Census 2016: Three politicians will withhold names

This year’s Census can be completed online. Many more had started to complete them, saved them and not yet pressed “send”.

Another error message said the server’s DNS address could not be found.

Why should you complete the census? But it seems likely most of the country will go to bed or finally finish watching Stranger Things rather than sit around and wait for service to be restored.

Senator Xenophon foreshadowed legislation to make the provision of names voluntary, which he says he will attempt to backdate to Tuesday night’s census.

“She said it could be everyone coming home from work trying to log in at once”.

Paper forms are still available.

The were hugely disappointed and I don’t think they actually believed me when I told them we don’t have the names and addresses and if we did, we could not give them to them or anyone else. “So I can’t really see what the big deal is”.

It’s reassured Australians they won’t be fined for not completing the census on Tuesday.

There were also some sad and sorry Census tales, including one woman having to blow dry her Census form after her dog urinated all over it and a man who claimed he had dropped his form down the toilet. “It definitely worked the other day”, he said.

“We’d advise people to try back again in 15 minutes”.

Despite increasing calls for a boycott, census chief Duncan Young told reporters today the ABS was still expecting 98 percent of households to complete the survey. We will keep you updated.

What is different this year?

But some people distrust the whole concept of a census, viewing it as an invasion of privacy.

This would give Australians “confidence” to complete the census this year, pending a “more substantial review of their processes and proposals”. But Bill McLennan, who was statistician from 1995 to 2000, strongly disputes this, and asserts that the ABS does not have the legal authority to collect names on a compulsory basis.

“The system is operating smoothly and as expected”.

Others said they didn’t care and would be completing the Census regardless.

The ABS website simply said, “The system is very busy at the moment”.

Naval officers on board the HMAS Tobruk filling out a paper census form.

But Small Business Minister Michael McCormack earlier labelled the controversy “much ado about nothing”. If you are travelling and staying in remote parts of Australia on Census night, and do not receive a Census form from a dedicated pick-up location, please contact the Census Inquiry Service. IBM remains subject to the same electronic cyber security requirements as the ABS. They wanted the names and addresses of every Muslim in Darwin and, if possible, Christians who may be linked to East Timor.

Some politicians and privacy advocates are anxious about a decision to hold individuals’ data for four years rather than 18 months.

Meanwhile, independent senator Nick Xenophon and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young have said they will risk prosecution and withhold their names from their census forms. I was taken aback by some of the privacy issues – e.g. full names, addresses, ages, employer’s name and address, etc – but filled these details out anyway.

Some took aim at the ABS while others questioned whether Australia’s broadband network had anything to do with the outage.