Good morning ,
The Catholic archbishop of Perth, Timothy Costelloe, has an op ed in The Australian complaining about the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) proposing to change the "religion question" in the next census. For those who don't have a
subscription to The Australian, a pdf of his article is attached.
The good archbishop writes, "The proposed change would introduce a new bias in favour of “no religion” by offering the more convenient option of selecting “No” as the initial response and limiting the availability of
the tick-box option while providing only write-in options for everyone else. " Oh, for goodness sake! After 100 years of bias in favour of religion!! Give me a break.
The archbishop argues the new form of the question "unjustly increases complexity and ambiguity for individuals who wish to
record their religious identity" and "would provide less precise information."
On the contrary. Changing the religion question so that it asks up front whether a person has a religion would provide more accurate data, not less. As we and others have argued, "the proposal to introduce a filter question would have a number of benefits, including removing some inherent bias in the religion question and ensuring more accurate and meaningful data."
For over 100 years, the religion question in the census has been biased in favour of religious institutions because it assumed the respondent had a religion (it asked, "What is the person's religion?") Since census data is used, amongst other things, to allocate government resources, this has inflated the religious
numbers and meant religous institutions got more resources than they deserved.
Now, as the scales may finally be balanced, their leaders fear diminishing bums on seats will mean decreases in the public largesse they have been used to. Diddums.
