Albanese backs down over sexual orientation census question

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has backed down to agree to the 2026 census including a question asking about a person’s sexuality.

Albanese said the Bureau of Statistics would test a question and if that went well, it would be included in the census. He said there would be “one question about sexuality, sexual preference”.

This was a “commonsense position”, he told the ABC on Friday morning.

“There were proposals for wide ranging changes in the census and that has been rejected because we think that that’s not appropriate. But in 2024, or 2026, the world has changed as well,” he said.

“It used to be […] people’s sexuality wasn’t as open or as accepted as it is today. And therefore the census, in terms of modernising, reflecting some of the changed values which are there, by asking a question, I think that people would think that was a pretty commonsense outcome.”

The about-face follows a campaign by the LGBTQI lobby and criticism by a number of Labor backbenchers.

It also comes after ministers had dug in behind the earlier position, arguing to ask such a question could be “divisive”.

The Victorian government had written to Andrew Leigh, the assistant minister responsible for the census, calling for the decision to be reversed.

Labor’s platform says the 2026 census should gather relevant data on LGBTIQ people and “discontinue the practice of randomly assigning non-binary people and intersex people as male or female.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said earlier this week: “If you’ve got the woke agenda, which I think is at odds with the vast majority of Australians, then the prime minister should argue that case, but I think we’re pretty happy with the settings that we’ve got in place”.

Crossbencher Allegra Spender welcomed the government’s change of heart. “I’m delighted the government has seen sense and will now include questions on sexuality in the census. Better data means better policy. And recognising the diversity of our community is long overdue. This u-turn shows that community pressure works,” she said.

But “I remain concerned that the government has not yet committed to including the full set of questions that were previously being tested by the ABS, including gender identity. I will continue to press for these to be included.”