Count Us In

The history:  

In the 2021 Census, LGBTIQ+ people were left uncounted. 

It was a wasted opportunity to gather crucial information about the kinds of services all our communities need. 

After Equality Australia and April Long filed a complaint, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) issued a statement of regret for the harm this caused and committed to continuing to work with LGBTIQ+ communities to develop new questions.  

But in 2024, the federal government announced it would not go ahead with them.  

With your help, our community responded quickly and effectively. In less than a month, the Government reversed its decision. 

Unfortunately, intersex people won’t be counted this Census after the ABS did not recommend the question because of the testing results.  

We will continue to advocate for the inclusion of intersex people in a future census. But for now, this is a major step forward to understanding who we are. 

What we know so far: 

Data released by the ABS last year estimates that 4.5 per cent of Australians aged 16 years or older are LGBTI+, meaning more than 900,000 Australians fit under the LGBTI+ umbrella.   

Almost 10 per cent of younger people aged 16 to 24 identify as LGBTI+. 

This was the first time ever that the ABS has had a sufficient sample size to extract such findings by combining the results from four household surveys, totalling almost 45,000 respondents.