Unlike census questionnaires in the US, New Zealand and Canada, the Australian Census doesn’t include questions about “race” or “ethnicity” and asks instead about “ancestry”.
That may be about to change, with new Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles saying he wants a new approach to “ethnicity” data in the next census in 2026.
Without this data, Giles said, Australia faces a “fundamental barrier to understanding the issues that face multicultural Australians.”
