Niall Clugston writes: I hope that no one who boycotts the Census ever complains about statistics being inaccurate.
Adrian Hempell writes: The moral panic over the census, being furiously stoked by Bernard Keane, is reaching peak stupid. Where is the moral panic over the government collecting names and addresses for the registration of births, deaths and marriages?
Where is the moral panic over the government collecting names and addresses to deliver Medicare, the PBS, or public hospital services, all of which gather much more detailed data than the few very high-level questions about disability in the census?
Where is the moral panic over the government collecting names and addresses to collect tax, or deliver social security benefits, both of which reveal far more detail than the single question in the census that asks you to nominate an income bracket?
Beryce Nelson writes: Re. “You’ve decided to boycott the census. Now what?” (yesterday). Not sure if this is still valid but in the 1990s there was a ruling by the High Court — think it is referred to as the Brennan ruling — that no one could enter your property without specific permission. Quite a few farmers and other acreage property owners have used this successfully in more recent times to prevent mining companies meeting with them to demand access. It means getting a warrant with grounds that would satisfy the High Court ruling apparently. Worth checking re the ABS and others alleging their god-given right to enter your property at any time.
Why do you think it’s *moral* panic, Adrian? It’s more technological than that, we don’t think the ABS is capable of preventing other departments from accessing the information in the future, or hackers from illegally accessing it. The arguments for it seem to be “well, you’ve already released it to everyone on Facebook, so why should it matter?
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/twowrong.html
I completed the census yesterday. There weren’t any questions I objected to. Not even providing my email address. Most emails I receive I delete unread and unopened, so even if a third party gets hold of it it won’t affect me.
Very cheap arguments being used against Keane’s dispassionate expose of the ABS’ unnecessary and intrusive demand for irrelevant data that could be used against us or our fellow citizens in the future.
To call it a “moral panic” is juvenile in the extreme – it has nothing to do with morals and everything to do with freedom and privacy. Consecutive census details, linked in the way that is now planned, would be able, for example, to identify who was likely to be living in a long-term same-sex relationship, something that was illegal not so long ago – in past years, this could have been used by government authorities to target same-sex couples for harassment.
And, as for blaming Keane, or anyone else highlighting the dangers of the new arrangements, for future statistical inaccuracy, that is, again, rather juvenile. There’ll be a significant body of people who, regardless of information published by journalists, will smell a rat and give false information – and that will be the fault of this unjustifiable (and so far unjustified by the ABS) intrusion into our privacy.
The Census and Statistics Act 1905 does authorise employees of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to enter a property to collect statistics. No warrant is required.