Minister Sukkar:
Good morning, thanks so much for being here. I wanted to get everybody here today to provide an outline of the arrangements and some of the unique aspects of this year’s Census which is due to take place on Tuesday, 10th August. With just a few weeks to go until Census night, we thought it was an opportune time to talk about how it will be a bit different.
I’m joined by the Australian statistician, David Gruen. Him and his team at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, I must say, have done a phenomenal job in preparing for this year’s Census. But before I do so, I want to reflect on the enormous value of the Census, the enormous value that is provided by our men and women who work for the ABS and indeed the expanding team that the ABS will be over the next few weeks.
As most Australians know and as we will try and emphasise in our advertising campaign, the Census data underpins a whole manner of government decisions relating to major policy and expenditure areas from infrastructure, health, education and transport. It’s used extensively for electoral boundaries, Federal Government grant allocations and of course, GST distribution. It plays a critical role in improving Australia’s economic and social infrastructure. It informs so many of our decisions and in the advertising campaign which will commence on the 4th July, we’ll be seeking to emphasise and reinforce that with Australians who I think implicitly understand that the answers that they provide in the Census will make a huge difference.
The numbers at a glance – this is a huge undertaking. The ABS undertakes this massive logistical exercise and this year is no different. It takes seven years from planning through to the release of the data, to conduct a Census. To give Australians an idea about how big it is, here are some facts. Recruitment activities are currently underway with 38,000 temporary jobs required across Australia. The largest cohort of those 38,000 is 20,000 field officers within local areas and this is a crucial workforce which will help participation in the 2021 Census. The ABS will be sending out 15 million letters over a five-week period in August and September and over 10 million households will be contacted by the ABS either by mail or in person, by field officers. Information about the Census will also be available in up to 29 languages. On any measure, a massive logistical undertaking which David Gruen, Australia’s statistician, will speak a bit more about.
So, what’s changed? When we think back to the 2016 Census and now to the 2021 Census, I think it’s useful to just outline some of the changes. In relation to security, the ABS has built a completely new Census digital service for this year’s Census. Testing and assurance activities have been ongoing and have been under close oversight by the Government, with a focus on performance and obviously security. The ABS – and I want to congratulate David and his team – has worked closely with the Australian Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Defence and the Digital Transformation Agency, to ensure state of the art cyber security protections are put in place. We’re also undertaking rigorous testing including something that I learnt about not too long ago from you, David – ethical hacks of our IT systems, and a simulated distributed denial of service attack, to ensure our systems are robust and are in the best shape possible for some of the issues that have occurred in the past. Building on a range of monitoring tools to provide real time alerts on issues – that’s being conducted through that work as well – and conducting independent security assessments of our Census systems through the Australian Signals Directorate IRAP program and the assessors are endorsed by ASD. As I said, the Digital Transformation Agency has also, in their work with the ABS, confirmed that the Census digital service is compliant with the digital services standards for Australian Government services. I also want to emphasise that all information collected in the Census will be securely hosted in Australia and encrypted end-to-end to ensure that our data sovereignty is respected.
A couple of other things that have changed since the last Census. New topics. We’ve now got two new topics in relation to health and veterans. The question on long term health conditions which is new in this year’s Census, will present a list of conditions such as heart disease, arthritis and diabetes, from which Australians can select one or many. The Government will also be more equipped with a comprehensive understanding of our veteran community by asking a question on service in our military.
Another change on the process of the Census, which again David Gruen may wish to expand upon, is the extended timeframe that Australians will have to complete their Census. Census night is 10th August, but people don’t have to wait until Census night. If they know who will be home, reasonably, on 10th August, they can start their Census form as soon as they receive their instructions and those instructions will be sent to Australians seven to ten days prior to Census night. This extended timeframe is primarily designed with convenience in mind. People who have busy lives and who want to complete that Census as soon as they get it, while it’s in their mind, are encouraged to do so, again if they’re of a view that they reasonably know who is going to home on 10th August.
