The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING, WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
TUESDAY, 11 AUGUST 2026
SUBJECTS: 2026 Census
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Tonight is Census night, and if you don’t know what that is, it’s something the Australian Bureau of Statistics does every five years to count every person and every household in Australia. It’s actually a huge thing to do. Technically, it’s called the Census of Population and Housing. It gives the ABS a snapshot of Australia on a particular night. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister responsible for the Census. He joins us. Welcome!
ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Patricia, happy Census Day!
PATRICIA KARVELAS: It is exciting, I will admit that. You’re an economist. Why is the Census important?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, tonight’s the night where we count the country and get those nation-building numbers. This will determine the flows of GST to states and territories, where we put centres for dealing with people with long-term health conditions. It’ll shape where new schools are located, where bus routes are placed and it’s important too for businesses who might be looking as to whether to open a new store, or for non-profits who are looking as to where to provide services to vulnerable communities.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: What are the new questions that are in this Census that you think are particularly interesting or exciting tonight in terms of capturing new data?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, this year, in common with a range of other countries such as Canada, we’re including questions on gender and sexual identity. They’re questions asked only of people over 16 and there’s a ‘prefer not to answer’ option. These are questions that the LGBTQ+ community has been calling for, for decades, and which are important for providing better targeted services to that vulnerable population.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, so that’s the biggest change?
ANDREW LEIGH: That’s the most significant change. It’s a new topic that’s been added, with questions drafted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, and tonight is the night. What happens if people miss it?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, some people have already filled in the Census. Some three and a half million people, as of this morning, had already done the Census in anticipation of tonight. The ABS would ideally like people to do it tonight. But if people don’t, then there’ll be a mop-up period in which you can answer the Census for where you were on Tuesday night.
For you, of course, you’ll be away from your home in Melbourne, here in Canberra, in common with all of my parliamentary colleagues who’ll be filling in a Canberra Census rather than doing the Census in their electorates, where they’d be at home.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: The Census, you mentioned the LGBTIQ issue. It doesn’t include a question about intersex status and that was really contentious at the time. Is that something you will seek to rectify?
ANDREW LEIGH: It was carefully tested. It was recommended to the Australian Bureau of Statistics by an LGBT+ advisory group. But intersex characteristics are extremely rare and the question wording was such that the ABS thought that the majority of people who’d be answering it would be answering it erroneously. So it wouldn’t be producing useful data for that very vulnerable population.
That’s a question which the ABS currently believes is better asked in specific health surveys rather than in the general Census, because we want the Census to produce good data that’s valuable for policymaking.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay and it’s obviously a really big undertaking. A lot can go wrong. Remember, the Censusfail several years ago?
ANDREW LEIGH: I certainly do and that Censusfail of 2016 led to important engagement by the Australian Bureau of Statistics with our cybersecurity authorities. It’s been the subject of many of my conversations with David Gruen, who heads the ABS, and the rest of his team and there were a lot of important learnings that came out of that Census that were implemented in the 2021 Census and which we continue to work on this time around.
The ABS engages extensively with national security and cybersecurity authorities, both here and overseas, in order to make sure the integrity of that data. They’re using the best available encryption technologies to keep Australians’ data safe.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I have to ask another question just on a political issue of the day. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister just apologise to the Japanese Prime Minister and the Japanese and settle this issue in relation to this podcast?
ANDREW LEIGH: Look Patricia, this is based on a misinterpretation. The Prime Minister has made clear that this is a strong relationship that he has a good relationship with the Japanese Prime Minister and I think we’ve had indications of that kind coming from Japan overnight.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You say it’s a misinterpretation. I’ve watched it, other people have. Not everyone agrees that it’s a misinterpretation. So why not apologise for how it’s been received?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, as I understand it, offence hasn’t been taken by the Japanese Prime Minister. This is an issue which has been blown up based on a misinterpretation of what happened in the podcast.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay. It’s probably very hard for the Japanese Prime Minister, you’d have to agree, to express being upset, given?...
ANDREW LEIGH: We have an extraordinarily strong relationship with…
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Difficult for women in politics to sort of, if she made a big deal about it, wouldn’t kind of work well for her necessarily. So she doesn’t have to express it to get an apology, does she?
ANDREW LEIGH: Patricia, we have a remarkably strong relationship with Japan and the Australian and Japanese Prime Ministers have a strong personal bond. That is reflected in the recent visit and the way in which that relationship has gone from strength to strength. They’re a key partner in economics, in security, in person-to-person engagement. Japanese tourism is something which has strengthened and of course the number of Japanese coming to Australia. So it’s a very strong bilateral relationship underpinned by a strong political bond.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Alright. We’ll have to leave it there. Thank you. Happy Census!
ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Patricia, happy Census day to you too!
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You live in Canberra so you’ll be able to do it correctly!
ANDREW LEIGH: We all filled it out over the weekend. We got the kids to fill out each of their sections, which I think is a good way of having a conversation about these sorts of issues and I think many Australian households will enjoy that conversation as they fill in the Census tonight.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Yeah it is fun. I mean, my idea of fun anyway.
ANDREW LEIGH: For stats nerds like us!
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Yes, it is. Andrew Leigh there, who is the Assistant Minister responsible for the Census, which is tonight.
ENDS