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The Census is held every five years. It’s a snapshot of who we are, and tells the story of how we are changing.

It helps us understand what we need now and takes the guesswork out of preparing for the future - as individuals, families, communities and as a nation.

Census data is used for lots of things, big and small. It informs how funding is shared between states and territories, our electoral boundaries, and planning transport, schools, roads, housing and healthcare services.

With the help of Census data we’ve seen major medical breakthroughs, such as the link between rubella and birth defects.

Researchers have been able to model the potential impact of COVID-19. Regional and rural communities can access health care through the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Disadvantaged students have more pathways to tertiary education.

New playgrounds are being built in suburbs with lots of families. And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have more access to health care and transport.

Complete your Census in 2021. It’s for all of us.

Go to census.abs.gov.au for more information.

The Census is a snapshot of who we are, and tells the story of how we are changing. It will ask questions about everyone staying in your household on 10 August 2021, including visitors and babies.

Instructions will be sent to every household and dwelling in the country. You’ll have several days to complete your form instead of a single night.

There will be different ways to do this, including online and by paper. And for those who need it, we’ll have people in your community to help make sure you’re counted.

Complete your Census in 2021. It’s for all of us.

Go to census.abs.gov.au for more information.

Ever wonder how Census data is used? How can completing your form help individuals, families and communities across Australia?

It can help with lots of things, big and small.

Census data is used by researchers to model how pandemics like COVID-19 could spread around Australia over time and what populations might be impacted.

With the help of the Census, thousands of disadvantaged students can pursue a degree at Curtin University, thanks to a system that prioritises young people with limited opportunities.

Clickstarter’s Darwin Small Business Network, offers design services and support for the high number of local young small business owners.

The Council on the Ageing can better understand issues affecting older Australians - planning for the age pension, rent allowance, and the need for aged care, hospital and other services.

The SEARMS Aboriginal Corporation uses Census data to make sure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can access affordable and culturally appropriate community housing. This includes supporting requests for disability modifications to help people stay home as they get older.

Using Census data, Welcoming Australia created a national network called Welcoming Cities.

It gives local councils information and ideas about how new migrants and refugees can be welcomed in the community.

The Census helps the Royal Flying Doctor Service know where it’s needed to help over 1,000 people every day. Providing health care and 24-hour emergency services, it covers a vast area of 7.69 million square kilometres, and last year alone, it flew over 27 million kilometres – that’s the equivalent of 34 trips to the moon and back!

Complete your Census in 2021. It’s for all of us.

Go to census.abs.gov.au for more information.

Ben Knight, Orange Sky Laundry
So in Australia 1 in 200 people are experiencing homelessness, and that means 116,000 people across Australia are homeless every night and those people are very diverse - they range of people around Australia that aren't just people that are sleeping on the streets.

So Orange Sky's mission is to positively connect communities. That means, that everyday at their own shift we're connecting our friends on the street. We're connecting volunteers who volunteer on the service. Plus we're moving out now to be able to connect all the services across Australia to a platform that supports them to track their data and understand what impact they're making in Australia.

Nev, Orange Sky Laundry Worker

I started out volunteering with Orange Sky when I was homeless and eventually, years later, I became employed and I've been employed for a couple of years now.

Ben Knight, Orange Sky Laundry

The main concept of chatting to our friends is that every van has 6 orange chairs that come out for our friends, and our volunteers sit down and they have genuine conversations about anything.

Nev, Orange Sky Laundry Worker

I found it really important to have that weekly conversation, because I wouldn't have many conversations otherwise.  It is quite lonely, you're just stuck with your own thoughts.

Ben Knight, Orange Sky Laundry

It's very important for us to be able to understand the needs of each location, so in that way the ABS Census data helps to inform us how many people may be experiencing homelessness, where they are, the location, and it also informs where those shifts are going to run.

So we want to be able to provide a shift where the most people are who are experiencing homelessness who can do the best with the service.

It's more than just numbers, your Census counts.

Dante St James, Founder, Clickstarter

Darwin’s always been a place of opportunity. You look at sunsets, you look at crocodiles floating through the beaches and you think it seems like a scary place to go but what the issue with Darwin has always been is it’s so isolated.

