Stand up and be counted in census, stars urge

Louise Hall
July 16, 2006

SWANS footballer Adam Goodes and boxer Anthony Mundine are leading a campaign by high-profile indigenous Australians to encourage young Aboriginal men to take part in the census.

They have joined other high profile indigenous Australians including Goodes's teammate, Michael O'Loughlin, Mundine's father, Tony, singer Casey Donovan and rugby league player Amos Roberts in urging their community "to stand up and be counted" when the snapshot of the nation is taken on August 8.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said getting an accurate count of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was traditionally difficult because of the transient nature of the population and low literacy levels.

ABS state indigenous manager Glenda Roberts said 84 per cent of Aboriginal people in NSW lived in urban areas, making them harder to track down.

Goodes, a former Brownlow medallist, is active in the Sydney indigenous community, spending time working with troubled youth with O'Loughlin, his cousin.

He said he was trying to get young men to understand that taking part in the census would help the Government allocate funding for housing, education, and health services.

"If these young indigenous guys are left out of the census, the funding won't go to the areas where they are," he said.

Ms Roberts particularly wanted the support of the sports stars to encourage young men to take part on census night.

"I thought it was really important to get the message out to indigenous people by relying on faces that people in Aboriginal communities could relate to," she said.

"We wanted to raise awareness that the census is a Government activity that directly affects the lives of every indigenous person in the country."

Held every five years, the Census of Population and Housing is the largest statistical collection by the ABS. It gathers information on the social, economic and housing characteristics of Australian society.

Ms Roberts said indigenous census field officers would collect information in regional and remote Aboriginal communities. In urban areas, the officers would help people to fill in the forms.

She said the census would not lead to any changes in their Centrelink benefits - a common fear within the community.

Source: The Sun-Herald