2016 Australian census

ABS website message after the 2016 online census was shut down

For the first time, the ABS significantly favoured internet submission of census forms over the traditional paper forms, claiming it expected more than 65% of Australians would complete the census online.[9] Reflecting this new preference, the tagline of the ad campaign for the census was the rhyming slogan "Get online on August 9".[10][11] Across many regions, paper forms were no longer delivered by default to homes, and households that wished to complete a paper census had to order such forms via an automated hotline. Letters were sent to each dwelling with unique code numbers that people would need to either login to the census website, or order a paper form if they preferred.[12] By census night, many households had still not received such a letter.[13] Contrary to previous years where censuses were both delivered and retrieved from households by dedicated census employees, in 2016 most of the paperwork relating to the census was delivered from and to the ABS by Australia Post.

The 2016 census was met by a significant controversy, which meant that many Australians could not complete the census online on the designated census day.[14] The ABS census website shut down at about 7:30 pm AEST on the night the census was to be completed. According to the ABS, throughout 9 August the census website received four denial-of-service attacks. At 7:30 pm, when the site was being heavily used, a software failure meant that the ABS was unable to keep blocking the denial-of-service attacks, leading to the failure of a router. As a result, the ABS decided to close down the system as a precaution. The 15th Chief Statistician, David Kalisch stated that no census data were compromised.[15][16][17] The Australian Signals Directorate assisted the ABS to bring the infrastructure back online more than 24 hours after the closure.[18][19][20] The census website was restored at 2:30 pm on 11 August.[21]

On the same day Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated his unhappiness over the event, which had "been a failure of the ABS", with his expectation that "heads will roll" once a review was complete.[22] Leader of the opposition Bill Shorten said that the 2016 census had been the "worst-run ... in the history of Australia".[23] The ABS blamed service provider IBM for the failure in the online census, saying that IBM had advised on the preparedness and resilience to DDoS attacks and had not offered any further protections that could be employed.[24] On 31 August, Parliament initiated an inquiry into the 2016 census.[25][26] It released its findings on 24 November and found that no individual party was responsible but it was shared between the government, IBM, and the sub-contractors.[27]

The census forms were able to be submitted online until 23 September. Once collection was complete, the ABS issued an announcement which confirmed that in spite of the initial online problems, there was a preliminary response rate of more than 96%. This consisted of 4.9 million (over 58%) online submissions and 3.5 million paper forms. The preliminary response rate was similar to the previous two census response rates of 95.8% in 2006 and 96.5% in 2011.[28]

An independent panel established by the Australian Statistician to quality assure the data from the 2016 census found it was fit for purpose, comparable to previous Australian and international censuses and can be used with confidence.[29][30]

"The Independent Assurance Panel I established to provide extra assurance and transparency of Census data quality concluded that the 2016 Census data can be used with confidence."

— David Kalisch, Chief Statistician.

The inclusion of Norfolk Island in Other Territories was new for 2016, following an amendment to the Acts Interpretation Act, 1901. In the 2016 Census, there were 1,748 people, compared with a population of 1,796 in 2011 (Norfolk Island Government Census). Of these 46.8% were male and 53.2% were female. The enumeration of Norfolk Island was an area of special attention for the ABS.

The highest reported ancestries in Australia and for the external territory of Norfolk Island as a percentage of population.[86] Results of the ABS Census of Population and Housing, 2016 are as follows.

Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders

There were 649,171 Indigenous Australians, who made up 2.8% of Australia's population.

• 80.7% spoke only English at home.
• 19.3% spoke a language other than English at home. The most common of these were:
  • Mandarin Chinese
  • Italian
  • Arabic
  • Cantonese Chinese
  • Greek
  • Vietnamese
• 2% of the population could not speak English at all.[92]