Secular Lobby Groups Caught Trying to Rig the Census Against Australia’s Faithful
Tonight, every household in Australia sits down to fill out the Census. For weeks, a coalition of secular lobby groups has run an online quiz with one goal: getting Australians who quietly hold a faith to tick “No Religion”.
A Quiz Built to Talk the Faithful Out of Their Faith
The campaign, branded “Not Religious? Mark ‘No Religion’”, is the work of a coalition of secular and atheist organisations, including the Rationalist Society of Australia, the Secular Association of NSW and the National Secular Lobby. Its centrepiece is an online quiz that probes prayer habits, worship attendance, and how comfortable users are with what their religious leaders preach. The quiz then generates a tailored recommendation for which box to tick on the census. As in previous Census years, the coalition’s primary grievance is that the question is unfair because it presupposes a respondent might have a faith.
Strip away the survey-style packaging and the intent is clear: convince religious Australians who don’t attend regular services into recording that they have no religion.
Having Lost the Fight Over the Question, They Went After the Answers
This is the coalition’s second attempt this Census cycle, not its first. In the lead-up to the count, the same groups lobbied the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) directly to have the religion question itself reworded, arguing the traditional wording was discriminatory. ABS Chief Statistician, Dr David Gruen, rejected the claim outright. In a written response to the Rationalist Society, he said the Bureau “does not accept that the wording of the religious affiliation question is discriminatory” — and confirmed the question, the one Australians have answered since 1911, would stay as it was.
Beaten through the front door, the coalition went around the back: instead of changing the question for everyone, they’d try to change the answers, one household at a time.
Why a Tick-Box Matters More Than You’d Think
This isn’t a fight over paperwork. Religious data from the Census tells governments where to fund chaplaincy, how to support Catholic schools, and how to resource aged care and hospital services for faith communities. National Centre for Pastoral Research director Dr Trudy Dantis has stressed census data is critical for parishes, schools and dioceses planning. Distorted input distorts the funding decisions that follow.
At the last Census, in 2021, 38.9% of Australians already recorded no religion, against 43.9% who identified as Christian. This was the largest recorded No Religion outcome in Australia’s history, with the percentage of No Religion 40 years ago being 12.7% and Christianity still at 73%.
And beyond religion altogether, there’s a precedent every Australian should sit with: an advocacy coalition built a tool to coach citizens on how to answer a national government survey, after government statisticians had already told them their objection didn’t hold up. If it works this time on this issue, there’s no reason it won’t be tried again on something else.
Also read: ABS Enshrines Gender Ideology In Australia's Census
What Religious Affiliation Actually Means
The question the census is asking is not whether Australians actively practice a religion, but how Australians identify themselves. It can simply be that your family is Catholic and even if you don’t practice the religion, you still identify as Catholic. In this case, the ABS would want you to put down Catholic as your response.
However, the quiz encourages people who answered that they attend religious services weekly and identify as religious to mark “No Religion” if they disagree with the political and social opinions of their church leaders. They want the bar to be so high that only the most devout and practising faithful would mark down their religion, which is not what the ABS is asking.
The ABS Draws the Line with Faith Leaders Already Behind It
The ABS didn’t mince words this week. It flagged that material circulating online was nudging people toward answers that didn’t reflect what the question was asking, and made it clear that Australians should record their genuine, personal answer, not a strategically chosen one.
That’s exactly what Sydney His Grace Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP and faith leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Hindu communities had already told Australians back in June, when they launched a joint campaign at St Mary’s Cathedral encouraging honest answers ahead of the Census. “The Census helps tell the story of who we are as a nation,” His Grace Archbishop Fisher said at the launch, stressing that no one needs to be a weekly churchgoer to have a genuine religious identity. Anglican Bishop Michael Stead put it more bluntly this month, describing the secular quiz as “deliberately distorting” what the question was meant to measure.
What You Can Do Now
When you’re filling in the Census, answer the religion question honestly, according to how you personally identify yourself, not based on how often you attended church this year. Encourage your family and your parish to do the same. Then share this article: the more Australians who see through the secular coalition’s quiz before they submit their form, the less ground this campaign gains.
References
- Staff Writers, “ABS clarifies Census religion question amid secular campaign,” The Catholic Weekly, 10 August 2026.
- “Secularist groups accused of trying to skew Census results,” CathNews, 5 August 2026.
- Marilyn Rodrigues, “Archbishop Fisher leads multi-faith project to encourage Australians to be counted in the 2026 Census,” The Catholic Weekly, 19 June 2026.
- “ABS chief rejects claim Census religion question is discriminatory for assuming every Australian has a religion,” Rationalist Society of Australia.
- “ABS warns Australians over ‘no religion’ campaign ahead of 2026 Census,” Greek Herald.