Backflip on LGBTQIA+ census question causes headache for Albanese government

Albo’s latest move on whether or not to exclude a key question in the 2026 census is an example of the Prime Minister making enemies and losing friends, writes Patrick Carlyon.

Division stands as the political buzzword of 2024.

The unions snarl at their political masters. The Left accuses Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of a “pathological” desire to divide.

Yet the biggest division last week wasn’t about one of the big ticket items, such as Gaza arrivals or power reliability.

Instead, it focused on a fight which had occurred to almost no one, a cultural battleline which no one knew was there.

The government decided that questions about sexuality and gender identity would be kept out of the next census.

This was interesting mainly because the ALP had earlier decided that questions about sexual and gender identity would be included.

The about-face was news to anyone (who had no personal stake in such questions) who had assumed that such questions had probably been asked in the last census.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says there ‘will be a question in the census’ on sexuality after testing by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The LGBTQIA+ lobby had expressed hurt, stress and anguish by the absence of such questions in 2021.

They had felt invisible, and had made some very legitimate points about the need for hard data for policymaking.

The census would seem like a sound starting point for quantifying who falls into what categories, for targeting policy to issues specific to such groupings.

Other countries have already asked such census questions with little uproar. Seen like that, such decisions hardly sound “woke”, or even susceptible to being labelled as such.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics had issued a statement expressing “regret” about the 2021 census. The ALP had made such census questions part of its policy platform.

Mr Albanese was the first PM to march in the Mardi Gras. Picture: Getty

There had been no protests in the streets about their mooted inclusion. If such things it had been a talking point, and there’s scant evidence for this, they had been lost in weightier talking points.

As one Coalition MP said last week, “it has not been discussed in my electorate”.

Then there was an Albanese Government backflip. The census question/s that almost no one was noticeably opposed to would not be included, after all.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers pulled a puzzled rabbit from a hat and spoke of “nastiness and weaponisation”. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles alluded to a “divisive” debate.

He said the government was “bringing science to bear” on the issue, which confused everyone even more, including many members of his own political party.

What followed was a moment of great division. Or should we call it unity?

ALP politicians eloquently spoke against their own government’s decision.

Activists threatened to boycott the census, and Albanese was uninvited from the Mardi Gras.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he prefers the census as it was. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he liked the census as it was, but brought no heat to his statement.

Some of his Coalition politicians, meanwhile, lined up to say that they had no problem at all with the inclusion of such questions.

“Ludicrous” said one of the government’s backflip.

“Spooked” said another.

“I’m OK with it,” said conservative Matt Canavan, whose religiosity extended to reading the Bible daily when he entered parliament.

On Friday, Albanese further muddled the issue. Presumably, he wanted it to go away, to limit the growing number of avoidable enemies made by waging an imaginary war. Instead, he made more.

Albanese is the political answer to being half pregnant. When he speaks, it can be hard to say whether there is good news ahead, or no news.

He appeared to backflip onthe party’s backflip, kind of.

Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt criticised Albo’s backflip. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“What there isn’t going to be is holus-bolus massive changes to the census because we think that it’s been pretty effective in the past, and for a range of issues the census isn’t the right vehicle to engage with the community across a whole range of issues,” he said.

We ran this quote through ChatGPT to understand what Albanese meant here. Chat GTP started smoking, then blew up.

Albanese did announce that there would be a census question, after all, by applying his finest a-bit-of-this, a-bit-of-that style of communication.

The Greens’ Adam Bandt predictably interpreted his offering as half-arsed.

“The queer community shouldn’t have to fight so hard just to be counted,” he said. “Under huge pressure, the PM has said they’d include a question on sexuality in the census – but not gender identity. What promises matter to this government?”

By now, pretty much everyone had been put out by the government’s shifting position. Well, everyone who was still trying to make sense of it.

Such census questions have no bearing on about nine in 10 Australians, perhaps more. But they say something about a government which divides itself by inventing political battles and taking friendly fire.

Originally published as Backflip on LGBTQIA+ census question causes headache for Albanese government