As I said in my opening remarks, an advertising campaign will begin on Sunday, 4th July. This will include advertisements on TV, radio, newspapers, outdoor advertising and of course, digital, and social media channels. It will obviously help raise awareness about the Census and as I said at the beginning it will also emphasise what I think is well understood amongst Australians, but just how important their data is and how important it is that as many Australians as possible complete the Census. The wonderful thing about the data we collect in Australia historically has been the very high rates of completion that we have and the ABS goes to great lengths to ensure that we get that participation up as high as possible and that’s a big part of what this advertising campaign will be about.
The Census is really fundamental to helping us plan as a country. It is critically important that everyone completes it as I said and as I keep emphasising. The ABS is doing everything it can, and I can assure Australians, it is doing everything that they can to deliver a very successful and seamless 2021 Census and I might ask David Gruen, Australia’s statistician, to add a bit more detail.
David Gruen:
Thanks Minister and thanks for coming to the press conference. The Census gives Australians a detailed picture of their communities and also of the nation. The Census provides enormous value to the country., in particular, the Census provides information at a local level that often can’t be found elsewhere. This information is relied upon by governments and also by lots of different organisations. Let me give two examples of organisations that use Census data. First, the Wheat Belt Business Network in Western Australia’s south west, provides support to businesses through advisory services, mentoring and networking. Through Census data, they identified that women in business are one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial demographics in the region. As a consequence, the Wheat Belt Business Network developed a business mentoring service which connects female business owners in the region with high profile and respected business leaders. A second example comes to mind because I spent last night sleeping rough up at the National Arboretum, the second example is about Orange Sky, which provides free laundry facilities, showers and conversation to the homeless. The Census provides the most reliable information on homelessness and Orange Sky uses Census data to determine where their services are most needed. These two examples, and many more case studies that you can find on the Census website, gives you a sense of the range of organisations that use Census data and what they use it for.
Let me now turn to the timeline and the significant milestones ahead and I’ll also describe how people can participate in the Census and what success will look like. The 2021 Census advertising campaign, as the Minister said, will start on Sunday, 4th July, and our Census phone service will open the next day to assist the public with quires. On 28th July, the Census online form will open. Households across the country will start to receive instruction letters by mail, in early August. These letters will include a unique login ID and instructions about how to complete the form online or, if people would prefer, how to order a paper form. For those who wish to complete the form online, they will be able to do it securely on a computer, on a tablet, or on their phone. We’re planning for around 75 per cent of forms to be done online - it was 63 per cent in 2016. Paper forms will be delivered to households in areas where completing online is less likely to be preferred or possible, for example, possibly because the internet connection is poor. As the Minister said, people can complete their Census as soon as they receive their letter if they know where they will be on Census night. And as the Minister also said, we will have more than 20,000 field offices working across the country to help people complete their Census, including reminding them that their Census is due. An innovation from last time – there will be Census information hubs that will be available in up to 400 locations across the country, providing a face to face way for the public to find out more about the Census or to get a paper form. And there will be fill-in-the-form sessions and information sessions in a range of community settings. Special processes are in place to count groups such as people experiencing homelessness and those in institutions such as hospitals and hotels. We will provide support for people who are deaf or find it hard to hear, blind or with low vision, including resources in Auslan and the ability to order brail and enlarged print forms. We are employing over 2,000 community field offices to specifically support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and the homeless. Census advertising will be translated into 19 Indigenous languages to help Indigenous communities to be counted.
Census information for people from multi-cultural background will be available in up to 29 languages. I was puzzled when I read up to 29 languages, I wondered why it was up to 19 languages. The answer is that radio ads will be in 29 languages, but other forms of communication will not be 29 languages, they’ll be less. There is in-language support, through telephone interpreter services. For those living in remote indigenous communities, the Census is conducted over an extended period, between July and August. That’s so the remote teams can get to the remote communities and visit multiple communities rather than doing everything right around 10th of August. Census staff will visit remote communities during July and August to help people complete the Census through face to face interviews. If for whatever reason we can’t get access to a community, our Census engagement managers will continue to work with the community to understand their issues and to allay concerns. All attempts will be made for Census staff to be recruited from within the communities of surrounding regions.
