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I'm Jenny Telford, the general manager of the Census and Population Division at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

A Tuesday, 11th of August is census night here in Australia.

We know many millions of households have already completed their census form already. But if you haven't, there's still plenty of time. We expect census night to be our peak in terms of the number of responses will receive from Australians. So if you've got your letter, you know how to get online really easily or request a paper form. And if you don't have a letter, you can still jump online to census ABS and complete your form now.

So the census can be completed anytime over the next few days. So if you haven't received your material from the ABS, please don't worry, there's still plenty of time to complete the census.

If you're worried, please give us a call on 1800 181 227. We can talk you through how to complete the census online now. Or we can send you a paper form. There's still plenty of time to complete the census. All we ask is that you take a moment on Tuesday night, look around and see who's in your household, because they're the people that will need to be listed on your census form.

So we really want to make sure that everyone in Australia on Tuesday night is able to participate in the census. So if you do need help, please reach out to us. The easiest place to go is our website at census.

Or you can give us a call on 1800 181 227. We also have a number of pop up hubs running around the country in shopping centres and in public libraries. Jump online to our website and you can find out where those pop up hubs are. And then you'll be able to speak to somebody to get some assistance. If you do need assistance completing the centres in a language other than English, there's some phone numbers and some translated materials on our website.

And if you have a disability of any sort, there's also lots of material available to give you the help you need.

So the census gives us a snapshot of who we are today and how we're changing over time.

We ask 66 questions on the census form to give us data across a range of different areas, such as cultural diversity, employment, education, long term health conditions, even information such as where you live, where you work, and how you travel to work on census day. All of that data comes together in incredibly rich data set that helps inform decisions across a whole bunch of different areas.

So governments of all levels use Census data to inform policy and service delivery choices. Community organisations use census data to understand their community and understand how their needs maybe changing over time. So census data is a really unique picture of Australia that informs so many critical things across our country.

So the census is every five years because our population change doesn't happen overnight. It takes a little bit of time. So every five years is kind of frequent enough for us to see how things are changing over time. It's also a really large logistical exercise, as you can imagine. So planning a census for the ABS takes seven years, so it's not something we would be able to run every year.

We do have data set that informs how our population numbers are changing more frequently, but a census and that comprehensive snapshot of Australia for every five years is sufficient to inform all of those critical decisions.

So we at the ABS understand how important it is to keep your data safe. We build privacy and security into every aspect of our preparations.

From the systems we build to the processes we design. Everything is done in a way that protects your individual response. Here at the ABS, we have legal obligations to keep your data safe. We will never release data in a way that could identify you or your household. We've got a great history of keeping data safe and we are absolutely committed to maintaining that.

So the census website and our online form have both been tested to really high performance levels. We anticipate census night to be a very busy night for Australians completing their census forms. We could see up to a million or over a million forms an hour coming through to the ABS. We have thoroughly tested the systems to ensure not only can they cope with that anticipated traffic, but they can cope with even more if we need to.

We will be monitoring very closely at the ABS. We will be doing everything we can to make sure that system is working well on census night, and our number one priority will be to keep your data safe.

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