2026 Census topic consultation - Phase two

As an amateur genealogist this question is very important, informative and necessary for researchers and historians long term. As a woman it is also of vital importance! Most want their births counted and recognised and it is vital for future planning for health services, education and a myriad of other services. Rather than dismissing millions of individuals and their life experiences to cater for a small population, problem solve and come up with a way to allow for that small population to be recognised without dismissing the identity, beliefs and fertility of the vast majority for a change.

If you remove this question in the current environment it will very much look like the government is trying to hide important data and this will cause more distrust from certain factions of the community. More people will be persuaded that there are problems they are not being told about and those factions numbers and community distrust of government and its agencies will grow.

In genealogy this information is it very useful for research, especially working out how people came here and tracing them from there.

People are not always aware of their ancestry as it gets forgotten or is hidden, while others simply get the information wrong, Ancestry impacts us in ways we do not always understand and data like this is very useful.

Australia is a melting pot and it would be better to fully understand the ancestry mix of our population. Rather than just limit ourselves to picking only two Ancestries it would be more valuable to acknowledge more! My husband is an Eurasian Australian, as are our children and grandchildren and identify as such, limiting them to four Ancestral identities would mean disregarding most of their Ancestry. An option for Eurasian Australian would better reflect their Ancestry, influences and identity.

You are making people choose their Ancestral identity and limit it rather than acknowledge and celebrate their full Ancestry. We would be a more informed community if we understood that we are much more diverse than we appear and we could better cater for these populations.

It would impact research into country of origin but would better inform us of a persons cultural affiliations and identity.

My husband’s family is made up of people from a very wide range of countries in four generations he has Scottish, English, Irish, American, Dutch, Indonesian, Melanesian, Austro-Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese and more. The term Eurasian better reflects his ancestry and cultural identity, so this term rather than having to select four ethnic groups would be a better option.

Where someone is born is not always an indication of their ethnicity or ancestry. Why not allow people to identify as First people, Australian, European Australian, Eurasian Australian, Indian Australian, Chinese Australian, African Australian, Eurasian etc as well, as that would for many better reflect their actual cultural identity than reeling off a number of countries of origin that have little bearing on who they are as individuals. This would allow government funding to be better targeted to these communities.

Disabilities within the community have always been undercounted and under recognised which partially led to NDIS being overwhelmed! Rather than most people trying to exploit the system it was a case of the quiet Australians realising services are available to better their quality of life and finally stepping forward to use them. There are many still who should access NDIS that are not because they have always provided the care and supports themselves, these people however are aging and services will be further overwhelmed when the full impact of this aging population occurs. Many disabled people also need more services as they age and at earlier ages, these changing needs could be better accounted for with better data collection and future planning. The fully independent window is smaller for people with certain disabilities and better targeted questions could help government to better plan for their future needs as well.

Homeschooling data should be collected to better reflect and understand changing community/household dynamics, attitudes, reasons, needs and requirements.

Long term health conditions should have more data collected on them to better plan and understand potential long term needs, impacts and requirements.

Please do not removed the number of births, as an amateur genelogists census records are a vital source of information and this question is an important historical one for family researchers.