Things they could have asked on the census

Last night was census night, and thankfully, unlike the last census, it appears the Bureau of Statistics has worked out how to do performance testing. 

Unfortunately, the badly defunded Bureau of Statistics also appears to have next to no forsight and have squandered the opportunity the census provides to give us the most vanilla version it could think of. There's no thinking outside the box for this government.

I completed the whole thing in about ten minutes. It felt incredibly lightweight. Once the rigmarole of setting up the account was done, it came down to answering some pretty easy questions. 

• Name, address, date of birth
• Marital status
• Religion
• Salary
• Employment status
• Had I done any unpaid work around the house over the last week or so?
• Was I a carer?
• Did I have a disability?
• What language did I speak at home?
• Did I identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?
• Where were my parents born?

Standard stuff. 

But there was a lot of things that either got up my nose, felt like a missed opportunity or felt misguided in it's white privileged shitfuckery. 

First point - are you a male or female. Part of me thinks this doesn't matter, just as I think courtesy titles don't matter. I can't remember if they asked for my courtesy title - but I'm a MS - not a Mrs, not a Miss. Part of me wants to do a PhD so I can be a Doctor and just be done with it. But the male/female thing felt kack-handed when you had to go hunting for the non-binary option. Why not just put the non-binary option out there instead of having to go hunt for it. 

Of, then there's the marital status questions: 

They asked what is your marital status:

Umm... again, I revolt when asked my marital status for a a number of reasons. Yes, I'm single, never married, but what does this have to do with the price of eggs? And what about those who are in loving, committed relationships who live together? Why aren't they counted? I don't get why they need this question. Marriage is an antiquated system where women are bartered as chattel. I don't get why if they want to see what we are doing in the bedroom they could accomodate for other types of relationships. Shacked up. It's complicated. Screwing around. Tinder Trashbag. Mummy issues...

It would have been good to have a question about adult children living at home. Sure, the household questions will show you who is living in a household, but will they say why? No questions about whether you live near your family either. 

Also, there was no questions about if you identify as LGBTQI+. This was the biggest wasted opportunity of the census, but when the Minister in charge of the census is a conservative religious nutbag, what else is going to happen? Many of my LGBTQI+ friends are VERY frustrated by this. Sure, as a cis-gender straight woman this doesn't impact me - but it affects many of my wonderful friends. When you're potentially not gathering information on more than ten percent of the community, that sucks. I complained about this in the census's comments section.  

Another friend was frustrated by the disability questions, saying that unless you were caring for somebody severely disabled, there was no way to be counted.

Somebody else mentioned that the health questions were too scant. 

Another said there should have been something about pet ownership, other than the fact that the Federal Government doesn't give a crap about how may pets we own. 

It just felt like a wasted opportunity to discover more about the nation than just the bare bones. 

But then again, when has this Federal Government gone above and beyond for anybody who isn't a millionaire?

Surely I can't be the only one thinking these things. 

Today's Song: 

Today's Cards: 

Enchanted Map: Protecting Treasure

Archetype Card: Monk/Nun

Cards Against Humanity: In the new Disney Original Movie, Hannah Montana struggles with    A DECENT FUCKING INTERNET CONNECTION for the first time.