteristics can help plan resources to support individuals and their families.
The ABS said in a statement, the small size of this population group means that sample surveys are unable to produce both national and lower level estimates.
And I mean, I think this really goes to the heart of why so many members of the LGBTQ plus community have felt so strongly about this story. You know, so often these sorts of conversations get dragged into kind
of culture war territory. But all this is meant to be doing is capturing the reality of what this country looks like and where you know, resourcing should go, and kind of just getting a true representation of the demographic so that when those conversations happen, there is actually an evidence bace that you know, people can point to and say, these are the numbers we're talking about.
Yeah, it's surprising to me this kind of bias that has been attached to the idea of collecting data. I think the argument about why the questions would be included is about providing a picture of modern Australia.
A snapshot exactly where we're at.
Okay, And so we've spoken a lot about the ABS and the work that they've been doing. Why has this conversation now come up in the news recently?
So after the ABS conducted that analysis and consultation that we've gone through. The Labor Party said last year that it was committed to making sure quote the twenty twenty sixth Census gathers relevant data on LGBTIQ plus Australians. So we've got that on the record from the government last year. But then on Monday a week ago, it's said it would not be including those abs updates that were recommended on sexual or orientation and gender in the next survey.
Assistant Employment Minister Andrew Lee told TDA it is the decision of the government that there will quote be no change to the topics in the next census which will be held in twenty twenty six.
Okay, and that triggered just immediate and quite visceral backlash from the Australian community. Can you walk us through the response that followed from the government coming out with this position.
Yeah, as you say, the fallout was pretty widespread and immediate. National advocacy group Equality Australia said the government had quote betrayed lgbtiq plus people around.
Australia. CEO and A Brown said the.
Community was again going to be quote rendered invisible in twenty twenty six because the census wasn't going to ask appropriate questions about their lives, and the CEO of lgbtiq plus Health Australia, Niki Bath, said that there would still be significant data gaps needed to address the pervasive health and well being disparities in the community.
So very strong response there from the community, but there was also a very strong response from inside the government, and I mean, I think it should be said that it's fairly rare.
For members of the government.
We know that the Labor Party has rules about crossing the floor and all of these sorts of things, and this wasn't a piece of legislation, but still it was quite remarkable to see a number of members come out and say we disagree with the government's position. Can you talk me through some of the political fallout.
Yeah, So we saw a group of six Labor MPs come forward in the end criticizing their party over the decision. As you say, not a piece of legislation, but still rare to see so many people within Labor criticizing a Labor decision. That movement was led by Labor MP Josh Burns. He told TDA that the community deserves to be counted.
He said the data collected in the census helps with government decision making and the delivery of services, and therefore I think we should reconsider the questions we put forward in the twenty twenty sixth sense. Some Coalition MPs also supported adding the questions, but Opposition leader Peter Dutton said that he felt pretty happy with the existing survey. And he questioned what he called a woke agenda. The Greens accused the government of failing to do the bare minimum
in data collection when it comes to the census. Green's lgbtiq plus spokesperson Stephen Bates said the lack of data on lgbtiq plus Australians was stalling necessary reforms to healthcare and education. By Friday morning, Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner had
also weighed in. So Doctor Anna Cody, who is the Commissioner, wrote a letter to the Assistant Minister for Employment Andrew Lee, talking about the sort of implications of the decision for the health, wellbeing and general equality of the community of
LGBTQ plus Australians as well as their families. She pointed to the kind of significant health disparities faced by the lgbtiq plus community compared to hetero and cisgender Australians and emphasized the message that we'd heard from a lot of other groups just about the importance of accurate population data to inform decisions on you know, health and mental health services. She said it was a matter of practical, effective policy.
So you've painted a picture of just significant pressure mounting on the government kind of from every angle, both within their own party, you know, opposition, Greens, people outside the system. How did the government respond?
So? Anthony Albanezi, the Prime Minister, did.
An interview with ABC Radio on Friday morning where he said there will be a question about sexual preference in the next census, depending on the findings of ABS testing. So to unpack that, he said the government had been in discussions with the ABS and that they were going to test for a new question. He said that would
be quote one question about sexuality, sexual preference. Albanezy said that the ABS will be testing making sure quote that people will have the option of not answering it or if they prefer not to answer, And he said that as long as the testing quote goes okay and a question can be developed in a way that's sensitive and that gets the information that is required, the ABS will be testing that with a draft question. Now, I do want to point out that Albaneze's comments only related to
a question about sexual orientation. He did not imply that there will be any kind of testing on questions to do with gender identity or variations in sex characteristics, which were the proposals suggested by the ABS after that statement of regret in twenty twenty three.
Okay, so the government essentially backflipped. They came out with a position, it was deeply unpopular and they've now kind of walked it back. Was there any explanation given?
Albaneze pretty much downplayed it. He said that the government thinks the census has been pretty effective in the past. He noted what he thought about the censors being the incorrect vehicle to engage with the community across various issues, and he downplayed the census, saying that it's not the be all and end all. He also noted other data collection strategies that are available to us now, including on our phones and through social media, so that arguably felt
like a little bit of a distraction. He did defend Labour's track record on anti discrimination legislation, though he noted the survey isn't for two years, and I think a good point that was made is that there is an election to get through next year. The survey comes the year after that, so a lot could change in the makeup of the government between now and then. But I do want to note there was some discussion around the government not including questions representing LGBTQ plus Australia in the
next census to avoid discrimination and harmful conversations. But kind of ironically you could say that is where the conversation ended up going. The sexist Crimination Commissioner pointed out that failing to address those concerns identified by the ABS and BUY advocacy groups after the twenty twenty one survey risked doing exactly that. Commissioner Cody said she was concerned in the face of rising negative retrick that it could strengthen
the voices of discrimination and division. That quote seek to disrupt the nation's social cohesion. I thought this was a really strong quote from the Commissioner to finish on. While we must seek to minimize harm, the answer cannot be to do nothing. LGBTIQA plus Australians and their rights must be protected and supported, as must the rights of all Australians.
M a really interesting deep dive, and I know that a lot of people would have seen these headlines but perhaps not understood.
All of that context.
So thank you for explaining that and thank you for joining us for another day on the Daily ODS.
If you learned something from this.
Episode, feel free to leave a covent on Spotify or wherever you're listening. If you're watching us on YouTube, we love to know what you're thinking and feeling about the topics that we cover here at TDA. We'll be back again tomorrow, but until then, have a fantastic Monday. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung
Calcuttin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres s right island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present,