Labor MP Josh Burns has broken ranks from his Labor colleagues and declared that the government has got it wrong by deciding to omit long promised questions about gender and sexuality from the 2026 census.
Burns said it was essential that the census counted everyone, his comment standing in stark contrast to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles who yesterday told reporters that questions about sexuality had to be removed in order to avoid “divisive debate” and promote social cohesion.
Burns, the member for Macnamara in Central Melbourne, said he has spent the last few days advocating for the government to reverse the decision.
“Macanamara is home to many LGBTIQA+ community members and I love being their MP and as part of that, I feel a responsibility to stand up for them,” he said.
“I’ve made it clear that the way we govern needs to be inclusive and the census is an important tool to gather data and feed that into government systems and services.
“For that to work the best it can, we need as few blind spots as possible, which is why I am asking the government to reconsider this decision.
“It is not too much to ask for people to be counted.” the MP said.
Governments decision has been widely condemned
The decision to remove questions about sexuality and gender from the 2026 census have been widely criticised, especially given the government had already issued a statement of regret over not including them in the 2021 census.
Anna Brown from Equality Australia described the move as an example of the government just deciding that representation for LGBTIQA+ was too hard.
“What the government is saying to us is that we are not worth having the hard conversations for, and they are dumping us in the too hard basket.”
Brown said it was “the government’s job to govern for all Australians” and its decision underestimated the Australian public.
“The notion that acknowledging the existence of LGBTIQ+ Australians in the census would be a threat to social cohesion is, frankly, absurd,” she said.
“And it is insulting to all Australians to think that they would be in some way angered or divided by such a basic acknowledgement of fact.”
Nicky Bath, CEO of LGBTIQ+ Health Australia (LHA), said the decision is baffling.
“This is a devastating and baffling decision that will retain the significant data gaps needed to address the pervasive health and wellbeing disparities that we continue to live with. It also means that accurate data will not be collected on LGBTIQ+ families.
“The lives of LGBTIQ+ people are not political footballs. Choosing not to include just four lifesaving questions, informed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics Standard in the 2026 Census, is an indictment of this Government that will have real-life consequences for LGBTIQ+ people.” Bath said.
Dr Morgan Carpenter, CEO of Intersex Human Rights Australia (IHRA), said the removal of proposed questions about sexuality and gender will make the census meaningless.
“Without meaningful inclusion in the 2026 Census, we won’t have good, reliable data on the health and circumstances of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex variations/differences of sex development). Worse than this, if the next census is the same as the last, it will collect data that is meaningless.”