What we’ve found specifically, pulling some of the Census data - we discovered that there is a much higher incidence of young small business ownership in Darwin than elsewhere. So, to design services around youth who are into enterprise, was a really good move for us.

There’s an over representation I guess of services like I provide in the bigger cities. Once you start to get to smaller cities of under 200,000, you start to see a drop off where the services such as expertise in Google, expertise in social media, expertise in cloud software drops off dramatically and these are the services that are priced in such a way that regional Australian small businesses could probably benefit more than anybody.

So, I founded the Darwin Small Business Network as a way of facilitating that exchange between small businesses. Where they’re not sitting in a silo, they’re not looking to do everything on their own, they can draw on the resources of a much broader community to learn new skills in those areas I know I could teach and then bring in other people who could show how to gain grants from the Government, how to pull their own Census data.

You combine data with a bit of expertise in any kind of area and you’ve got a really powerful tool to grow a business. It’s more than just numbers, your Census counts.

Rachel Golding, Founder:
Dinner on the Table is a profit-for-purpose business. We use the profit from the sale of our meals and catering services to gift meals to families living with disabilities, across New South Wales and the ACT.

Alison, Carer: Life is incredibly busy for our family, with three children. One who has incredibly high care needs and my husband having a brain injury and not being able to help. Dinner is often the last thing that's on my mind at the end of the day.

Rachel Golding, Founder:
With the pressures of modern life, it can be hard work getting a hearty meal on the table at the end of the day and Dinner on the Table wants to help families with that. We use the Census data, primarily in two ways. Firstly, to understand our target market. Who they are and what’s important to them. But more importantly we use the Census data to understand disability in Australia. So, we’re interested in things like how many people with a disability live in Australia. We know that they are the largest minority group in this country and that informs how we plan for the services that we provide, but also how we communicate with our key stakeholders.

Alison, Carer:
Having meals gifted to us from Dinner on the Table when Murray first came out of hospital and things were tight financially, was a huge lifesaver. At the end of the day, if I haven’t had the time or the energy to think about cooking, we can have a healthy home cooked meal, and all eat together. There’s a lot of cheese on toast in our house without Rachel.

Rachel Golding, Founder:
We want to support some of Australia’s most vulnerable people. It’s more than just numbers, your Census counts.

Barbara Beard, Senior Social Research & Information Officer WESTIR
WESTIR is a non-government organisation. We deal with social research and we act as the conduit for small community organisations to access data that they couldn't normally afford to buy or analyse.

Census data is important because different organisations can get hold of that data and use it for the right purpose. They may need to deal with many different aspects of different communities, and we can help them with that.

We'll firstly look at how many people there are in the area and then we'll start to look at what they do, where they live, what the houses are, whether they're employed, unemployed, what industry they work in, their occupations. So mostly the profiles are used as a planning tool.

Erin Weller, Penrith City Council Community and Cultural Development Manager

Penrith City Council has used Westir's service on many occasions. Most recently Westir completed a community profile for Penrith Council in response to growth and change in the city.

Barbara Beard, Senior Social Research & Information Officer WESTIR
Penrith Council needed a social profile to help them with a growing LGA finding out who's moving in there, who's actually making up the population and how to deal with that population.

Erin Weller, Penrith City Council Community and Cultural Development Manager

There are aged-services, there are disability services, there are youth services, there are Aboriginal services that we work with in the city and all of those services will use that information and the profile to plan on behalf of their communities.

Barbara Beard, Senior Social Research & Information Officer WESTIR

It's more than just numbers, your Census counts.

So, the Census counts everyone in Australia, so it counts everybody and every household. It’ll ask questions about how you live, where you live and who you are.

I’ve really seen the census benefit my community through different programs and policies that have helped us, even with like our health centre, with community programs for kids, in education… it’s really helped a lot.

All the kind of government programs that are designed to help our mob, or support our mob, or that are out in community – they all use census data, so that’s just one way they they’re beneficial. And if we don’t participate in the Census then our mob are the ones that miss out of those services.

