ABS Review of Content and Procedures of Content and Procedures for 2006 FOR 2006 CENSUS

At present the Australian Bureau of Statistics is conducting a consultation about the proposed content and procedures for the 2006 Census. There are a number of issues of real concern in their proposals for what questions should be included in the 2006 Census.

The major concern is the proposal to dramatically reduce the detail in questions on Language Spoken at Home and Proficiency in English in the 2006 Census.

This will have dramatic consequences for all areas of community service provision. If the ABS proposal is successful, the only output categories available in 2006 for Language will be ‘English’ and ‘Other’ languages, which is grossly inadequate for the all the current uses of language data of which we are aware.

In its Information Paper, ABS recognises the value of questions on language as a basis for planning and provision of the broad range of community services to our communities. The ABS are concerned to limit the size of the Census questionnaire to avoid respondent fatigue when completing the form.

They propose that the Language question be downgraded to make space for questions on Time Use and Disability. These are undoubtedly interesting and useful things to know for small areas. Certainly WESTIR has long been actively supportive of including a question on disability in the Census, as no other sources of information are available for small areas.

But, the Language question reveals one of the basic characteristics of the Australian population – its active ethnicity. ABS acknowledges this in its information paper for the consultation. But they are still proposing to reduce the availability of detailed language data to once every ten years. Certainly in areas of rapid demographic change and growing multiculturalism, such as Western Sydney, this is grossly inadequate.

Any attempt to reduce the rich detail of current language data to merely ‘English’ and ‘Other’ should be strongly resisted.

What Should You Do?
• Download a copy of the full Information Paper on ‘ABS Views on Content and Procedures – 2006 Census’ from the ABS website at: http://www.abs.gov.au [and follow the menu link to Census].
• Examine the proposals for the Language questions on P. 59 of that document.
• Put a submission to the ABS Consultation, opposing any reduction in the type and detail of language data available from the 2006 Census. This should also include some deion of your current uses of Language data.
• Details of how to make a submission to the consultation are contained in Chapter 5 [pp15-17] of the Information Paper.
• But Hurry…the time for the consultation is very short. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 30 July 2003.

Peter Rogers
WESTIR Ltd
21 July 2003

Source: communitybuilders.nsw - Forums - communitybuilders.nsw Discussion Forum

2006 Census Issue - Urgent

Peter Rogers