The treasurer has doubled down on a decision to exclude asking about gender and sexuality in the census, saying the government was focused on other things. or signup to continue reading Australia's LGBTQI community has expressed anger, saying they were being treated as a political football. Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said the choice to not include the question in the 2026 census was to avoid opening "a divisive debate".
But LGBTIQ+ Health Australia chief executive Nicky Bath says her community already experiences controversy. "We know at times we have to trade on those divisive debates for us to be able to progress," she told AAP. "When we're now placed in this position where we're surrounded by these divisive conversations for no gain, it's even more distressing.
" While Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he understood the feedback from the community, "the census is still a couple of years away and our focus has been on other things, including the cost of living". "Our goal here has been to try and avoid some of the nastiness ..
. in the lead up to the census," he told ABC radio on Thursday. He said he took "people's feedback seriously" but would not reverse the decision.
"We know that people are unhappy about this, we don't take that lightly," he said. The LGBTQI community had only asked to be captured in the census, Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said. To assume all Australians would be angered by a basic acknowledgement of that fact was "insulting", she said.
"How cou.