Greeks may get their own Ancestry category in the next Census – online at least

Dr David Gruen, Agency Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Photo: NK

“Australia has an enviable record of having a very high participation rate in its Census. Last time, despite the outage of its online census, we had 95 per cent participation and we’re aiming for that again,” Dr David Gruen, Agency Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, told participants of the webinar organised by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry last week.

He showcased the nuances and details, and outlined how the Census, which informs public policy and provides a snapshot of who we are and how we are changing, is not just an important tool but able to document a number of variables. It determines electoral backgrounds, helps when planning for transport, aged care, health services and the like. We can find out what happened to the Year 12s from five years ago, and integrate different data from different sources.

Anastasia Panagiotidis, General Manager of Relationships Australia, highlighted the limitations of the question on ancestry, pointing to the large Greek community of Australia, however Mr Gruen refuted whether Melbourne does indeed have the third largest Greek population in the world.

“I must say, I think that there are at least four cities around the world that claim to be the third largest (Greek) city in the world. I have heard many. I think that Chicago claims it too. But anyway, be that as it may, as you would imagine the ABS goes to a lot of trouble not to pick favourites and so we have a statistical way of choosing which, for any of these questions, whether it be the religion question or, in this case the ancestry question,” Mr Gruen said, pointing to Greece’s omission being the result of an algorithm reading data.

“What we do is we look at what are the most responses from the last Census.”

He did, however, commit to expanding options online in the next Census.

“Doing it online gives us the option of adding more options – one of the things I am keen to do for the next Census is not limit ourselves.

“We don’t want the paper form to have a vast number of options because otherwise it is going to be a great big wad of paper, but for the online form there seems to be no reason why we can’t expand the choice,” he said, adding that he would explore it without giving an “ironclad guarantee”.

The Census has also been criticised as a missed opportunity to document our views on climate change, though Mr Gruen states there are already plenty of statistics regarding that. Or if you want to know how many LGBTIQ+ people live in Australia, you won’t find out in the upcoming Census, though Mr Gruen hinted that more work would be done on this in 2026. In fact, there’s a team already focused and working on the next Census.

Mr Gruen said, “One thing we have to grapple with is what are the right things to put on the Census.”

There is a demand to add questions, and “we have one of the longest Censuses in the world” and “given that it is compulsory we don’t want to add burden. We want to make it as pleasant and as quick an experience as we possibly can”, he said by way of explanation.

Regardless of any shortfalls, at its most exciting, data from the ABS is being set to the Australian immunisation register weekly so that “we are collecting and passing over to the Federal Health Department information about the characteristics of people who are being vaccinated weekly and those who are not being vaccinated,” Mr Gruen said, pointing to details as to how the Census can differentiate vaccination rates between different areas, and pinpoint the communities being less vaccinated.

“We can encourage elements of the community who are not getting vaccinated and target that if we would,” he said.

The implications are also important as far as mental health is concerned, with the Census asking participants whether they self-identified as having anxiety, “a less severe form of mental health condition, but serious enough that people are going to report it,” Mr Gruen said, describing this as a “starting point” to better understanding. “The ABS is also being funded to do a big service on mental health and well-being and that is actually in the field at the moment,” he said.

“I suspect that if the answers to this question demonstrate that there are truly millions of Australians who self-identify as having a mental health condition, I think this will spur further interest in collecting this information and work to ameliorate these problems.”