The 2026 census questions on gender and sexual orientation that have been at the centre of a political brawl for the past week have been revealed to the ABC.
The government — and ABS — announced at short notice that it would not be proceeding with releasing the questions for testing amid reports of concerns at the top echelons of the government that they would start a culture war, and public commentary by senior ministers that there were concerns they would be divisive.
But the decision to abandon the questions caused a big backlash in the LGBQTI+ community, which had been promised the questions at the 2022 election.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese subsequently relented and said there would be a question on sexual orientation, but suggestions have continued in the media that the questions were along the lines of “do you have the same genitals you were born with?” and that a question relating to a person’s gender identity was “verbose, complicated, confusing and utterly impenetrable”.
The three questions, with accompanying explanatory notes, are:
1) What is the person’s gender?
(Gender refers to current gender which may be different to sex recorded at birth and may be different to gender recorded on legal documents.)
Respondents are asked to mark one of the following boxes: Man; Boy; Woman; Girl; non-binary; uses another term; prefer not to answer
2) How does the person describe their sexual orientation?
The options are: straight; gay or lesbian; bisexual; uses another term(specify); don’t know; prefer not to answer. This is marked as a question for people aged 15 and over.
3) Has the person been told they were born with a variation of sex characteristics?
(Sometimes called intersex or differences of sex development, this question refers to innate reproductive development, genetics or hormones that do not fit the medical norms for female or male bodies. These specific characteristics may be noticed at birth or develop in puberty).
The options are: yes; no; don’t know; prefer not to answer.
Source: LGBTQI+ questions government scrapped from 2026 census revealed – ABC News
Question 1 is obscure and would not elicit information of any value whatsoever. That is, if a transgender person put down as that with which they identify as their ‘gender’ then this would skew figures in a way that is not helpful.
Question 2 is generally unobjectionable except if a man put down that he is ‘lesbian’ that would skew the figures.
Question 3 seems to be unobjectionable.
The rationale for these questions needs to be set out clearly, so as to explain their efficacy in assisting in planning and determining policy.