For this year’s Census we’ve got the added complication of needing to be ready to respond to possible interruptions because of Covid and of course, the safety of citizens and Census staff are of critical importance. We’ve undertaken extensive planning on how to engage with the community and how we protect our staff in the event of a Covid outbreak. Our planning includes quarantine facilities. We will ensure both incoming travellers from a declared hot spot and international arrivals staying in a state or territory quarantine facility, have the opportunity to complete the Census.
Last year’s October Census test involved 100,000 households in select locations across Australia. Our Covid-safe plan was tested in different states in this test. In Victoria we used a mail-only approach with no field staff, relying on letters and advertising because Victoria was locked down. In Sydney we tested a contactless approach where field offices dropped material at the letter box instead of knocking on doors and in South Australia we tested how we would withdraw our field staff in response to a sudden change in restrictions in that state and organised the safe return of field staff once restrictions were lessened. So, we don’t know exactly what will happen, but we have tested the various possibilities and we think we are as well organised as we can be with respect to Covid. While the Census test was small – it was 100,000 households, not 10 million – were glad to be able to test our systems and our work, health and safety processes ahead of the Census. The responsiveness of our Covid-safe plan continues to be tested as we have adapted our field operations, must recently in Victoria in response to the recent lockdown.
What will success look like? We have a range of metrics to judge success. We are aiming for an overall response rate of 95 per cent, which as the Minister said, is very high by the standards of other countries. Success hinges on the timely delivery of Census instructions across Australia about how to complete, and on providing a seamless and trouble-free experience for those who complete the form online.
The accuracy of counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people needs to be maintained. We had a significant under-count in 2016, that’s a group that is particularly hard to enumerate, and in so far as possible, we want to improve the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that we enumerate. This includes a particular focus on the response rate in the Northern Territory which of the states and territories has the lowest historical response rate.
We will also peruse high quality outputs including robust information from the new questions that the Minister talked about. Looking beyond the collection phase, data form the Census will be released in three phases – June and October of 2022 and in March of 2023. The Census will provide further insights into the impact of Covid-19 across the Australian population. We need everyone to be counted to tell the story of how Australia has changed and to plan for the future. As always, the Census will provide invaluable information including at the local level that governments, businesses, communities, and individuals can trust to make important decisions. The ABS is working hard to ensure that we deliver a safe, secure, and efficient 2021 Census and I thank everyone in Australia in advance for their participation. The Census provides critical information to plan for the future. It’s important that everyone completes. Thank you.
Minister Sukkar:
Well done, thank you, David. Thanks for being here everyone. I think we are happy to take questions.
Journalist:
Dr Gruen, this is the first Census I think that will coincide with an Olympic Games. You’ve got our Olympic team will actually have left because the competition starts 21st July before they can be counted and won’t get back in. Are we going to under-count our sporting stars and support staff in this year’s Census?
David Gruen:
That’s a good question, that’s a good question. We count people who are in Australia, so I think we could get back to you in some detail, but perhaps not at the press conference.
Journalist:
I understand that they will actually be in quarantine back in Australia on Census night.
David Gruen:
Well there you are, provided they are here in quarantine, they will be counted.
Journalist:
Dr Gruen in terms of the closed borders, does that have any material implications on what we might end up seeing in the Census data results and is it an opportunity to cut out the noise from other countries and tourists, is that how you’re viewing it?
David Gruen:
I’m not viewing closing the borders in any way other than focused on counting the people who are here. To the extent that there are people who would otherwise be here that are not, we won’t count them.
Journalist:
Just with regards to, you mentioned there the people who are in quarantine – whether that’s hotels or places like Howard Springs – so people who can we have details about how you will go about making sure that they are going to be included? Is it just a case of dropping forms at the hotel and then getting them delivered as they are getting their daily meals?
