Canberrans head to the Web for Census Night

Did anyone notice that for the religion question it listed a bunch of different religions, then had ‘other’ with a space of 5 or 6 lines to write something else and then underneath that, all on it’s own they had a little box for ‘no religion’…

I thought that was SO dodgy!!

Perhaps this says something about me that sexual preference, favourite colour etc. seems to indicate dating agency rather than “informed analysis of trends in the Australian population”. Although sexual preference is probably just about as valid as religion, really, in the categorisation of things.

What the hell do you expect the Australian Government to do with the favourite colour thing, though? Build more things green?

I thought the census was used for dating services. I recall after the last one some news regarding which suburbs had higher proportions of single females vs single males.

simto, how on earth did u get dating agency out of my comment?

If the point of the census is to get valuable information on the population of australia; for things such as public policy, market analysis and such. then there could have been lots of questions asked.

I buggered up the stats, I live outside the ACT and got a paper copy, but then the census bloke offered me a net census. I have a colony of spiders in my letterbox and I think he didn’t like encountering them. Had no problems with the site at all, it all went along and took about 10 minutes to do.

It was the same out in Kambah – I rang on the day and they sent some schmuck around with a hard copy … maybe they though that they were short of well-heeled types from the ‘burbs and they had enough trendy inner city wanker types?

Would have loved to do the census but they didn’t get us forms (in a block of 90 units). Seems like they’re happy to miss ~150 people.

We’ve called the census hotline so they can send us a form out. Bah!

Jazz: it said somewhere on the form that they ask that to estimate daytime populations.

You got it wrong VY (not sure how an ABS form can be filled in wrong but anyway), for religion you should have put ‘lesbian converter’.

Maelinar = Jedi

Jedi is easier to write than ‘no religion’, and it provides endless humour to the masses, unlike religion.

It’s not a dating agency, Jazz.

For profession, I put down ‘lesbian converter’.

I’m a bit disappointed in the whole thing. of all the questions that could have been asked and weren’t there. instead i’ve got to put down who my employer is and their address. how is that useful?

The space could have been far better used to find out peoples sexual preference, or favorite colour.

Big Al, they only get about 3 hrs in the evening, ours said they have to finish around 8pm and with 500 houses (according to our collector) it’ll take time to reach everyone in the evening.

I was already to do census online, then went to get the envelope with the other login number….

It was never handed to me.

So I just did the paper one. I’d use the online one if they had given me both logins to use the damn thing.

I deliver / collect the census. eCensus ftw.

I too, had no problems filling it out.Took about 20 mins.
I would definitely use the online version in future.
The lady who gave me the form mentioned “online” otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue about it

JohnBoy, what religion will you be listing on your (paper) census form which opposes helping the ABS???

Nah, they’re my taxes and I want a say in how they’re spent. My completed form is sitting on my dining table … I reckon the census guy will come a couple of times before he realizes that I’m not home during the day and leave a pre-paid envelope – that’s gotta cost and a dollar spent getting the census form back is a dollar denied to public education or pubic servant salaries…

no way.. helping the ABS is against my religion

plus i got given a reply paid envelope which my census is firmly ensconced in.

All of you who filled out the paper form should be whipped by Stanhope for bringing down the number of ACT eCensus returns – as you obviously have access to the web.

Until your form is picked up by the your census collector, you can submit it online (so do it now). It also costs less for the ABS to process the eCensus, so why not get some better value from your tax dollars.

I used the uberqwik method. The missus filled it out and I signed it.
Was there anything interesting in it?

Nah, even if they had 90% doing it online, the amount of effort for the other 10% means that the frequency won’t be increased. So many things to consider such as oil rig workers, people overseas, disabled, non-english speaking etc. etc.

My religion was Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. didn’t bother going online though. Agree with JB – they’ll just do it more regularly if they get a good response rate online.

Online worked a treat for me. If you can type and have filled in online surveys before, the process is extremely fast + the census collector doesn’t have to return to collect the form.

I am concerned that by expressing a religion of Pirate or Jedi I would completely waste my religion count when I really wanted to be counted as no religion or atheist or as I put it ‘extreme atheist’.

I tried accessing at work yesterday and it kept timing out. Was working fine last night though.

Yeah we didnt think of doing it on the interweb.. mostly because we are in between interweb PC’s at the mo..

But the hardest question for me and the lady was friend was working out whether we are defacto or housemates.. housemates sounds a lot more funner and deviant

Didn’t think doing it online would really work for us, as a sharehouse with people not usually all around at the same time. Leaving the form on the kitchen bench for everyone to get to it when they had time works well.

The online census kept timing out for me – had to do it the ol’ fashioned way. Did this happen to anyone else?

Gee I thought it would actually be higher than 11 per cent across the whole of Australia. I suppose that’s overly optimistic. Nevertheless submitting it online is likely to be a good proxy for intelligence.

I made the mistake of having turning the TV on at the exact same time rove mcAnus was on and talking about census forms. I was glad that I didn’t put down a pirate as my occupation because rove mcanus said to do it. Rove is not my master he does not control my legs.

We wanted to do it electronically, but we didn’t get the necessary envelope with the second, online part of the code so we had to fill out the paper version. Bummer.

I hear this census we are all putting “Pirate of the Caribbean” as our religion.

There reports of house of Vikings in Scullin.

Idiots!

If not for the cost of doing this on paper the ABS will have us filling in the damn forms every week.