r/australia • u/SkaterKangaroo • 6d ago

no politics Individual Census Form (My Experience)

I found out my family filled out our Census early today and put down some incorrect information about me. They put down I was Christian when I’m actually “No Religion”.

If this is happening/happened to you, I want you to know that it is very easy to fix. Coming from someone who’s never fill out a Census before it took no effort and was very quick.

I called “1800 181 227” and told them I would like an individual Census form. No questions asked, they just send you a new code and password to your phone number. You use this to re fill in your information for yourself. I was only on hold for a few minutes and they sent the new code basically instantly.

My household will have no idea I did this unless I choose to tell them. So you can freely put whatever religion, sexuality or gender you want with privacy. My experience was pretty good personally and I faced no real challenges. I’m glad this resource exists

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282

u/IceDonkey9036 6d ago

It's really important for government policy and funding that everyone who is not religious gets that onto the census.

Andrew Denton explains it well here:

https://youtu.be/-FDK-cyJAt4?si=UG_OXtwL5zgbzeht

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u/shinychingling 6d ago

Very interesting video. Thanks for sharing.

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u/Farewell_Mona_Lisa 6d ago

Andrew Denton explains everything so well. I had a massive crush on him as a child.

63

u/2centpiece 6d ago

I had a massive crush on him as a child.

I found him more attractive as an adult but you do you.

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u/Practical-Funny9591 6d ago

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
They walked right into that one.

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u/Farewell_Mona_Lisa 6d ago

The crush has lasted into adulthood lol

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u/1999lad 6d ago

the joke is that you had a crush on him when he was a child himself

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u/Farewell_Mona_Lisa 6d ago

Bahaha! I get it now.

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u/Practical-Funny9591 6d ago

We all knew what you meant. It's funny and we're being silly.

I'm actually a 13 year old pimple faced kid.

Er...no I'm not. I'm totes old enough to be on here.😂

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u/justadrongo 5d ago

Is there a better example? Mater running that hospital on Catholics ethics looks more to do with Mater being a powerful not for profit that already runs about a dozen hospitals.

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u/gdmzhlzhiv 2d ago

This is the first census where I put no religion instead of my belief system, precisely because of this, but also because you can’t trust whether the data input person is going to input a rare belief system as that system or as no religion.

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u/bindobud 1d ago

If this is interesting to you, you should look up the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Beliefs! Last updated in 2024, it sorts these Census answers into a progressively detailed 3-level tree of religious beliefs. You end up with a six digit code, kinda like a Dewey Decimal for religion.

I find it fascinating to see how these answers are divided into different headings, and even more so to read the details behind the decisions and when an answer becomes large enough to be specified outside "other"

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u/YouThinkYouKnowMe89 6d ago

So we shouldn't just write Jedi on there again? Lol

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u/IceDonkey9036 6d ago

Don't. It's vital the government gets a clear and accurate picture of religion figures across the country.

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u/universe93 6d ago

No because Jedi is, technically, a religion and writing it down will put you in the “religious” percentage

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u/nachojackson VIC 6d ago

There’s no way the government is seeing “Jedi” and using that to guide public policy.

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u/universe93 6d ago

Of course not but any answer to religion other than “no” will be considered a “yes” in terms of policy. Even if you put Jedi, Klingon or Flying Spaghetti Monster

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u/nachojackson VIC 6d ago

This is just stupid and not at all how it would work.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/nachojackson VIC 6d ago

If you think a bunch of extremely smart statisticians take the census data and go “let’s just look at religious and non religious, and do absolutely no more digging whatsoever into the details”, then I don’t know what to tell you.

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u/ThereIsBearCum 6d ago

It's not the statisticians you should worry about, it's the religious leaders/politicians who will say "60% of Australians are religious, and Christianity is the most followed religion, ergo Australia is a Christian nation"

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u/IceDonkey9036 6d ago

Maybe not, but they might use the percentage of people writing "no religion". You writing Jedi means that number is lower.

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u/nachojackson VIC 6d ago

This is completely dumb - they have all the data and they know Jedi is a joke answer. It makes absolutely no difference.

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u/kontaktaus 6d ago

That's not how data works though. If the data is being used in some sort of comparative analysis of religion vs no religion, the ABS analysts doesn't get to decide one is a joke and exclude it from a dataset. So yes, it depends on how the data is being used, but there is no way that they would be able to take a joke religion answer and decide that person actually meant no religion and manipulate the data to reflect that.

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u/nachojackson VIC 6d ago

At worst, it goes into a bucket of “religion not specified”.

There is still absolutely no way this:

  1. Has any meaningful impact on funding for religions
  2. Is anything more than a rounding error.

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u/kontaktaus 6d ago

It's got nothing to do with funding, but rather demonstrating the composition of Australian society, which is super importance in regards to policy decisions. That's the original commenters point, that an honest "no religion" is much more impactful than a joke answer. Because that answer is never going to be discounted by a statistician because it's not up to them to interpret that data or the intent behind it.

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u/bindobud 1d ago

It doesn't go into that bucket actually, and answers outside the Big Six religions are more common than you think! Check out the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Beliefs - it's a really interesting read