Two senior Labor ministers once criticised the former Coalition government of "playing politics" with the census after it was revealed in 2019 that LGBTIQ+ questions had been scrapped in the national survey after a Liberal minister "expressed a preference" about their potential inclusion.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and Cities Minister Jenny McAllister, who were both in opposition in 2019, publicly criticised then-prime minister Scott Morrison's Coalition government for not including questions about sexual orientation and gender in census test forms.
The revelation comes as current Labor MPs Josh Burns and Peter Khalil became the first Labor MPs to publicly call for the Labor government to reverse its dumping of LGBTIQ+ questions from the 2026 census.
Many other Labor MPs have privately vented their frustration with the decision, including in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, three Coalition MPs told the Herald that they wouldn’t be bothered by the inclusion of the questions – and a Labor staffer for a federal minister told GSN that they were “devastated" by the government's decision.
"It’s a gut punch to all the LGBTQIA+ staffers who hold the government up. It’s become a massive issue now … when it would have been nothing" had the government included the questions, they said.
Now in power, the Labor government announced on Sunday that it would not proceed with including questions on sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex characteristics in the 2026 national survey despite it being Labor policy in its 2023 national platform policy document.
But in an October 2019 media release titled "Government Play Politics with Census", McAllister and Jones criticised the then-Coalition minister responsible for the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Michael Sukkar, for interfering with the census.
At the time, The Guardian reported that then-Australian Statistician David Kalisch revealed during a Senate grilling that Sukkar’s office did “express a preference” about inclusion of new gender and sexuality questions, after which Kalisch made the “ultimate call” not to use 20,000 census test forms which included them.
Asked if the then-government’s preference was to exclude gender and sexuality questions, Kalisch replied: “They were contemplating what response they would make around census topics, and didn’t want the census test to preempt that decision.”
Jones and McAllister seized on the comments, saying in their joint statement at the time that "the ABS has admitted that they scrapped proposed new questions about gender and sexuality from a census trial this year after an intervention from Minister Sukkar’s office".
McAllister suggested that the reason for the exclusion "may just be a culture war issue for the government, but it has real consequences. It impacts our ability to address the health and wellbeing challenges facing the LGBTI community".
“It is clear from evidence provided today by ABS that Minister Sukkar’s office interfered to exclude questions on gender and sexuality from the census form," she said. "The key question remaining is why.
“The Minister’s preference to exclude questions on sexual orientation and gender identity means that LGBTI Australians remain ‘unseen'."
Jones said in the release that “LGBTI Australians have been ignored in Australian policy planning for too long” and that “Australians should feel let down that their Government are more interested in playing politics than doing the job Australians expect and deserve".
“Even after years of progress, there are still significant health and wellbeing disparities that affect Australia’s LGBTI community," he said.
In a separate tweet, Jones claimed that the Coalition government "didn't want to ask questions on Sexual Orientation. Did this come from the PM?"
Gay Sydney News approached Jones via text just after 5.30pm on Thursday for comment about his and McAllister’s 2019 comments. We had not received a response at the time of publication.
Ben Grubb is the founder and editor of Gay Sydney News, an independent publication covering LGBTQIA+ news. A journalist with more than 15 years' experience, he has reported and edited for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAToday, Brisbane Times, The Australian Financial Review, News.com.au, ZDNet, TelecomTimes and iTnews, primarily on the topic of technology. He previously hosted The Informer, a queer current affairs program on Melbourne’s JOY 94.9 radio station, and contributes to LGBTQIA+ media including Stun Magazine. Ben has also appeared as a technology commentator on Channel Ten's The Project, ABC RN’s Download This Show and commercial radio stations 2UE, 2GB and 6PR. Contact Ben: [email protected]
