The census enables Australian researchers and policymakers to understand what’s going on across the country in everything from inequality to child health. It helps governments decide where money needs to be spent. Leading policymakers and analysts are concerned a boycott might result in patchy or even false information, leaving us in the dark on these important questions.
“If you want government to be targeting its services appropriately, then it needs high-quality information,” said the Grattan Institute’s John Daley. “If you mess up that information by not responding, or much worse, deliberately put in false information, you’ll wind up with a misallocation of resources. And government resources are scarce. We want to make sure they get used where they do the most good.”
The upcoming Australian census — to be conducted on Tuesday night — has provoked controversy and concern over the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ decision to keep people’s names with their information for four years, rather than the previous 18 months. Calls to boycott the census have grown, and several parliamentarians have demanded the ABS address people’s fears — something it is unlikely to be able to do in the four days that remain until census night.
“It’s a great pity that, alongside people’s legitimate concerns about privacy, we don’t also weigh all the ways in which identifying data … can improve our lives,” said Lateral Economics’ Nicholas Gruen.
The census provides the baseline for a whole range of studies and recommendations of public policy. Public service consultant Martin Stewart-Weeks describes it as a the “gold standard” for policymakers, who prefer it as the starting point for many other studies.
[The 2016 census is a huge threat to your privacy — boycott it]
Stephen Bartos, a former Finance Department senior executive who now heads up the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth, says without the census, it would be far more difficult to gauge things like youth homelessness. “We can only find that out from the census. Only the ABS has the resources to go out and look for everybody.”
On the value of the census, Gruen cites the work of Professor Fiona Stanley. Her pioneering work in the 1980s linked census data with various other sources of information — from maternity histories and birth records to geographic data like street addresses — giving greater insights into child health issues such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy, low birth weight, and maternal and child health in Aboriginal populations.
The consistency of census data is another part of what makes it so valuable, says Jon Stanford, a director at Insight Economics.
“It provides the most comprehensive vehicle for measuring all sorts of changes in the nature of the Australian community over time,” he said. “One example is the issue of inequality in the Australian community. Is this increasing? If so, what does that mean?
“A break in the series would be, to my mind, a bit of a disaster.”
[Is Bernard Keane going to jail for telling you to boycott the census?]
Several researchers say they don’t understand why there has been so much controversy about the census, given the range of other government data collected by various government agencies.
“I think one of the odd things about the census debate is if you look at the information in tax returns, for example, much of it is more sensitive than what you provide on the census,” Daley said. “And the government does keep your name with that information. Or take your health — the government routinely collects detailed health information through your Medicare card, which again is kept with your name.
“I must confess I find the whole debate a bit odd.”
Gruen says all the evidence suggests the data will be well protected by the ABS. “And, more than this, our data is far more powerful for our own individual and the public good if the ABS can identify it and link it to help us discover patterns in the data that can lead to improvements in our lives.
“I wonder how many of the activists objecting to the ABS identifying data for a period of time (while protecting our privacy) hand over their shopping data to all manner of commercial interests in return for less than 1 cent in the dollar of Flybuys points and similar inducements.”
All of that is fine, but it doesn’t tell us what benefits are reduced/eliminated when we don’t give our names.
And we still don’t know exactly what the fines will be for which offence and for how many days the will be counted. Could one possibly be bankrupted or jailed for simply refusing to fill out a form? Or is it $180/day up to a maximum of $1800 for non-compliance, as I have read. These assholes aren’t being very forthcoming with their threats, are they?
Some hard facts would be useful.
I’m personally very careful to avoid Flybuys points and all the various “loyalty” data collection exercises. I don’t enter online competitions to “win an iPad”.
That is my choice. And fair enough for others to choose differently.
But I have no choice with respect to this census. I object to the fact that I have, apparently, no legal choice to avoid having my identifying details collected, stored, and used (anonymised not really providing any great protection to anyone who really wants to identify me).
The ABS (and the government) need to have the public on their side in order to collect the best quality of data. They need to win the argument about why it is a good thing to collect and store this information. I feel this hasn’t been done and I am, effectively, being bullied by the state. It may be “for the public good”. It may not end up having any specific negative impact on my quality of life. But it is still state bullying for which, in my opinion, the case has not been made.
The state should not be using coercive power except where absolutely necessary. Making demographers and statisticians happy to have a bigger pile of data to mine is not “absolutely necessary”, and historically they’ve had a fairly high rate of people volunteering for their data to be stored because people trusted the process and the institution. Being heavy handed and arbitrary is a sure-fire way to erode that trust, and necessarily erode the overall quality of the census data at the same time.
Where is the problem when:
.) The ATO has your Name, Address and Income and connects to other departments.
