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The results of the census weren’t exactly surprising, but they were eye-opening.
In spite of the catastrophic census fail, the good folks at ABS begged and pleaded enough to get enough answers that the data was deemed “of comparable quality” to prior years.
The threat of being fined $180 for every day your Census form was late obviously worked a treat.
When compared to data from 1966, the census reveals a drastically changing Australia.
A lot of predictions have surfaced about our future, and we’re not saying don’t believe every prediction you see, but this one from 1912 definitely came true:
Melbourne will overtake Sydney’s population
Although Sydney’s clung onto its position as most populous city, it’s not set to stay that way.
Sydney’s population grew by about 1,656 every week since 2011, but Melbs saw 1,859 newbies each week and is predicted to take the number one spot.
Despite being ragged on more than anywhere else, the ACT is the fastest growing state or territory. Questacon and a surplus of roundabouts have attracted another 40,000 new residents since the last census.
‘No religion’ most popular… religion?
A lot of reports are focussing on the fact that for the first time, “no religion” is the most common religious status in Australia – knocking Catholicism from its long-held number one spot.
However, if you lump denominations together, almost 52% of Australians identify as Christian, meaning they’re the real winners of… census?
Some reports have headlines screaming that Islam has grown by 160% since 1991… to a whopping 2.6% of Australians. As we become more multicultural, Hinduism and Buddhism have also seen a massive growth, but account for only 1.9% and 2.4% of the population.
The dominance of people identifying with no religion, although expected, is interesting. In 1996, only 0.8% ticked the box and the number’s almost doubled since the 16% in 2001.
We’re more diverse than America, England and Canada
Just over a quarter of our population is born overseas, which puts the United States (14%), Canada(22%), New Zealand (23%) and the UK (13%) to shame – not that’s it’s a competition…
We’re born in close to 200 different countries and speak over 300 languages at home, including Australian Sign Language.
If you dig a little deeper, people born overseas, or had at least one parent born outside of Australia, made up almost half of our population in 2016 – cementing our status as the immigration nation.
Females massively underrepresented in politics
Although men and women have an equal share of the population, the breakdown of Australian politicians and CEOs looks very different.
ABC reimagined the census data as 100 people and their fantastic infograph highlights an inconvenient, although far from shocking, truth.
Cue men’s rights activists insisting sexism doesn’t exist and we don’t need feminism.
Number of same-sex couples skyrocketed
Obviously people haven’t just suddenly become gay, but the amount of same-sex couples who declared themselves as such increased 39% since the last census to a record 46,800.
The average age of these couples is 40, and last year ANZ predicted 37,000 to 38,000 might marry if they could.
If only half that number did, and only half of those married in the next 12 months, ANZ says $500 million to $550 million would be injected into the economy in the next year.