We understand people do feel worried about completing the Census, and that’s part of my role really, is to break down those barriers and to assure people that their information isn’t going to be shared, and that means that your information is deidentified, so your name, your address – anything like that is taken away from your data and it can’t be traced back to you.

So there’s plenty of help for our mob to complete the Census. We will have a hotline that’s available via our website, we have a Census website with frequently asked questions, but you can also request a paper form as well. So you’ll either be sent a code in the mail, or a paper form in the mail. So that way you can complete it on your computer,  on your phone, on your tablet. We want to make it as user friendly as possible, and so that we have as much participation as possible. So we’ll also have Census pop-up hubs where people can come and ask any questions in person, so they’ll be in high traffic areas such as shopping malls and anything like that. We’ll also have fill in the form sessions where people can ask questions. We’ll also have someone sit there with you to actually complete the census.

A common question I got as a field officer was, does everyone have to be included in the census form, and so yeah – even if it’s like a house of 12 people, you have to include every single person on the Census, whether they live there or visiting, everyone needs to be included – even if you need 2 or 3 forms to complete it.

Help tell our mob’s story and plan for our mob’s future. So complete the Census.

Professor James Smith, Menzies School of Health Research.
Justice reinvestment is about prevention and early intervention and keeping people out of jail. It's particularly important for keeping young people engaged in their local community.

We use the ABS and other data sources to inform the strategies moving forward and that's really important because what the public thinks might be the problem might actually be a different story to what the data tells us.

So it's about using the data in a really meaningful, pragmatic, practical way to be able to inform those services and programs moving forward. Focusing on prevention rather than incarceration over the longer term.

Chloe Harris O’Leary, Youth Advocate.

I think Youth Justice Reinvestment is a positive program to help young people address the issues they're having that have brought them to commit crime. It's not just about numbers, it's about young people and helping them improve their lives.

Professor James Smith, Menzies School of Health Research.

We're working with local service providers in Katherine to be able to unpack the data as well so we're building their capacity to be able to understand and tell their own story around the data from their community context.

It's more than just numbers, your Census counts.

Luke Shannon, Institute of Urban Indigenous Health.

Nearly 40% of Indigenous people in Queensland live in urban areas. How do we know that? ABS data. We've increased the number of our clinics from 5 to 21 in South East Queensland and annual visits to doctors have increased by 250% in the last decade.

Caitlin, patient.
It's a one stop shop, so you have everything under one roof. Optometrists, dentists and the doctors and it's always there when we need it.

Luke Shannon, Institute of Urban Indigenous Health.

Currently across the country there is a 17.5% undercount on the Census for Indigenous people. This is much higher than the undercount for non-Indigenous people. Given the importance that I've seen in my role that the census can play in terms of identifying needs within communities and the benefits that this can give to communities, I would encourage everyone to participate in the Census.

Caitlin, patient.

I'm really grateful that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community health services are here, because it's very culturally appropriate for me and my children.

Luke Shannon, Institute of Urban Indigenous Health.

It's more than just numbers, your Census counts.

First Nations Media Australia

Hi, I’m Jennifer Nixon, an Amnatyerr, Kaytetye and Alyawarr woman, from First Nations Media Australia, the peak body for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander media industry.

I’m looking forward to Census 2021 because it tells us a lot about where our mob is living and what services are needed in different areas.

For example, a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are moving to south-east Queensland, we can see population growth in that area for the Census. Then we can look at whether people in that area have enough media services to keep them informed.

First Nations media organisations look at the census data to see community profiles for their broadcast area. Not just for the people we know, but for everybody in the region. Are we talking to all of them? Are they doing enough programming for young people coming up? What languages are people talking and is that changing from five years ago? Census helps us keep an eye on what’s changing in different regions for the whole community.

The census is done every 5 years and a lot of decisions are made based on the information provided on that one night in August. Not just by Governments, but by our own organisations too, like First Nations Media Australia.

We want to make sure we’re looking after you and the census is a way of collecting information about everyone across Australia, all at once. It’s all of our information and the Australian Bureau of Statistics is helping us put it all together and make it count.

So please complete the Census this year to make sure it  tells the whole story of our population. Every response matters.