David Gruen:
So, one of the interesting things that other countries have discovered in conducting censuses through Covid is that the proportion of people filling them in online goes up and that is what we think may happen here. I mean we are obviously not in a situation of a…..you know, Covid is very much under control but we will do what is safe so clearly in a situation of quarantine, we have to be extremely careful and make sure that we are not in contact with people who are in quarantine. But we have ways of communication with them and we will use the ways that we have developed for the circumstances in which people are in. People are under quarantine because there are lockdowns so we’ll use those mechanisms to be in touch with people and we’ll encourage them to fill the forms in and perhaps they don’t have a lot of other things to do so they’ve got some time.
Journalist:
I apologise if this is in the pack but will those conditions that you were listing include mental health conditions and will they be aligned with the veteran data?
Minister Sukkar:
They will include mental health conditions, it’s quite an exhaustive list.
David Gruen:
Yeah, it’s a long list actually.
Minister Sukkar:
We’re very much hoping that people will exhaustively go through it. I think of the two new questions, they will, in some respects, try to achieve similar objectives but those long term health consequences – I don’t know if you’ve got the full list there, David – but it’s quite a long list and it does include mental health.
David Gruen:
I can read you the list if you’re interested. Arthritis, Asthma, cancer including remission, dementia including Alzheimer’s, diabetes excluding gestational diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, lung condition including COPD or emphysema, mental health condition including depression or anxiety, stroke, any other long-term health condition. So it’s a long list.
Journalist:
Over the last six months we’ve seen a fair increase in ransomware attacks and denial of service attacks. Census’s are a very high-prize target. Has that gone into the Government’s thinking and, Dr Gruen, given what happened in 2016, how confident are you about this one?
Minister Sukkar:
It’s been probably one of the biggest sources of conversation between myself and Dr Gruen and I think we’re very pleased that the ABS has really invested and incorporated the agencies that I spoke about – whether it’s ASD or the cyber security centre – from the commencement. I suppose there’s always a caveat that you don’t know what you don’t know but we feel about as prepared as we can and when you think about things like distributor denial of service attacks, we have conducted some of the most thorough tests in relation to that. The ethical hacks, which I spoke about, getting together some of the, I think we’d consider, David, some of the best minds in the country to really test our thinking, test the systems, test the Census. It’s something that will be at the front of our minds until the Census is done and you can never call mission-accomplished on this, but I think we’ve invested more than probably anyone could have imagined in security. I don’t know if you wanted to add, David?
David Gruen:
All I wanted to add was ‘never say never’ because it’s not possible to completely eliminate the risks of cyber attacks as is clear form experience but obviously everybody who is working on the Census is acutely aware of what happened in 2016 and there were a large number of reports written in the aftermath of 2016 and a total of 29 recommendations for what the ABS should do to make sure that we didn’t have a repeat. We have implemented every single one of those recommendations and we have had the Australian Cyber Security Centre working with us pretty much from the get-go, in a range of ways including ethical hacking, looking at our systems from the inside. As the Minister said, we are as prepared as we think we can be, but I will sleep more soundly on the 12th August after this is over.
Journalist:
Ethical hacking, what does that specifically mean?
David Gruen:
Who knew the new occupations in the world, it turns out there are companies that specialise in doing their best to hack your system, with permission. You say to them, ‘do your worst’ and tell us what you find.
Journalist:
Are they an occupation listing in the Census?
David Gruen:
Not yet. We will need to update ANSCO to include ethical hackers and I suspect there’s only a fairly small number of them. I think it’s a pretty niche occupation and I suspect that they’re pretty young and they wear turtlenecks, that would be my guess.
Journalist:
What were the main concerns around security? Was it state-based actors?
David Gruen:
The answer is that we have to be prepared for everything including kids in their parent’s basement who would think it would be a great idea if they could get into the system. That, state actors, people who…as is clear the ABS holds a lot of sensitive data. We do it as carefully as we possibly can so that we protect people’s privacy, but it is something that means that you have to have as sophisticated protections as you possibly can.
