The PR Blog

Counting the Uncountable: What the Census No Longer Wants to Know – And Why That Should Worry Us

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.”
-  Gospel of Luke 2:1

The story of Jesus begins with a government form. Joseph and Mary weren’t in Bethlehem for a family reunion. They were there because Rome was counting heads... and wallets. The census was the long arm of the state reaching into the lives of ordinary people, disrupting them not with swords, but scrolls.

And here we are, two thousand years later, still filling out forms. The methods have changed....no donkeys or dusty scrolls, just tablets and touchscreen drop-downs.....but the intent remains eerily similar. Governments count us not to understand us, but to calculate us.

Once upon a time, a census was a solemn reckoning, a headcount, a ledger, a listing of souls and properties.

In the days of Caesar Augustus, it was an instrument of empire, designed for taxation and military service. Every man to his own town, every name to his ruler. In that ancient act of accounting,

Mary and Joseph found themselves journeying to Bethlehem...  and so history, prophecy, and governance collided in a stable.

Australia’s census, too, began in earnest as a way to measure and manage a growing nation. A pastoral tool, a fiscal ledger, and later, a multicultural map. It told the truth, quietly, plainly, about who we were becoming.

But now, in a strange turn, the census no longer wishes to know certain things. Ethnicity: once recorded with precision, awkwardness, and sometimes pride, it is quietly being erased. In 2026, for the first time in decades, Australians may be asked everything except what ethnic or cultural background they come from.

Why?

We’re told it’s about streamlining. That roads, hospitals, and infrastructure don’t need your ancestry to function. That we should be seen only as Australians, all the same.

But we are not all the same. And governments know that better than anyone. Some Aussies are more Aussie than others. 

Ethnicity data helps identify disadvantage, discrimination, linguistic needs, ageing patterns, and migration trends. It informs education funding, health outreach, and community services. To delete this data is not efficiency -  it is amnesia.

More likely, this omission is not about roads, but realities too awkward to report.

Over 30% of Australians are now overseas-born. In some suburbs, Anglo-Celtic Australians are no longer the majority. Languages, customs, and cultures are shifting at a pace faster than many expected, and faster still than many would publicly admit. 

Is this going to be a thing of the past?

I fear so.

There’s a quiet dismay rippling through the country: not from hate or bigotry, but from a sense of dislocation. Streets feel unfamiliar. Classrooms don’t echo with the same sense of self. The imagined community of “Australia” is harder to describe, let alone unify.

So, the data disappears.

It’s safer that way. For the bureaucracy, for the politicians, and for the fragile ideal of multicultural harmony.

“We don’t see colour- we see Australians.”

It sounds noble. But it can also be a way to ignore lived experience. To avoid awkward truths. To shelve discussions about integration, assimilation, or the cohesion of values.

And perhaps that is the true reason. Not that ethnicity is irrelevant....but that it is too relevant. Too revealing. Maybe this is just too " Australian  for modern Australia "

And while this quiet erasure unfolds, we’re urged to focus our attention elsewhere. 

What have we done? Or more importantly what have our governments done to us? 

Climate change. Net zero. Carbon footprints. We’re warned of rising sea levels while neighbourhoods change beyond recognition. Government action is loud on the global, silent on the local.

One could be forgiven for suspecting a bait-and-switch. That the crises we’re told to fear are the ones that generate international summits, easy taxes, and theatrical virtue; while the slow erosion of shared identity is left unmeasured, undebated, and unspoken.

“It’s far safer to talk about melting glaciers than melting civic unity.”

In the end, a census is not just a counting of people. It is a declaration of what matters. And in this new silence, something is being said very clearly:

Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just belong.... but to what I ask? 

Let’s be blunt. The census exists to serve the state. It helps governments decide where to build roads, how to allocate funding, and how to justify taxes. It’s a spreadsheet before it’s a snapshot. You are counted not as a person, but as a unit of economic impact.

Which explains why certain questions stay and others vanish.

Income? Still there. Housing type? Still there. Who you live with, what religion you follow, whether you work from home, what kind of internet you use, all dutifully collected.

But ethnicity? That’s now too complicated, too political, or too uncomfortable.

The irony is thick. We’re told the state values “diversity” at every turn... except, apparently, when it comes to recording it. One might conclude that diversity is a fine thing to market, but a fiddly thing to fund. Because if a census shows stark inequalities between ethnic groups - education gaps, health disparities, income divides - well, someone might expect something to be done about it.

Far easier, then, to not ask. If you don't ask the question, you don't get the answer. 

There’s a deeper game here. The census gives a nation the illusion of understanding itself, but it is also a tool of selective blindness. It highlights what the state needs to run efficiently - and quietly ignores what might disrupt the flow.

Ethnicity is messy. Tax brackets are tidy.

The truth is, we are only counted when it’s convenient. Our existence is meaningful to the government only insofar as it contributes to the treasury, the infrastructure model, or the voting map. You’re not really a person in the census. You’re an input variable.

We’ve come a long way from Bethlehem, yes. But not as far as we might think.

Render Unto...

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” said Jesus. The implication, of course, is that some things do not belong to Caesar. Some things are beyond the census. Identity. Soul. Worth.

But Caesar, like Canberra, has a habit of extending his reach. He counts our bedrooms, our mortgages, our marriage status. And now, having grown weary of meaning or feeling or difference, he stops counting some things altogether.

You are, in the end, only as visible as the state finds you useful.

So next time you sit down to do the census, take a moment. Ask yourself: who’s counting, and what do they want from me?

Because the numbers may be silent, but they are speaking -  about what matters, and who no longer does. Because the numbers may be silent, but they are speaking -   about what matters, and who no longer does.