The Australian Census question on Religion is deliberately misleading
On August 10th this year Australians will fill in their census forms and one of the questions asks for the participant’s religion. Here is how the question looks on the online form:
And here are the available answers:
Note that in the initial question, Atheism is included as an example of ‘Other’. Why is this the case? This is, in my opinion, a deliberately fraudulent attempt to have atheists incorrectly answer ‘Other’ instead of ‘No religion’.
The ‘More information’ drop-down only adds more confusion and misinformation:
It says “People who have non-theistic religious beliefs or other life philosophies should record their response in the ‘Other (please specify)’ box. This is entirely reasonable. There are many non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and The Satanic Temple.
It then goes on to say ‘Examples of non-religious beliefs include Agnosticism, Atheism and Rationalism’. I suspect they meant to say non-theistic beliefs, as that was the topic of the previous sentence. But whether they meant non-theistic belief or non-religious belief is redundant because atheism is not a belief or a religion— it is the absence of belief in a deity and it should not have been put in this example. As Penn Jillette puts it “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby”.
This deliberate attempt to mislabel atheism as a belief, or an ‘Other’ religion is done to reduce the number of people who answer ‘No religion’ on the census. Which leads to the question of why are they trying to do this? What does it matter anyway?
Non-government schools (private and religious schools) account for only 34.3% of students in Australia, but the federal government contributes massive amounts of money to them (85% of their total funding), compared to public government run schools. Catholic schools in particular received $9,915 per student in 2019, other religious and independent schools received $8,272 per student — but government run schools received only $3,075 per student. Why is there this enormous favoritism for Catholic schools? Is this representative of the composition of Australian society? No, it is not — here are the results of the 2016 Census question on Religion:
30.1% of respondents answered ‘No religion’. That’s a jump of over 7% from 22.3% in 2011. ‘No religion’ is the fastest growing category in this question, and Christianity collectively has dropped from 61% in 2011 to 52% in 2016.
The department of education justifies their enormous spending on Catholic schools as follows:
“The Australian Government has historically been the majority public funder, reflecting its commitment to supporting parental choice and diversity in the schooling system.”
First of all — anyone citing ‘history’ as a justification for their actions is invariably racist, and I see no reason to doubt this is the case here. When history or tradition are you primary justification you are in bad company.
Secondly Australia is a secular country— as defined in the Constitution of 1901. So why is our government blatantly favoring Catholic schools?
Because they are pandering to voters. By funneling huge amounts of money into religious schools they are guaranteeing votes from religious voters. Rather than updating their policies to reflect the increasingly atheist and secular society we live in, they are attempting to rig the census and reduce the number of people answering ‘No religion’ to justify their disproportionate spending. These underhanded tactics are common to all destructive, selfish groups that hold power, whether it’s fossil-fuel companies, cigarette companies or religious governments — they will lie and cheat, fudge the numbers, deny reality and steal as much money as they can before they are brought down.
If, like me, you are sick of the minuscule funding the Australian government grants to public schools then make sure to answer ‘No religion’ in the upcoming census if you are atheist, and do not vote for the Liberal, National or Labor parties — all of which support massive funding for private religious schools.