Minister Sukkar:
And whilst not a security issue it’s more of a systems-based issue, having more of an emphasis on people completing the forms, or at least encouraging them in some aspects, completing their forms as soon as they get it, it means that load on the system will be spread over time. I think people of my generation or older have always thought about a Census night and while that is very important for integrity of data and we still encourage people to only fill it out if you know where you’re going to be on that night, I think the practical realities and the experience in other jurisdictions has been, practically – even in the old days – people would fill out the form when they got it, in many instances. This is a recognition of that and if we spread the load over a period of time, of course 10th August will be the biggest load, but if we spread that out, that helps from a system stability perspective too.
Journalist:
Dr Gruen, you were saying that you’re hoping for a 95 per cent return rate. Are you worried though of the reputation damage that might flow through from 2016, could dissuade people from actually getting involved and sharing their data this time?
David Gruen:
Interestingly we had a 95 per cent response rate in 2016. It’s more that there’s a general, gradual reduction in response rates all around the world. People are less willing, gradually, to do these things and so it requires a substantial amount of effort. The majority of people just do it but getting the response rate up from 75 per cent to 95 per cent takes a lot of effort over several weeks and we go back and back and back to people who haven’t filled the form in either electronically or on paper, to try and convince people of the importance of doing it. I’m not worried about 2016, it’s more that it is just an effort and the benefit of having as high of a response rate as possible is that the information is much more accurate and you want granular information, you want information at the local level. To the extent that you can convince 19 out of 20 people or 19 out of 20 households or more, to fill it in, the quality of the information is better. We encourage people to complete in the window and that’s what we’re encouraging but it’s not too late if you wake up on the 11th and you haven’t filled it in, it’s not too late.
Journalist:
Are there penalties if you don’t do it?
David Gruen:
There are potential penalties. It is compulsory but we use them sparingly.
Journalist:
Do you think that things like the Facebook data scandal and other sort of concerns around how big tech is using people’s personal data is perhaps leading to that hesitancy around Census’?
David Gruen:
I don’t know what’s behind it, but we have very strong protections for people’s information. One of the criticisms in the lead up to the 2016 Census was how long we were keeping personal information – addresses and names – and one of the recommendations for us was to make clear well before the Census, how long we would be keeping names and addresses. And so we released in July of last year, privacy impact assessments on how long we should keep names and addresses and we have committed to getting rid of names after 18 months and addresses after three years. That’s all on our website it was all done in a considered way well before the Census.
Minister Sukkar:
End-to-end encryption, the sovereignty of the data which we’ve emphasised a lot and I think we’ve published a lot of information on it, is really designed to try and assuage those types of fears. Sovereignty of people’s personal information and the protection of it, alongside the security aspects we’ve been talking about, has been crucially important to us.
Journalist:
How will your processes differ if there is a security event like last time? The communications strategy last time appeared a bit chaotic from the outside.
David Gruen:
The answer to that is that we have been doing exercises, scenario exercises, planning exercises, were something untoward to happen and we have a detailed super structure with decision makers and a decide room. We’ve done a lot of work to work out exactly what we would do were something like that to happen.
Journalist:
Does it include taking down the Census in the event of an extreme hack?
David Gruen:
We absolutely wouldn’t want to have to do that, but our premier responsibility is safety.
Minister Sukkar:
I think that it’s fair to say we’ve planned for every eventuality and worse-case scenarios and how we would be able to very quickly address those and communicate them.
Journalist:
August 10 is a sitting day. Are you going to do your Census here or back home in Deakin?
Minister Sukkar:
It’s a very good question, one that I probably should’ve thought about before I came here. I’m not sure, I’ll speak to my wife and I would probably take advice from the chief statistician to make sure that I was a model citizen.
David Gruen:
Very happy to provide that advice, Minister.
Journalist:
Are there any ideas that you have around trends that you’ve seen in the data that you usually collect that you are hoping would then be reflected and given more detail in the Census? I know there’s been a lot of talk about, during Covid, people moving out of cities into regional areas, I think some of the data in the last couple of days from the ABS has showed 30,000 or so people leaving Victoria over the last few periods. Are there any trends that you’re thinking are going to be there, that you’re hoping to flesh out?
