Diversity Council Australia (DCA) joins Equality Australia and other advocates calling on the federal government to reconsider excluding trans and gender-diverse people, and people with innate variations of sex characteristics, from the 2026 census. While we welcome the government’s announcement to proceed with testing questions about sexual orientation, we urge the government to continue testing questions about all members of the LGBTIQ+ communities.
DCA has worked closely with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), government, and other stakeholders to improve how our census captures populations of different cultural backgrounds and those who identify as LGBTIQ+. DCA has met with the ABS and government Ministers, made formal submissions to the ABS in April and September last year, and is a member of the ABS LGBTIQ+ Expert Advisory Committee, set up to provide advice on topics and questions to include in the next census.
As Australia’s peak body leading diversity and inclusion in the workplace, DCA was originally founded in 1985 to develop and promote gender equality programs and expanded to embrace all diversity dimensions in the early 2000s. For almost 40 years DCA has advocated for gender equality, supporting gender diversity and inclusion.
This issue is about gender diversity. It is about counting and including diversity in the mix of Australia’s population. As others have rightly pointed out, it will inform decisions about schools, health facilities, childcare, and all types of programs and policies that will be delivered to the Australian people and paid for by Australian taxpayers. LGBTIQ+ people are also taxpayers and deserve to be counted to receive much-needed services.
The irony is that the most vulnerable groups amongst LGBTIQ+ populations who need these services are precisely those the government doesn’t want to count.
In the face of a worldwide backlash against diversity and inclusion, specifically targeting trans and gender-diverse people, it is not entirely surprising that the government is being cautious. However, the planned strategy to consult with experts to carefully formulate and test these questions is precisely the approach needed to ensure that even complex concepts are clearly understood by everyone.
There will be debate. Some of it will be divisive. But there will also be education and an opportunity for many marginalised people to see themselves ‘counted in’ to the Australian population.