Australia’s Catholic bishops wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese asking him to intervene and “reverse” proposed changes to the Census religion question, the Rationalist Society of Australia can reveal.

Under freedom of information (FOI) laws, the Rationalist Society of Australia has obtained copies of the letters that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) sent to Mr Albanese and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in March 2024.

In the letter to Mr Albanese, a representative of the ACBC – whose name was redacted in the released documents – said they were writing to “raise my serious concerns about the … changes to the religious identification question for the 2026 Census”.

Following a two-year public consultation process held in 2022/23, the ABS had acknowledged the public’s concern that the question “assumes you have a religion” and had, in late 2023, proposed changes to the question so as to “support more accurate data collection”. The ABS wanted to change the religion question from ‘What is the person’s religion?’ to ‘Does the person have a religion?’, with ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ boxes, plus an open space for people to write in their religious affiliation.

In their letter on 19 March 2024 to Mr Albanese, the Catholic bishops confirmed they had engaged in the public consultation but claimed there had been insufficient consultation with religious leaders. 

Read the full letters to Prime Minister Albanese and the ABS

The letter said:

The Conference engaged in a consultation process with the ABS over the past two years but was informed in the last two weeks that the question would change, and that consultation had finished.

I am very surprised at the ABS’s imposition of changes without sufficient consultation with religious leaders and sociologists of religion and very concerned at the threat these changes pose to the usefulness of data from the 2026 Census. I would appreciate your agreement to reverse these changes.

The letters appear to have triggered a response within the Albanese government, as FOI documents previously obtained by the Rationalist Society of Australia show that, in early April 2024, the ABS sent an email to the Treasury Department titled ‘Religious Affiliation Talking Points for the PM’.

Then, in late April, Catholic bishops waged a public campaign against the proposed changes, warning of a “new bias” in favour of ‘no religion’.

This prompted current and former Liberal politicians, including former prime minister John Howard, to echo the concerns of the bishops.

In response, the ABS held an additional consultation process – described as a “listening phase” by the head of the ABS, David Gruen – with religious lobbyists throughout the winter months of 2024.

In highly unusual circumstances, in which the Albanese government failed to meet multiple ABS deadlines to confirm the broad topics it wanted included in the 2026 Census, the ABS then cancelled the major September household test that it had identified as “critical” to determining the performance of the new religion question. This major test was, essentially, to have been a rehearsal of the proposed 2026 Census questions, with forms being sent to tens of thousands of household.

Weeks later, in October 2024, the ABS decided to re-use the existing leading question for the 2026 Census because it did not have enough data to assess the performance of the proposed new religion question and because returning to the 2021 question would “maximise comparability” with past Censuses.

This decision was made despite the proposed new question having performed well in several rounds of cognitive testing and despite ABS executives knowing that the existing question “may lead respondents to a particular response” and there was “public support for the change”.

Despite the bishops’ call for Mr Albanese to reverse the changes, there was no scope for the government to influence the design of the question. As the ABS has confirmed on many occasions, the ABS is responsible for determining how questions are asked in the Census, while the government can only decide the broad topics – i.e. ‘religious affiliation’ – to be included.

In its letter to Mr Albanese, the Catholic bishops claimed – erroneously – that the proposed changes would exclude a ‘Yes’ tick box and that having only a ‘write-in option’ would be an “unwarranted complication for people who wish to record their religion”.

While the bishops’ letter included an image that showed the draft question missing a ‘Yes’ tick box, the ABS, in response to the media reports, clarified that it was not proposing to exclude a ‘Yes’ tick box. It is not clear how the bishops came to have an image of the draft question missing the ‘Yes’ tick box, but the ABS may have made an error in an early communication to them about the proposed changes.

The bishops also told Mr Albanese that the “substantial change being imposed” would impact the comparability of the data with past Censuses:

Accurate and comparable data is vital as the Catholic Church and other religious groups rely heavily on it to assist parishes, schools, health services, welfare and other organisations to understand the religious demographic of the communities they serve.

In response to the Catholic Church’s public campaign in early 2024, the ABS itself had comprehensively rejected the bishops’ concerns and argued that the desire for maintaining comparability with past Censuses needed to be “balanced against changes to improve accuracy, relevance and inclusivity.”

In response to the Rationalist Society of Australia’s request for the letters sent to Mr Albanese, the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet refused access “on the grounds documents do not exist”.

However, the Rationalist Society of Australia asked for a review of that decision on the basis that a Catholic media outlet had reported that “some Catholic church leaders” directly raised their concerns about the proposed Census changes with Mr Albanese.

In coming days, we will report further about the ACBC’s letter to the ABS.

Read our three-part ‘The Census Files’ series.

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: Number 10 (Flickr CC).