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An independent assurance panel has declared itself satisfied with the quality of the census despite passive resistance and an upsurge in the use of false or unlikely names amid concerns about privacy.
The 2016 census was the first conducted under new rules that allow the Bureau of Statistics to retain names and dates of birth for up to four years and to use them to create "linkage keys" that can be connected to other databases.
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The report of the independent assurance panel into census data quality commissioned in the wake of what became known as #CensusFail finds that Australians became far more circumspect about revealing their dates of birth (compliance fell from 90 per cent to 81 per cent) and less able to recall their names.
A total of 209,000 Australians left off their first names when completing the census (0.9 per cent), compared with just 49,000 (0.2 per cent) in 2011. Some 274,000 left off their last name.
Census 2016. 200,000 of us 'forgot' to hand over our first names. Photo: Viki Yemettas
Seven per cent of the names that were provided were found not to match an index of known names. Fewer than 1 per cent were obviously invalid, being things such as "curse words, titles or phrases".
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The report says it is possible that many more people provided false names, but says it is not possible to work out how often that occurred.
Most of the people who withheld their dates of birth provided their age instead, which is permitted under the rules. Responses to the only other voluntary question, about religion, actually increased, which suggests that Australians remain happy enough to help out the nation with the census so long as their answers don't identify them.
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