• In a three-part series, Si Gladman revealed the events surrounding how the Australian Bureau of Statistics came to the decision to re-use the biased question on religion for the 2026 Census.
• Jemima McPhee wrote about what we could learn from ancient thinkers in acquiring knowledge through scientific methods and in dealing with misinformation.

By Si Gladman

Without any comprehensive quantitative data to measure the performance of the proposed religion question, due to the cancellation of the September Census Test, a number of ABS executives began raising concerns in email exchanges. Documents obtained by the Rationalist Society of Australia under freedom of information (FOI) laws reveal ABS executives discussing the risks of continuing with the proposed new question design. Read the full article

The government’s delays in informing the ABS of its decision on the topics – coming two days after the given deadline of 21 August – had instant consequences for the major Census Test, which had been billed as the critical step that would provide the ABS with the information it needed on the performance of the new religion question. One day after news of the government’s decision emerged via the media, and a week after the ABS’ desired launch of public communications about the Census Test, Dr Gruen announced that he had cancelled the test. Read the full article

While it was not clear whether the ‘PM’ in the subject line was referring to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the request for talking points by the Treasury’s Department, regarding one topic from a Census to be held in more than two years’ time, suggests strong interest in the matter at the highest levels of the federal government. The government’s need for information about the ABS' work on the religion question became evident within days of the email to the Treasury Department, as a powerful special interest group, the Catholic Church, launched a public campaign calling for the government to intervene. Read the full article

I was very frustrated when I read the article in the RSA Weekly about Sydney’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher in which he used such inappropriate and emotive terms as “assisted suicide” and “killing teams” . Such terms are frightening and offensive to people who are considering voluntary assisted dying (VAD). I wrote a letter to the archbishop, taking issue with many of his dogmatic and heartless points which expressed concern for everybody except the dying patients whose lives have become intolerable. Read the full article