Queer communities have welcomed plans to count them in the census but are calling for their gender-diverse peers to be included. or signup to continue reading The 2026 census will be the first national snapshot to have a question on sexuality after Labor backflipped on a decision to scrap a plan to collect the data. Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody said the decision recognised all Australians deserved to be counted.
"To make good policies, for the government to do its job properly, it needs to have the right data," she told reporters in Sydney on Friday. "It needs to have the evidence on which to base the decisions that it makes." This included the government's 10-year LGBTQI health and wellbeing plan, which would be "ineffective if we don't include everybody", Dr Cody said.
"The national census, it's all of Australia ...
so that includes LGBTQI+ communities," she said. Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown welcomed the decision to add sexuality but said the government should not pick and choose who was counted. She said a question asking what someone's current gender was on top of what sex they were assigned at birth would capture how many trans people were in Australia.
"One in two transgender young people attempt suicide," she said. "This is a really vulnerable community - the government should be doing everything it can to capture data about trans and gender-diverse people in this country." Labor pledged to "discontinue the practice of randomly assigning non-binary p.