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Did anyone else find it full of errors?
Two examples:
- It asks you to list relationship to someone you live with. I put my wife. For me, it then asked if I was married. My wife put me, and never asked if she was married.
- It asked about someone living with us, so we put the mother in law who lives in the granny flat. It then asked what her relationship was to me, but not my wife?
Few other examples floating around in it. Mostly just weird logic.
Were you person 1? The census defines family relationships using their relationship to person 1. It’s a little weird but not incorrect
I probably was.
There was also no option for “in law” options, which I thought might be important to know.
I am quite enjoying people complain about providing all this information to “the grubberment”… on Facebook. With all their details filled in and profile not private in any way.
I know someone who had a guest staying over at their home on census night. Not a tenant, not a life partner, not a family friend, just a guest. Apparently the questions the census asked about them were the same as if they were your wife or personal relative. Questions that are wildly inappropriate and invasive to ask your guest.
- What’s your income, exactly?
- What’s your gender? And also birth sex?
- Are you gay? Straight?
- Where do you work? Specifically, street address? How do you get there? How many hours per week?
- Where were your parents born?
- Where were you 5 years ago on this date?
- Etc
There was no way to just send a link so they can fill in their section privately online. Seems like an obvious feature to add. You have to just give them your device unlocked and hang around awkwardly hoping they don’t mess with it, either that or roleplay as the secret police and begin the interrogation.
You can let them fill in the section for themselves if you trust each other not to look at each other’s parts of the form, or they can click the button on the census page to create a new form.
They say that if they get two forms for the same person they will keep the most complete one
This is pretty good for privacy
It was a bit old fashioned on marriage though, you’re only married for census purposes if it’s registered, but there’s no need to register a marriage now, you’re treated the same everywhere it matters (a defacto spouse is treated like a spouse for medical purposes, for example)
I wonder why they don’t want to know how many of the marriages are registered and how many are not.
So reading the ABS website they could have contacted the ABS to ask for a separate census form or should have filled it out prior to the 11th of August if they knew where they would be on the 11th.
No, it was fine for me. We are a couple with no unusual living arrangements, though.
Guys idk iirc or not but I feel like census was a general overall grasp for statistics, not asking such invasive questions, am I misremembering or have we never had to put our full names and details on the census before? Maybe I’m tripping
We have always needed to name the people in the house that night, we have always been asked demographic questions.
Sexual orientation hasn’t been in it for long; how you get to work likewise
All questions matter for policy creation. You need to know how many religious or gay people there are in each region to know what services need to be provided or approved.
What has changed is that it use to be fully anonymous, but now the government can partially re- identify the information to refrence against their other data sets and they keep the information for 99 years instead of 25
For the last 25 years they have kept the data for release in 99 years. Unlike other places you can opt out of having your data stored and released
The last few censuses, yes, and originally you could not opt out
So like, gay people riding on busses ?
Or gay people doing trains
I doubt they’re making that data set, but local government might use the gay data to approve a gay club, or include more or less health information for those sexualities in places where’s they provide such
They might use method to get to work numbers by region to see which places are doing public transit better so poor performing localities can more easily see how to improve
It was big news amongst lots of people a few years back. These things get a lot of attention amongst privacy advocates and techies and but don’t get through to the mainstream who can’t tell the difference between reasoned fears and the opinions of loony influencers/conspiracy theorists. They are too busy sharing dick picks and publishing their life history on Meta. If only we had a responsible and ethical media who would help inform the public instead of pushing sponsor messages and mining clicks.
I believe the aim is to link data from various sources to enable more complex analysis. As such anonymized ids are likely reversible in many cases. Unfortunately voters didn’t really get an opportunity to debate and have a say on the matter and we are probably stuck with it now.
I think they increased personal details at the same time that they eliminated immediate destruction 2 censuses ago. The change came alongside a promise of “anonymisation” which was roundly mocked for being not actually anonymisation (rather deidentification) and trivially reversible. IIRC they made one minor change that didn’t really fix anything and called it a day. Nobody talked about it the next census.
Yeah, I hate it, because i genuinely love the premise of the census, but the data can get massively skewed if it’s not fully anonymous. Like looking at the US and thinking do you want a chance someone can verify you said you were trans.
Apparently no one lives at my house.
In the current era of populism I think it’s daft to be providing this type of information to a government department.
I’d pay the fine if that’s what it came down to.
I mean, don’t blame the government when they make bad policy decisions then. You can’t make informed decisions if you don’t know the demographics for particular areas.
I’m kind of curious what decisions you think the government will actually make relying on my census response.
Firstly, the data is normalised to account for erroneous responses like mine. That’s basic statistical analysis.
Secondly, anyone who thinks pennies are going to rain down from heaven now the government knows someone lives in your house does not understand politics nor budgets.
Not sure about your specific government but typically they would use data like number of people in a certain area and income class to decide where bus stops should be located, number of people with a certain religion to determine zoning of religious faculties that can be constructed, number of people with young children to determine where schools need to be built, etc.
