Frustrated Albanese vents in cabinet over census fiasco

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vented his frustration in cabinet over mishandling of Australia’s next census, complaining that new questions about a person’s gender identity were inappropriate and he had to step in to fix the problem.

In a cabinet meeting on Monday, August 26, Albanese expressed annoyance at complicated questions about people’s sexual orientation and gender status proposed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the 2026 census, according to three sources in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at a press conference in Perth on Tuesday.Credit: Trevor Collens

With Albanese about to fly out to the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, he made a captain’s call to dump them.

That decision horrified LGBTQ groups and split the caucus, as six Labor MPs broke ranks to publicly question the move. By the end of last week, as the Greens made plans to wedge progressive MPs by bringing on votes in both houses of parliament over the issue, a second captain’s call was made to allow one question on sexual orientation.

“He spoke about it in cabinet; it was fire and brimstone. ‘I am having to clean this up’ and ‘we’re not having these questions [in the census]’,” said one of the MPs in the meeting, who supported the prime minister’s eventual decision.

“He made the call on it himself and then he briefed the cabinet. He didn’t ask permission, it was retrospective approval.

“No one spoke up about it at all. Everyone just backed him in.”

A second MP in the cabinet meeting said the prime minister was frustrated, rather than angry, and had read out one of the most complicated questions about a person’s gender identity to his cabinet colleagues to illustrate why an ABS briefing for journalists, which would have revealed the potentially problematic questions, had been cancelled.

Albanese told the room “there is no problem with a [sexual] orientation question”, the second MP said, but “we have to have sensible questions going forward” and that there was time to tweak the questions before the census.

The prime minister’s concern was that the more complicated gender questions could be exploited in a new culture war when the government wanted to focus on talking about what it was doing about the cost of living.

A third MP in the meeting confirmed the account provided by the other two sources and said Albanese had spoken “more in sorrow than in anger”.

They added he had “called it correctly in the end” and had subsequently made the right decision to include one census question about people’s sexual preferences.

However, the third MP said that before the decision, Albanese had “left Richard Marles, Jim Chalmers and Murray Watt swinging in the wind” as the trio had publicly backed in his initial captain’s call to dump all the proposed census questions.

Asked on Tuesday in Perth if he still had confidence in assistant minister Andrew Leigh, who has responsibility for the census, Albanese said: “Yes.”

It is the second time this year that details have leaked from the Albanese cabinet. This masthead revealed in March that Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic spoke out in cabinet and in a full ministry meeting about ministers being shut out by the powerful expenditure review committee, which makes final decisions about spending proposals in the budget.

The second leak of cabinet discussions, which are supposed to remain confidential, suggests disquiet in government ranks over political strategy and messaging.

This masthead revealed on Monday that the head of Albanese’s media team, Brett Mason, will shortly step down from the role to take up a new job with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, clearing the way for a refresh of the government’s messaging ahead of the next federal election.

Before the prime minister’s intervention, the Bureau of Statistics had been working on new census questions for some time and planned to brief journalists on the same Monday that cabinet met to discuss the issue. The night before, the bureau cancelled the briefing.

Privately, Albanese has expressed particular concern over a complex question about gender identity and people with intersex characteristics.

On Tuesday, LGBTIQ+ Health Australia chief executive Nicky Bath called for three new questions to be included in the 2026 census that addressed gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation.

Following the 2021 census, the bureau acknowledged complaints from Equality Australia over the omission of certain topics, the framing of questions and the exclusion felt by members of the LGBTQ community.

Support is available from QLife on 1800 184 527, Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, headspace on 1800 650 890, Head to Health on 1800 595 212 and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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