Documents in relation to the wording of the Census religion question

Written by Claude Haiku 5.5 from the extracted text on 20 Oct 2026. It can miss or misread redacted and scanned pages. Check the source before relying on it.

The release contains correspondence between the ABS and the Macedonian Communities Council of Australia (MCCA), a 2026 Census topic review executive meeting brief, draft question wording and testing attachments, and internal emails about the religion question. The ABS's 17 September 2024 summary of an 5 August 2024 meeting records that the ABS had decided not to proceed with the 2024 Census Test and would test a revised question through other mechanisms. Concerns centred on the "Greek Orthodox" picklist option, which the MCCA said excluded other Orthodox churches. Options discussed included removing the picklist entirely, renaming the option "Eastern Orthodox Christian" (which would prevent coding to specific Orthodox groups), and retaining the current disaggregated classification because third parties use the data. The ABS's internal brief notes 13 submissions on the topic and almost 600 feedback comments from the 2021 Census on Orthodox options. The documents also cover the 2021, 2016 and earlier religion question wording, and rejected write-in options due to respondent burden and data quality risks. Personal information of officials is largely redacted.