The Census is no place for politics

Unwelcome, personal, and political questions were in the Census this year... [Deposit Photos/@olly18]

Why am I not surprised the 2026 Census feels a bit … politicised?

The last time a national census was held under a Labor government was in 2011. What a coincidence that those are the only two occasions I have felt the process turned into a political exercise. That is my opinion, at least.

This year the battleground is obvious.

For the first time, Australians aged 16 and over were asked optional questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. At the same time, secular campaigners ran a coordinated push to mark ‘No Religion’. Religious groups counter-campaigned, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) was reduced to pleading with the public to ignore online crusades.

It is my opinion that the Census has become another front in the identity wars. And Labor, after initially baulking at the ‘divisive’ new questions, eventually waved them through.

In the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes wrote:

Did you think more than a few Census questions were unduly personal and intrusive, and others designed to pander to the identity politics agenda? Your scribe did, and so did Michael de Percy. Michael also relates a disturbing first-hand experience of the Blob’s unquenched desire for all manner of personal information from all manner of people. The Census is now a political document, not a simple number-gathering exercise, and both sides of politics are to blame.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

For those in the Coalition upper-ranks who like to snoop on my nightly writings, I urge you to read this article from Michael de Percy in a sober and calm fashion. Political parties must try to understand the political reality of their voters before it is too late. As I said to Michael when he filed this submission, it seems as if the ‘party’ and the ‘people’ have different native languages. They understand the words – but the jokes never hit because the proper context is missing.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, The Census is no place for politics.

Identity politics is modern communism

Communism failed to smash the state, so identity politics tries to smash the society.

How progressive politics unpicked Western Enlightenment one dangerous idea at a time

Every aspect of post-pandemic policy has become dominated by identity politics. The question is where this leads.

Key to identity politics is the right of individuals to identify however they choose, even if that means grammatically incorrect pronouns or irreversible medical interventions on minors. What is missing is any serious concept of the common good.

Ordinarily, if A identifies in a way that B rejects, B can still accept A’s right to choose. But when refusal to affirm that identity becomes a social, professional, or criminal offence, the purpose is no longer liberty. It is the enforced subordination of shared reality to private will.

Identity politics does not merely expand freedom. It systematically dismantles the shared understandings that make a free society possible.

Identity politics represents the acceleration of contradiction and therefore the manifestation of modern communism. It is destroying our liberal democratic traditions, and it is undoing the very fabric of Enlightenment thinking. Not only is it destroying the West from within, but it is making excuses for otherwise abhorrent human rights abuses elsewhere. It is hypocrisy in the extreme.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Identity politics is modern communism.

The One Nation of our discontent

The major parties do not grasp how deeply they are hated.

People are livid. This is no longer tall-poppy syndrome or healthy scepticism. They want the whole system burnt to the ground. For many, Roberts-Smith was doing his duty while the political class looked after itself, as it always does.

Anecdotes of women in their seventies living in cars after losing their houses are everywhere. Meanwhile politicians tell us to tighten our belts, or worse, take the roof racks off. Labor MPs film TikTok-style videos while people are weed-spraying, driving trucks, rouseabouting, working in cafés and cleaning. I did an eight-hour barista shift in a regional café last Sunday. It nearly killed me. I did harder things in the Army, but in my late fifties that shift was hell. Imagine a pollie lasting the distance.

The divide between ordinary Australians and the political class could not be greater. Politicians lecture us about what they stand for and then do the opposite. They may not all have lived by the skin of their teeth, but few have ever scrounged for durrie butts while properly down and out.

In the Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall wrote:

There’s been a worrying spread of ‘might as well burn it down’ among the frustrated and exhausted ‘quiet Australians’. Once the unshakeable electoral base of the conservatives, these voters are struggling to find hope – even with the rise of One Nation. The notion that political parties can be reformed, saved, or even join forces into a workable coalition, is slipping further out of sight. And that’s a terrible thing for our future.

For those in the Coalition upper-ranks who like to snoop on my nightly writings, I urge you to read this article from Michael de Percy in a sober and calm fashion. Political parties must try to understand the political reality of their voters before it is too late. As I said to Michael when he filed this submission, it seems as if the ‘party’ and the ‘people’ have different native languages. They understand the words – but the jokes never hit because the proper context is missing.

In the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes wrote:

Michael de Percy makes a powerful point very succinctly. The major parties don’t realise, or understand, just how much voters hate them. Say no more.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, The One Nation of our discontent.