The Australian Bureau of Statistics says it is working with states who are considering changing the laws around how gender is recorded on birth certificates to ensure that the agency’s work in planning for the nation’s future is not compromised.
Last week the Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert said proposals to stop recording gender on birth certificates would compromise the work of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and lead to catastrophic health problems across the nation.
Both Tasmania and the Northern Territory have proposed changes to the way sex is recorded on birth certificates. A report from the Western Australian Law Reform Commission had also suggested there was no need to document on birth certificates in people were male or female, but the Western Australian government has announced it won’t be taking up the proposal.
Robert argued that if gender was not recorded on birth certificates the government would not be able to tell how many people were male or female. The politician used the example of providing vaccines against cervical cancer as a potential negative health outcome.
“When it comes time for the commonwealth to provide funding for cervical cancer vaccines for example, exactly how many do we order? If we actually don’t know how many women we’re trying to protect.”
The Assistant Treasurer said people should be aware that cervical cancer affects transgender men.
“Cervical cancer doesn’t care how you identify, it just cares if you’ve got a cervix or not.” Robert said, insisting that the government needed to know every Australian citizens biological sex. “We need to know who are men, who are women, so we can plan properly.”
The Assistant Treasurer’s claim that the Australian Bureau of Statistics would be compromised was immediately challenged by transgender rights advocates who highlighted that there was no suggestion that hospitals would not record the biological sex of births – only a proposal to make recording that information on an individual’s birth certificate optional has been suggested.
OUTinPerth asked the Australian Bureau of Statistics if their work would be impeded if the register at hospitals still recorded biological gender.
“The ABS is consulting with state and territory governments to understand any implications of planned or passed legislation on this issue. This consultation will cover the breadth of issues relating to continued sourcing of sex information.” a spokesperson for the organisation said.
We also asked how not recording the sex of a child on their birth certificate would interfere with the Australian Bureau of Statistics work. The spokesperson said sex information on birth registration data was essential, but acknowledges that the data may or may not be included on birth certificates.
“Birth registrations, including data on sex, from states and territories are a critical input into ABS population estimates. Population estimates by age and sex are used for a variety of funding and planning purposes, including employment, education, and health care. Age and sex are also essential to understanding fertility and population growth and inform population projections.
“Without information on sex included in birth registration data provided to ABS, (which may or may not be printed on birth certificates), that missing information would need to be either modelled or imputed, potentially increasing the margin-of-error in population estimates.” the spokesperson said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics also outlined that the number of male and female citizens is compiled from a wide range of sources.
“The ABS rebases Estimated Resident Population (ERP) after each Census, and from that base subsequently produces quarterly ERP by adding Births (by sex), subtracting Deaths (by sex), and adding/subtracting (by sex) for Net Overseas Migration (NOM) and Net Interstate Migration (NIM).” the spokesperson said.
OIP Staff
