Mind your language - make the Census count

Your responses to the 2011 census could impact the community’s welfare and productivity in keeping certain cultural values alive

BY PAWAN LUTHRA

Every five years for the past hundred years, the Australian Government does a stocktake on its people, their habits, lifestyle, backgrounds etc., and then uses this data to distribute funding. Federal funding arrangements to the states and territories, including allocation of GST revenue, are based on census information. In fact, over 40 billion dollars of Federal monies are distributed to States and Territories based on the data collected during the census. In modern times one National Census is done, but in the early years of the census, each State did its own and then figures were counted together. However, this created confusion as different parameters were being used.

The census underpins Australia’s democracy and is crucial to communities, private institutions and all levels of government when planning infrastructure, community services and facilities where you live

The census underpins Australia’s democracy and is crucial to communities, private institutions and all levels of government when planning infrastructure, community services and facilities where you live. In fact, strategic and tactical decisions are made to ensure that they, as a Government, are delivering to their constituents.

For the Indian Australian community it is important that they do link their census information to their Indian roots. The Australian Hindi Committee issued a press release about the census, in which they asked that the Australian Hindi community should declare their language in question 16 of the census form. They said that Government policies such as which language to teach in schools, depend on official statistics. The press release requested that if you speak one of the regional Indian languages to also write Hindi in the census form.

“This year, the census night is August 9 and on this day 9 million households will have the opportunity of telling us more about themselves,” said Mr Paul Lowe, Head of the Census Population Program from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. “In fact, we are open to people filling up their form online also, if they prefer. These forms are available online from end-July but need to be only completed on August 9.”

Paul Lowe has been with this programme for 25 years and stated, “The modern census has certainly come a long way since the earlier ones. One example of this can be seen in some of the questions which are omitted from this year’s form. Earlier census forms had questions such as “how many idiots are in this house” - a difficult question to ask these days! Another outdated question was whether or not the toilet was located in the house or outside, or if it was self-flushing or not. Census workers in the past were never paid for the hard work that they did. Over 16,000 census collectors are being used this year and yes, they get paid for their time and effort,” Mr Lowe told Indian Link.

It seems in early census reports, Aborigines were not counted in the census nor asked to complete the forms. Modern equality laws however, ensure that every Australian and even Temporary Residents now are counted and heard!

Paul Lowe said that the planning and preparation for the census has been ongoing for 5 years, over 43,000 census collectors will be used and every corner of Australia will be covered

Paul Lowe said that the planning and preparation for the census has been ongoing for 5 years, over 43,000 census collectors will be used and every corner of Australia will be covered. It will certainly shed a light on who we are. “One of the underlying issues which we need to understand is the impact of the global financial crisis on Australia. Do note that the last census in 2006 was before the GFC, now this is the post-GFC world,” he said.

It is time to be counted and August 9 is the night - just please, mind your language!