This article was originally published by Lucy from Naarm. You can find the original article here.
The Government has backtracked again on the Census, announcing that gender identity and sexual orientation will be counted on the 2026 Census. However, this is with the notable exclusion of a proposed question that would have counted Intersex people as well as transgender people under the age of 16.
Dr Morgan Carpenter, director of Intersex Human Rights Australia said in a statement, “This is a devastating development, which means that the next census will be out of step with the 2020 ABS Standard, and new standards for health and medical research. It means that we won’t get much needed information on the health and wellbeing of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex/differences of sex development).”
The intersex question asked for the Census 2026 would have read;
Has the person been told they were born with a variation of sex characteristics (sometimes called intersex or differences of sex development)
Yes
No
Don’t know
Prefer not to say
These questions would have been in line with similar questions asked by the Aotearoa (NZ) Census and the US National Academies of Sciences and Medicine.
According to the Government, the ABS has rejected the proposed question. However, the question remains: Was this truly the ABS’s decision? As the director of Intersex Human Rights Australia noted, this decision is completely out of step with the 2020 ABS Standard.
Additionally, the Government announced that both the gender identity and sexual orientation questions will be 16+. This is against the recommendations of the ABS, which had only the sexual orientation question as a 15+ question, and the gender identity question as an all-ages question. The result of the Government’s decision is that transgender youth will not be counted in the 2026 Census.
Anthony Albanese said “We ensured … that only people aged over the age of consent will be asked questions on the new topic”. This statement is troubling, as it implies that to be trans is inherently sexual. The age of consent is completely irrelevant in a topic about transgender lives, and leads credence to viewpoints which sexualise our lives.
The LGBTQI+ community continues to push the government for a complete backflip, so that all transgender people are counted, and all intersex people are counted. The Australian Census data is invaluable to healthcare planning for our communities, and it’s a tragedy that we have not had accurate data about us until now.
None of us are counted, until all of us are counted.
