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The Census Files: When the ABS made its decision (Part 3)
By Si Gladman
In early October 2024, the tide was turning against the new religion question as executives prepared for a meeting with the head of the ABS, David Gruen (pictured), to make a decision on the way forward.
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.
"... this author was able to ascertain the hidden text simply by highlighting the section in the PDF that was provided by the ABS, copying the selected items, and then pasting it into a word-processing document. This process revealed that among the hidden text were the comments that option 1 'may lead respondents to a particular response'."
Si Gladman
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