By Karen Percy
It’s the headcount that charts a nation. The deepest official data dive in Australian history. And a crucial civic event that takes place every five years.
On August 11th each and every Australian resident, as well as international visitors, will be required to be recorded in the Census.
Run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Census is a compulsory questionnaire including age, gender, ethnicity, education levels, participation in the workforce, disability, and much more. This year there are 66 questions in total designed to provide a snapshot in time of Australia, its population and key characteristics.
“These provide a really rich picture of the social, cultural and economic makeup of Australia,” says Emily Walter, Census national spokesperson.
The Census collects what’s called aggregated data. While information is collected from individuals, it is collated to provide a broad and deep idea of where Australia is at.
“Because we undertake the Census every five years, we get to see how that changes over time and that’s really important to help us understand what we need right now, but also to anticipate what we might need into the future to support the country,” Ms Walter says.
This helps governments identify geographical areas of need to allocate funds or to see where population demographics are heading. This assists in planning everything from GST carve up to the states and territories, or possible changes to the number of members of the House of Representatives.
When Australia passed the 28 million population milestone on June 2nd 2026, it was calculated from baseline data from the 2021 Census.
2021 Census data for the 3012 postcode area, for example, tells us that 27,000 people were recorded as living in the area. The median age was 35, and 53-percent of people over the age of 15 were married or in de facto relationships. Their ancestry was English, Scottish or Irish (41%) and the largest language group other than English, was Vietnamese.
Ms Walter says it’s not just governments that use statistics from the ABS.
“It helps a lot of organisations like Not For Profits and businesses, and local councils as well, to really understand and be able to support all sorts of aspects of the community whether it’s health services, education services, transport and infrastructure.”
Each Census introduces new questions after a consultation process, to reflect an evolving Australia. In 2021 there were specific questions around veterans and military service. This year includes questions about sexual orientation and gender to better understand the needs of the LGBTIQA+ community.
In a time of misinformation and disinformation, and growing distrust of government, the Census organisers are preparing for pushback from citizens via an extensive information and awareness campaign. Ms Walter emphasises there are no links between the Census and a household’s accounts with Medicare, the tax office, Centrelink or other services. And that privacy is taken very seriously.
“This is purely a statistical collection to understand an aggregate picture of communities and provide the basis of that important decision making,” Ms Walter says.
And she says, while filling out the census form don’t forget to include babies when counting the number of people in your household.
“Sometimes people forget to include their babies just because … they’re not used to doing that but absolutely every person needs to respond to the Census for it to be representative of the country,” says Ms Walter.
The ABS is currently recruiting 30,000 temporary workers who will help educate participants, distribute the paperwork, and collect completed forms. Households can also opt to complete their form online. The ABS has posted a sample form to its website and from early July will have a contact centre available to respond to questions.
Sample forms – abs.gov.au/statistics/research/2026-census-topics-and-data-release-plan/2026-census-sample-paper-forms
For those wanting to know more, go to census.abs.gov.au
