Census 2026: Jewish group accuses Australian Bureau of Statistics of downplaying existence of Judaism

A Jewish group has accused the Australian Bureau of Statistics of diminishing the presence of their community in the upcoming Census by failing to include a tick box for Judaism in the religion section.

Those of the Jewish faith or ancestry will have to specifically write “Judaism” to be counted on August 11 while those who are non-binary will get a box to tick instead of male or female in the section on sex, despite also constituting a very small segment of the Australian population.

Robert Gregory, the chief executive of the Australian Jewish Association, said the omission of a tick box for Judaism was concerning, with anti-Semitism on the rise.

“It is disappointing that the Census does not include a dedicated box for Judaism,” he told The Nightly.

“The reality is that the Australian Census is likely to significantly undercount the size of the Jewish community.

“Australia has a proud Judeo-Christian heritage, yet there is sometimes a sense that this heritage is being diminished rather than recognised.”

A selection for Jewish people has been unavailable since the Australian Bureau of Statistics introduced a tick-a-box option with seven choices in the 1991 Census, even though Judaism is based on the Old Testament of the Bible, which those of the Jewish religion refer to as the Hebrew Bible.

“With anti-Semitism at record levels, many Jewish Australians are already reluctant to identify themselves publicly,” Mr Gregory said.

“We nevertheless encourage people to indicate their religion in the Census.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said recent episodes of anti-Semitism, following last year’s Bondi massacre and the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack in Israel, had made many Jews fearful of telling a government agency about being Jewish.

“Given our history and recent events in Australia, it is understandable that there are some sensitivities in the Jewish community about privacy, confidentiality and security when identifying oneself as Jewish to governments in any context,” president Daniel Aghion said.

“However, the law imposes stiff penalties, including imprisonment, on any person, who divulges, directly or indirectly, any identifiable personal information collected in the Census, and this is strictly policed.”

Jewish groups including the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies have been running Facebook campaigns encouraging Jews to write “Judaism” on their Census form.

“Make JUDAISM matter in the 2026 Census,” it said.

An Australian Bureau of Statistics spokeswoman said the tick-box choices were based on the most common religions from the 2021 Census.

“We adopt this approach to the Census questions to make it as easy as possible for people to complete the Census,” she said.

KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said the ABS Census survey needed to list the most common religions in the 10 tick-box choices, apart from the write-in, to keep people’s attention spans, adhering to the format of other demographic questions.

“If you’re adding an extra 10 seconds to someone doing the form, or 20 seconds, the ABS would say, “We’ve got like 50 questions and if we add 20 seconds to those it starts to get more onerous’,” he said.

“You want to have the most number of people find the right answer as quickly as possible but you also don’t want to have people scrolling through heaps of possible choices because if there’s 20, for example, and you scroll through and you don’t see yours in the first 20, you might go, ‘It’s not there, I’ll just move on’.”

Islam and Buddhism have been options since the 2001 Census.

Hinduism only became a tick-box option in 2016, just nine years before India last year became Australia’s most common birthplace for overseas-born migrants.

The German reformation Lutheran tick-box choice disappeared at the 2016 Census.

The last Census in 2021 counted 99,956 people of the Jewish faith or ancestry, making up just 0.39 per cent of Australia’s then population of 25.4 million people.

That was based on Jewish Australians having to write in Judaism on their Census form.

Nonetheless, their numbers were still double the 43,220 who ticked the “non-binary” sex box in the 2021 Census, making up the 0.17 per cent of population who didn’t select male or female.

But they Judaism is still small in number compared with specific Christian denominations with a specific tick-box choice.

The 2026 Census will include in order the tick-box choices of no religion, Catholic, Anglican (Church of England), Islam, Hinduism, Uniting Church, Buddhism, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox and Baptist, with other requiring a write-in.

Sikhism is absent as a tick-box choice even though its numbers swelled from 125,901 in 2016 to 210,400 in 2021.

Religion has been a question at every Australian Census since 1911.