Next year’s census has a very subtle edit that may completely change the way Australia sees itself and have drastic consequences for the way government money is spent on welfare and education.
For the first time since the “no religion” option was introduced in 1991, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will place it first on a list of answers to the question “what is the person’s religion”, and move the “Catholic” option into second position.
As every politician knows, getting to top spot on the ballot paper has a big impact.
In the last census taken in 2011, 5.4 million people picked the “Catholic” box and a total of 13.1 million Australians (61.1 per cent) said their religion was some type of Christianity. Meanwhile 4.7 million (22.2 per cent) Australians picked “no religion”, or wrote down agnosticism, atheism, humanism or rationalism. The “no religion” option was in a difficult-to-find location under the “other please specify” box.
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the ACL has previously reminded members about the importance of ticking the right box on the census form. Governments use the ABS data to “plan for services and infrastructure” and “we need to prove the size of the constituency who hold these values,” the ACL told members in August 2011.
So is it possible Australia is no longer a Christian nation? When a similar change was introduced into the New Zealand census the country’s Christians lost their position as the majority and the number of people recording no religion jumped from 35 per cent to 42 per cent.
And placing the ‘no religion’ box at the top of the list could swing the results significantly, according to associate professor Roger Wilkins at the University of Melbourne