.) Medicare has your Name, Address and health information
.) Your drivers licence includes your Name, Address and Date of Birth
.) If you have a passport the department has your Name, Address and Date of Birth
There ALL problems.. And ALL have had leaks or internal tampering. Some have been caught and charged via all those dept’s you listed.
“If you want government to be targeting its services appropriately, then it needs high-quality information”
Ok, time to bell the cat on this one. I’m an analyst, I work with real data, and I can tell you that it rarely changes a decision already made, and statistics in the main are produced by statisticians who are good at maths and bad at thinking, and then passed on to people who will always over-ride what the statistics are telling them if they want to go the other way.
So here goes, tell me about all the government services that have been moved based on real data that was understood and acted on, and could only be gained from the census. Tell me about all the decisions where the data didn’t come in the top 10 factors for why services were directed somewhere, and tell me how much statistical truth one would require to change one’s mind if you are a politician who is looking no further than the next election. I’ll tell you about the 98% of real climate scientists who are convinced that climate change is real, and what are we seeing from the governments in terms of real and immediate action. I’ll tell you about the disastrous violence against women and the dire lack of services for them, and the lack of action from politicians. Apparently protecting our environment, or our women and children, aren’t important enough issues for the statistics to be the main factor in decision making, so tell me, what is? Where to put the next Smiggles store (well, yes it would, corporates do use data when their livelihoods depend on it)
Really, sales of homes is enough to tell you where people are. Stats on income levels etc are interesting, in a voyeuristic way, and can make for pretty colourful maps and no end of opinion pieces, but tend to amount to bugger all.
Political decisions trump statistics 19 times out of 18. Sure, gather the data, gives a bunch of statisticians and academics, and journalists, something to do and write about, but in terms of directing ‘the provision of services’, the vast bulk of the data is already out there in the births, deaths and marriages, and the real estate sales. Most of the rest is just fun to play with.
Which sort of provides less of a basis to invade a citizens privacy.
Excellent post, Dog’s. This quote is totally mystifying:
‘…without the census, it would be far more difficult to gauge things like youth homelessness. “We can only find that out from the census. Only the ABS has the resources to go out and look for everybody.” ‘
How/where does the ABS access the homeless? As homelessness is one of the most significant changes in society over the past decade where are the policies (based on the census) which have been devised & implemented to address the problem?
Without the census…It is a con.
“Disastrous violence against women”. (By Dog’s Breakfast)
Unfortunately for your argument, Mr Breakfast, violence in general has been steadily decreasing over the last three decades. And the only real disaster area as far as violence against women goes is among the indigenous population, where females have a much higher likelihood of going to hospital following a violent incident than the non-indigenous population. https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/domestic-and-family-violence
Otherwise, the situation in Australia is not anything remarkable in the Western context – the majority of violence against women occurs in the home, and the majority of violence against men (which is more than double that against women) occurs outside of the home.
Given your ignorance of these points, the rest of your argument is substantially weakened, which is a shame as you had some relevant and interesting things to say.
I am one of, I am guessing, many who strongly supported the Census and now do not.
So, I do agree in principle with the idea of having a clear snapshot of the nation. But the idea that merely knowing something leads to change is weak – all the data in the world has led to a much clearer appreciation of increasing inequality over the last three decades. Nice for winning a dinner party argument, but hasn’t done much for all those people who’ve been going backwards for the last 30 years.
The main game, however, is not whether the Census is good or bad, it’s what is the reason for linking names and addresses? And is that reason compelling enough to outweigh the risks of having that level of data about the whole population stored centrally and accessible by governments (and possibly for sale to corporations)?
Sure, our data is already routinely collected (which I have been very uncomfortable about for a long time), but perhaps the clarity of what’s happening now is galvanising people around the issue of mass surveillance.
FACT!!… they say it is important data for change..
BUT we have so much DATA on road issues/speeding etc… YET most speed cameras are NOT placed via that great data collected by another Government Department. They are placed in 50k zones as revenue raising tactics.
I for one do not trust how this Census data will be used.. I suggest it will be used to work out how do they the government manipulate the data for increasing Money/Tax returns.. It is all they the government are interested in “Money For Their Corporate mates”
DogsB deals with the pissant debating point about evidence based policy – if anyone can find such a beast.
However, as many here would know, the metahorse has already bolted, we’ve burned that bridge and left the floodgates wide open.
Apart from the very few (of we, the People of the 21stC West) who make a conscious decision to deconnect, a vanishingly small number, if we choose to kow-tow for convenience, then the only protection is the “equal armament” principle of the English Common Law – that the citizen must have the same firepower before the Court.
We must be able to demand, at 24hrs notice, all data held on us at all times from all sources.
Failure to comply to be argued in open court.
Oh look, Porcus Aviatrix