The Albanese government missed deadlines and delayed responding to multiple “urgent” requests from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, leading to the cancellation of a major test that was to be critical in determining whether the agency adopted a newly formulated religion question for the 2026 Census.

The Rationalist Society of Australia can reveal that it took about six weeks for Andrew Leigh, the responsible minister for the Census, to respond to the ABS’ initial urgent request in mid 2024 for the government’s decision on the topics that it wanted included in the 2026 Census.

An analysis of documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws, plus documents tabled in the Senate, and also contemporaneous media reports, reveals a picture of the government failing to meet the ABS’ timelines leading up to the planned large-scale household Census test, scheduled for September 2024.

The ABS had proposed changes to the religion question, including to remove the inherent bias from the existing question, ‘What is the person’s religion?’, and the picklist of most common religions. It was set to use the large-scale test in September to assess the performance of the revised question, ‘Does the person have a religion?’ accompanied by a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ boxes and a free-text box.

Documents show that Dr Leigh gave written confirmation to the ABS two days after the ultimate deadline – 21 August 2024 – that the ABS had set to allow it enough time to communicate with tens of thousands of households about the September test.

The ABS then swiftly cancelled the large-scale test and, several weeks later, decided to revert to the biased 2021 religion question because it did not have enough data on the performance of the proposed new religion question. 

On our Rationale magazine website, a new three-part feature series, The Census Files, documents how religious opposition and then the cancellation of the large scale test preceded the ABS’ decision to abandon the proposed new religion question.

Earlier in 2024, Catholic Church leaders directly lobbied Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and publicly called on the government to intervene to stop the the ABS’ proposed changes to the religion question.

The FOI documents show that several religious interest groups also raised concerns with the ABS during consultations in the winter months of 2024.

Within days of the government missing the ABS’ 21 August deadline, media began reporting that the Albanese government wanted to keep the same topics that were used in the 2021 Census, and that the ABS had announced the cancellation of the large-scale test.

While much of the media reporting focused on the concerns of the LGBTIQ+ community that questions on new topics of gender identity, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation would be left off the 2026 Census, the cancellation of the large-scale test effectively torpedoed the proposed new religion question.

With the government only having authority in deciding the topics to be included in the Census, but the ABS having authority in determining how questions for the topics would be asked, the ABS had needed to conduct the large-scale test in September to make a judgement on the performance of reformulated questions, including for the religion topic.

The RSA is not alleging that the Albanese government deliberately delayed informing the ABS of its desired topics for the 2026 Census in order to derail the ABS’ work on the new religion question.

However, the timeline of events raises the potential for perceived political interference in the ABS’ testing process.

The documents show that, as early as 15 July 2024, the ABS requested “urgent” action from Dr Leigh in the form of government agreement to the proposed topic changes.

“As you were advised on 6 June 2024 … a Government decision on the proposed topics is needed in July 2024 to mitigate unacceptable risk to a successful 2026 Census. 

“You will need to write to the Prime Minister to seek authority to progress changes to the Census.”

In an undated letter, Dr Leigh then wrote to Treasurer Jim Chalmers seeking his support in obtaining Mr Albanese’s approval for the proposed topics.

On 16 August, the ABS again wrote to Dr Leigh and Dr Chalmers with an “urgent” request for a government decision, seeking written confirmation and warning of the approaching 21 August deadline and implications for the large-scale test. 

The letter followed the “verbal advice” that Dr Leigh had given of the government’s decision to Dr Gruen on 13 August. It was August 23 – two days after the deadline – that Dr Leigh signed the document agreeing that he confirm the government’s decision to make no changes to the Census topics.

Media reporting in late August said that Mr Albanese had made a “captain’s call” on the Census topics and had “stepped in” because Dr Leigh “had not made clear to more senior cabinet colleagues that the statistics bureau planned to ask a sweeping series of questions he feared were inappropriate”.

The FOI documents show that, in May 2024, the ABS believed the timeline allowed for “sufficient time for Government decision and updating of the Census Regulation”.

The documents also show that the proposed new religion question was “the most successful question” and had “tested sufficiently” in rounds of cognitive testing, and also noted that the proposed enhancement to the religion question “would not require Government approval”.

The ABS had also been clear to stakeholders about the critical nature of the large-scale test in September for delivering the information it needed to inform its decision on whether to adopt the newly reformulated religion question for the 2026 Census.

In May 2024, an ABS document suggested that re-using the 2021 Census religion question would be an option should the large-scale test raise “significant data quality concerns”, or in the event no major test was conducted.

In the weeks following the cancellation of the large-scale test, ABS executives raised concerns about continuing with the proposed religion question given there was no comprehensive data beyond cognitive testing. In early October 2024, at a meeting of ABS executives, Dr Gruen decided to revert to the 2021 question. The ABS then confirmed this to the public in February 2025.

As reported by the RSA in December, documents obtained under FOI reveal the ABS, in May 2024, the ABS comprehensively rejected the concerns from religious lobbyists about the proposed changes to the question.

The ABS provided 661 pages of correspondence and documents in response to the FOI request last year, but much of the detail is blacked out. All these documents can be viewed on the ABS’ FOI disclosure log. 

Read ‘The Census Files’ feature series on Rationale.

See all of the RSA’s reporting about the Census question here.

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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.

Image: Australian Bureau of Statistics