Australia’s multicultural experts and communities are welcoming the federal government’s move to begin collecting ethnicity data to measure diversity within the country. 

The Australian Government have long struggled with adequately capturing the country’s diversity as the individual’s country of birth and language spoken at home were often used as main diversity indicators, ignoring those with diverse backgrounds and are born in Australia and speak English. 

The new Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles explained that the failure to collect data on ethnicity or race was a barrier to understanding the issues multicultural Australians face. 

“I looked at the sort of countries that we often compare ourselves to … and we weren’t compiling data that enables us to understand the representation of different population groups,” Minister Giles said during the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) conference. 

“This became a much bigger issue, of course, during the pandemic, where we saw really uneven health impacts, particularly in the vaccination rollout.” 

While the Australian Government had committed to sourcing ethnicity data during COVID-19 testing and vaccination last year, Victoria was the only state to do so.  

This was despite indications that culturally and linguistically diverse communities were hit harder by the outbreaks. 

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed that Aussie residents born in the Middle East and North Africa were over 10 times more likely to die of the coronavirus than people born in Australia.  

Meanwhile, those born in South-East Asia and southern and central Asia were around twice as likely to die than those born in Australia. 

FECCA Chief Executive Mohammad al-Khafaji said that the pandemic showed a hole in the data collected about the Australian population. 

“COVID has provided that opportunity for us to actually look seriously at the systemic barriers for us to address this issue,” he said, welcoming the announcement as the new government recognised it as a priority. 

“The pandemic showed us some pretty hard truths about our society,” Minister Giles said. 

“That is the most extreme example of many about our failures to ensure that everyone was counted, and everyone was supported, through a difficult time. I don’t want that to happen again.” 

A culturally and linguistically diverse data collection working group, with representatives from peak multicultural bodies and data collection and demography experts, will be established to help develop national standards for diversity data collection. 

Ahead of the 2021 census, people from Asian and Pacific Islands ethnic minority backgrounds revealed that the ABS was not accurately capturing their ancestry. 

Minister Giles said he wanted the changes to inform the next census in 2026. 

“The data set we have about this is imprecise, because the place of birth doesn’t really tell us the full story about who someone is, how they identify, and that’s why we do need to get better data,” he said. 

Source: ABC News. Content has been edited for style and length.

Eliza Sayon

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Eliza is a content producer and editor at Public Spectrum. She is an experienced writer on topics related to the government and to the public, as well as stories that uplift and improve the community.

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