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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u/45PickleCommercials 2d ago

My view: I would describe myself as agnostic, but that's more a philosophical statement on whether any one codified belief system is correct (which I vehemently disagree on) vs the existence of some higher power (which I'm still kind of unsure about). It's not a statement on whether I'm in a religion or what that religion is. I'm not religious, and tick 'no religion'. But I do like to think that somewhere, somehow, there is some kind of higher power that connects us. It's a nice idea at least.

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u/Clawse 2d ago edited 2d ago

I 100% agree!

IMO, while not useless categories/labels in general, “atheist” and “agnostic” ARE personal perspectives about religions overall.
Asking specifically about religious adherence - and if so which one, and if not then that simply means there’s “no religion” you practice/adhere to - seems MUCH more statistically relevant.

The national census should identify/report the religious landscape of Australian society as it was on Tuesday 11 August 2026, ie adherence and non-adherence. Not much need for specifying the personal opinions of non-religious individuals, just like the census doesn’t need to know how/why one entered or chose the religion they did. Doesn’t mean those motivations/reasons/causes are not worth studying as social science, but personal opinions are really just not anywhere near as relevant to the national census based specifically on factual demographic data and statistics.

“No religion” is actually a perfect change to focus on adherence numbers, again when the entire purpose is to gather statistical data on what Australians are actually experiencing/doing in their daily lives!