The Albanese government has partially backflipped on a decision to exclude LGBTIQA+ questions in the 2026 census after backlash from across the political spectrum and from Australia’s queer community.
The census will now include one question about sexual preference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Friday morning, but seemingly not questions related to gender-identity, intersex status or being trans.
This prompted the Greens to say they would force a vote on including other LGBTIQA+ questions in the 2026 census when parliament returns if the PM didn’t commit to including gender-identity and intersex status questions among others related to the queer community.
“If we don’t keep the pressure up Albanese will keep on feeding us scraps and half measures,” said Greens LGBTIQA+ spokesperson Stephen Bates, adding that the PM – panicked by criticism this week – was “trying to split the queer community down the middle”.
“They need to count us in, all of us, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, intersex and everything in between,” Bates said.
On ABC radio in Melbourne on Friday morning, the PM told host Rafael Epstein that the government had spoken to the Australian Bureau of Statistics to include one question related to the LGBTIQA+ community in the upcoming census testing. Census testing is conducted before final questions are introduced into the official census.
“We’ve been talking with the Australian Bureau of Statistics and they’re going to test for a new question, one question about sexuality, sexual preference,” said Albanese.
The partial backflip comes after a week of backlash from LGBTI+ community groups and even within Labor’s own ranks. By Thursday morning, six Labor MPs, including assistant health minister Ged Kearney, had broken ranks by publicly calling for the government to reverse its decision to exclude the questions.
“I’ve heard firsthand how important data is to this work,” Kearney said on Thursday. “I’m working to ensure these views are represented within the Albanese Labor government.”
On Thursday, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody also called on the Albanese government to reconsider its decision.
Zann Maxwell, the Labor candidate for Sydney lord mayor in the upcoming September 14 NSW local government elections, thanked the six MPs who had spoken out, saying their dedication to LGBTIQA+ rights made the victory possible.
“This outcome is a victory for LGBTIQ+ Australians and underscores the strength of our internal party advocacy, particularly the powerful efforts of Rainbow Labor,” he said. “I’m proud to have been a member of the executive team whose statement set this successful internal advocacy in motion”.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras also welcomed the decision, saying it was the right step forward towards better representation.
“However, true engagement requires more than testing — it calls for a commitment to inclusivity and accurate reflection of our community’s diversity,” the organisation said.
“We hope this process leads to meaningful inclusion in the final census.”
Equality Australia also welcomed the inclusion but expressed some hesitance around how the government would cover other topics including trans and gender diverse people.
“We welcome the inclusion of a sexual orientation question but the national snapshot of our nation must include all of us, not just some of us,” said Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown.
“The federal government shouldn’t pick and choose those of us who are worthy of being counted.”
The initial reason behind the government’s decision to ditch census questions about LGBTI+ Australians was to avoid “divisive debates”, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said earlier this week, before the decision was partially reversed.
“We’ve seen how divisive debates have played out across our country, and the last thing we want to do is inflict that debate on a sector of our community right now,” he said.
This was met with fiery backlash from across Labor’s ranks. A federal Labor minister’s staffer told GSN they were “devastated” by the initial 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 agreed to initially include the questions, they said.
Before the partial reversal, Opposition leader Peter Dutton welcomed the government’s rejection of LGBTQIA+ census questions, labelling any potential inclusion of them as part of a “woke agenda”.
“I think the set of questions that we’ve got at the moment – the long-term way in which we’ve collected this data – has stood us well as a country,” he said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics will now undertake testing around the question on sexuality in the census, and if successful it will be included in the 2026 census.
Editor’s note: Journalist Eliot Hastie is a Mardi Gras member for discount purposes only.
Correction: The PM spoke about the census on ABC radio in Melbourne on Friday morning, not Thursday morning as reported originally in one instance of this article.
Gay Sydney News reporter