It is an event that comes twice in a decade, but the buzz doesn’t get old for me: I love Census night.
And now we get to do it again – add our story to the national picture, indicating where we live and work, what we do, how we move around and how healthy we are.
I love the act of sitting down, filling in the form and providing the Australian Bureau of Statistics with a snapshot of my family’s life, of adding our square to the patchwork quilt of our society.
The Census is an official instrument. It records our nation’s development and comprises the facts that will inform arguments for the next five years and provide evidence to bolster policies and plans made by all levels of government.
It will indicate where the babies have been born and therefore which areas are going to need, say, extra schools soon and extra playgrounds sooner.
It will show areas where more aged care support services are needed, and indicate the size of our families, our houses and our incomes.
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The information is used to shape the country’s health, education, transport and infrastructure needs and I feel privileged to live in a nation that counts everyone in.
It also asks specific information about the cultural, religious and financial circumstances of everyone inside the four walls of a household on a specific night.
And for the paranoid and skeptical, the privacy and integrity of the answers is ironclad, because protection of all data is critical to the success of the Census.
Under the Census and Statistics Act 1905, no identifiable information can be released and personal information is not shared with other government departments or agencies such as the police, Australian Taxation Office or Centrelink.
It is also compulsory. You can be fined if you don’t participate or if you submit an incomplete form. Under the Act, you can be issued a Notice of Direction, which instructs you in writing to complete the Census. You can then be fined up to $222 a day for not completing your census forms.
That is how important this survey is.
In my childhood and younger years, a Census person came knocking on the door to deliver the paperwork and came back after it was completed. The sense of the importance and officialdom are adhered to my memories of it.
Now most of us are completing it online, with only people in remote areas being visited in person.
In August 2016, when online submissions were first introduced to census collection, the website crashed and only two million Australians had completed their forms on the night.
But officials have had five years to get their act together and are confident this one will go smoothly.
We become part of the history of building an accurate picture of our nation.
The first national census was held in 1911, but Australia’s first census was held in 1828 in New South Wales, which was a British colony then.
The process is as old as time, with Ancient Greeks and Romans counting their people to work out how best to meet their infrastructure and social needs.
For me, the excitement of filling in the census is followed by the agonisingly long wait for the results. They never fail to be surprising, revelatory and interesting.
Roll on June next year.
+ Census night is Tuesday, August 10
Jane Stephens is a USC journalism lecturer, media commentator and writer. The views expressed are her own.
