Wasn’t that a political decision made by the government, rather than by apolitical civil servants?

Aladeen!

The risks are small, particularly in the short term and also apply to questions like religion but I respect that decision as we never know the long term risks and history is full of warnings. Changes in the 2016 census removed some of the anonymity protections that existed previously and we ever had sufficient public debate about the changes. The mainstream media and politicians were very dismissive of privacy advocates and the public was typically apathetic and ignorant.

Census information can be important for the provision of services. The historical default is going to be that most services are tailored to cis hetero people and if many decision makers live in a cis hetero bubble as many people including myself do then data informs and assists in addressing inequities.

Religious lobby groups are immensely influential despite the census showing a steady decline in religion and we have a large and growing gap in public vs religious school funding which is causing serious disadvantage and social problems. The census data is potentially a valuable tool for people wishing to address inequalities and argue against bad policy. Gender and sexuality data will only strengthen the case against the redirection of taxpayer funds to these groups.

I get the feeling there’ll be plenty of transgender Jedi this time around.

Your comment was removed as it contained transphobia and a misinformed understanding of the concepts being discussed.

Wikipedia have a good explanation of gender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

Yeah righto, cunt. I really don’t think you gotta worry about 99.5% of the population writing in “piss off mate” on their census forms, and as far as the government’s concerned, having accurate demographic data is actually very useful for allocation of funding.

I’m also curious as to what exactly you think the “identity game” you mentioned is.

At any rate, you’re factually incorrect about gender and sex being specific in their definitions. They’re both just bullshit abstract categorisations made according to a vague set of values from across a nebulous grouping of criteria. And unless you arbitrarily mangle their “specific meaning” beyond any utility, neither of them is a simple Male/Female binary in which those categories are mutually exclusive.

Literally only a few years ago we had a national argument about sexuality. Shouldn’t we at least have some national demographics to back up this kind of discourse? An understanding of who modern Australia really is?

I’m not sure a dolphin can consent unfortunately

Let’s keep conversations on topic please

Spoken like someone who doesn’t have a toddler