People always complain about schools being to crowded and little portable classrooms becoming permanent and it’s partially due to not knowing how many children those schools should be built to accomodate.
Sorry, that’s just nonsense.
Obviously, bus stops are located according to direct observations like the number of passengers at existing bus stops, and the residential addresses of card holders and so on.
Religious faculties are not constructed or approved according to a quota, but by application. If a religious group applies to a local council to have a building approved for that use, then provided they comply with local policy it will be approved. Councils do not create jedi knight training facilities because the census indicates they ought to do so.
Funding for schools is determined by, perhaps surprisingly, the number of students who are enrolled at that school. I would challenge you to show me some evidence of funding that’s been provided to a school on the basis of a census, but we both know that’s an absurdity. Ridiculous.
The suggestion that pennies will rain down from heaven once the government is aware of my existence just doesn’t withstand a moment’s critical thinking. The notion is merely to motivate you to provide your information in the mistaken belief that you’re serving the greater good.
I’d pay the fine if that’s what it came down to.
This isn’t the token fine for not voting. It’s $364 per day.
But if it’s anonymous how do they know you didn’t do it?
Besides, I have genuinely not received or seen any official information about when the census is or how to do it - i only know it happened (is happening?) from people i know talking about having done it. How i was even meant to be informed?
You’re meant to have received your code, along with other details, in the mail.
It’s tied to your address. Every address with at least one person staying in it on census night has to fill out a form.
Hmm, interesting, maybe I’ve been blacklisted. Though most of my family have ADHD, so more likely one of them brought in the mail and put it “somewhere safe”
That’s true but the risk of being fined is infinitesimal.
Very few people are fined each time, less than 100 australia wide:
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/no-one-yet-prosecuted-over-2016-census-boycott/8315898
The fine is $364 per day up to a maximum of 10 days for refusing to follow the direction of a statistician.
So if you don’t complete the form, their policy is to contact you in person and ask, then give you a direction to complete the form. If you refuse to follow that direction they may refer you to court but that’s not necessarily the case.
They also have a policy of only referring people when their refusal harms the quality of the census. That pretty much means they’re only going to fine conscientious objectors, and assholes.
In my own case, I did not refuse to complete the form. I completed the form incorrectly. The potential fine is $3,640 or something. I would be interested to see a case in which they could apply that. Without an admission of guilt it would be difficult to prosecute and ultimately yield no benefit.
I completed the form incorrectly.
On purpose? That’s so much worse than just not filling it at all. That’s a total arsehole move.
LOL. No it’s not.
Basic statistical analysis requires data to be normalised.
It’s trivial to account for non-responses like mine.
The gov could figure out 98% of what you put down on the census using other means. I.e im trans. They can work that out by listing my perscriptions easy peasy.
They don’t know I’m bi if I don’t tell them though. Also the ABS probably doesn’t have access to Medicare data
Thats true, but you can lie or prefer to not say (at least on that Question).
Also I meant the gov in general, the government has access to my health record albeit with presumably lots of privacy laws preventing random non consensual access.
There are also private companies data collection to worry about of course (which one should put a lot of effort in preventing).
My point is a census in terms of privacy is so low down on the list on privacy issues. If anything its very private, given the various laws preventing access.
Not to say you should out yourself because of that, and choosing prefer not to say or straight is ok, just making a general point on the census.
Census privacy to me seems most important within the household – they made it easy for any person to have their own form to fill in private and they tell you how to make sure your privately completed form is counted instead of the one your conservative father filled out on your behalf (“the most complete form will be used”)
That’s not really an argument in favor of the census though.
If they already have the information then they don’t need the census.
I agree that that isn’t a good argument.
A better argument is that this is how the government gets a sense for what the population is. For example, a growing percentage of “non-religious” or (to a lesser extent) non-Christian religious makes it harder for the government to continue justifying subsidies for religious schools and special status for religious organisations. A higher percentage of people saying they travel to work by bike or public transport helps justify increasing funding for those methods over continued motornormativity.
If you care so much you should swap answers with someone less secure than you.
I won’t paint a target on my head to make it easier for pollies to avoid leaving their office and meeting people. Entire branches of my family tree are missing because of censuses being used for evil.
So uh, good luck with guilting people about it. Maybe target the surveillance state and fash instead
harder for the government to continue justifying subsidies
I don’t think political parties will rely on census data for that. Once reference groups demonstrate that a policy of reducing those concessions has broad support it will be a policy. It doesn’t matter what the census says.
people saying they travel to work by bike
They measure this with direct observations - how many cyclists use pathways et cetera. There’s no city in Australia that’s going to look at census data and decide to invest in bike infrastructure.
Demand for public transport is measured by… the numbers of people using public transport.
The funding thing is a common argument but in almost all cases it seems that direct observations would be more useful.
