Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Census Information Legislation Amendment Bill 2005 is to amend the Census and Statistics Act 1905 and the Archives Act 1983 to ensure that name-identified information collected at the 2006 census and all subsequent censuses will be preserved for future genealogical and other research and released after 99 years. This information can only be stored if the occupants of the household give their explicit consent.

By way of background explanation: in 1998 the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs brought down a report, Saving our census and preserving our history. This report recommended that name-identified information contained in forms from future censuses be retained, that the records be closed for a period of 99 years and that census information continue to be processed and handled only by officers of the National Archives of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This bill is of special interest to me as in a former life I was an area coordinator for the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the 2001 census. This was the first time that people were given the option of agreeing to the retention of their census form with a minimum closed-access period of 99 years. The previous Australian practice had been that all name-identified information collected in the census was destroyed once the ABS had extracted statistical data from the forms and they were no longer needed for processing.

The 2001 census experience showed that people were delighted to be part of this trial, with some 52 per cent of responses choosing to have their information retained. The percentage in the area I covered was far greater than this. The option of preserving family information for future generations of family history researchers and genealogists added momentum to the whole census experience. I come from a rural area, and we have a large number of farming families who have been in the area since the 1890s. Now, with internet access, they are very keen on their genealogy. When you go to most people with a census form they are not very keen about it, but these families really were delighted to be able to take part in it. I think this is a huge breakthrough, and I commend the committee for their perseverance in being able to bring the bill up. This bill includes explicit protection from disclosure under compulsion to any Commonwealth agency, and the public can be confident that their privacy will be respected, whilst future historians and genealogists will still be allowed a unique and comprehensive glimpse of Australian life for our descendants.

The census is carried out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905. Its main purposes are to measure accurately the number of people in Australia on census night in order to provide a reliable basis to estimate the population of each state and territory and to provide information for small geographic areas and for small population groups. The next census is due to be held on the night of 8 August 2006.

This bill amends the Census and Statistics Act and the Archives Act 1983 to ensure that name-identified information collected at the 2006 census and all subsequent censuses, for those households that provide explicit consent on the form, will be preserved for future genealogical and other research. There will be a closed-access period of 99 years rather than the usual Archives Act closed-access period of 30 years. The bill contains provisions to ensure that, during the 99-year period, the name-identified census information will not be released under any circumstances, not even to a court or a tribunal. Under this legislation, upon the expiry of the closed-access period, the name-identified information of those households which have explicitly consented to this happening will be released so that it can be used for research purposes. I commend the bill to the Senate.