David Gruen:
These trends can be measured with enormous accuracy in the Census, but it is a snapshot in time. I guess what the Census is useful for is things that you didn’t think of, that you didn’t know about from other sources. I think there’ll be a lot of trends, the ones you’re talking about will almost certainly be in the data but there’ll be other things, presumably as a consequence of Covid that we haven’t thought of, that will appear in the data. That’s why we want to make sure that everyone fills it in.
Journalist:
What’s your favourite answer from the Census and which question do you like to see?
David Gruen:
The last Census, before I had anything to do with the ABS, my wife and I had a discussion about how much unpaid work I did in the house. So let’s just put it that way, that’s been a topic of conversation in our household for some time.
Journalist:
How badly are you failing on that?
David Gruen:
This comes up whenever I do anything. He’s just practising so the week before the census he can put in a higher number.
Journalist:
Dr, during your experience last night, were you bleary-eyed this morning and what did you learn about counting, including the homeless?
David Gruen:
No, I’m not bleary-eyed, though it is a bit of a wind tunnel up there I’ve discovered. No, it’s very uplifting. It isn’t a lot of fun at the time, but Vinnies collects a lot of money so for Canberra, they’re going to collect more than $1 million and nationwide its obviously multiples of that. No, I don’t feel bleary-eyed, I wouldn’t want to do it too often and of course the difference between me and a homeless person is that I can go home and have a shower and so if you want to try and get a job as a homeless person, it isn’t easy, and it doesn’t hurt me to do this once a year and remind myself of it.
Minister Sukkar:
David, do you want to add the extra steps that we’re taking to reach out to homeless providers and others to try and ensure that we have integrity with that data?
David Gruen:
Absolutely. So, we have teams of people who work with local groups so that we actually go out. We don’t expect them to fill the form in themselves, we will go and do it and help them and identify where homeless people tend to be and concentrate our efforts in those places.
Journalist:
Minister Sukkar, just one other question within your responsibilities but aside from the Census, there’s ongoing discussion about building supply shortages across the country, the pressure that this boom in construction – partly fuelled by HomeBuilder – has created. I know you have already tweaked HomeBuilder; you’ve extended the construction deadlines to allow more people to get involved there. Is this something that you’re going to have to continually look at because those crunches on supplies just don’t seem to be….
Minister Sukkar:
That’s a very good question. What HomeBuilder has done is it’s meant that we’ve got residential construction activity elevated in every jurisdiction. Typically, what we’ve see over the last couple of decades is you’ll have periods where the east coast is very busy but other parts of the country aren’t and so there is a natural equilibrium that’s found. Because of HomeBuilder and low interest rates, we’ve seen residential construction activity just in every market around the country heightened. There are supply chain issues in virtually every manufacturing industry at the moment. When you look at the United States who, like many other governments, have gone to the lever of supporting the construction industry in the middle of a pandemic, we’ve seen global pressures on things like timber. Timber that comes out of Eastern Europe now is at an elevated price and a lot of what would be supplied to Australia is now going to North America. The primary way we were able to try and deal with it as you’ve just eluded to, is by extending the commencement time frame under the HomeBuilder program from six to 18 months to smooth that out. But there are still, not only material pressures but labour as well. We are keeping a very close eye on it, particularly timber, and there are potentially some things that we can do to alleviate timber shortages that we are really closely looking at the moment. Some industry participants have told me they think we may have slightly turned a corner. It’s certainly not business as usual, it’s still hard, the timeframes of getting materials is still a bit slower than normal, but it is perhaps getting a fraction better. We are keeping a close eye on that, but timber is one area that we think there are some things that government can support industry with. Haven’t made any final decisions but we are looking at it really closely.
Journalist:
In what way?
Minister Sukkar:
In facilitating additional supply through sawmills, basically. There’s been a bit of a perfect storm of issues. Obviously heightened demand, global demand and some areas that have exhausted their supply because of the bushfires. We have got timber mills in some parts of the country running three shifts who couldn’t do anymore. Some other sawmills that are almost exhausting their supply of timber and so they have got the capacity to do it if there’s ways in which we can facilitate or help them get that supply then they’ll be able to continue feeding into the market.