Counted but Invisible? How Coffs Harbour’s Most Vulnerable are Fighting for Representation this Census

For those sleeping rough across Australia, completing a census form is rarely a top priority. However, advocates and government planners emphasize that capturing the numbers and profiles of the nation's homeless population is crucial. For several years, Timothy Coles has lived in a tent on the outskirts of Coffs Harbour. He intends to complete the census next week to highlight the hardships faced by Australians, sitting down at a local crisis service to do so.

In Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, demand for support is high at Pete's Place, a local homeless crisis center run by St Vincent de Paul that provides food, caseworkers, showers, laundry facilities, and tents. Anna Millett, the team leader at Pete's Place, explained that clients face significant obstacles when trying to complete the census. "Some of the people who come into our service can't read or write, so it can make filling out a form quite daunting," Millett said. "We see people with complex issues, such as mental health, drug and alcohol use, people experiencing domestic or family violence and young people," she added.

Reaching Out on the Ground

To help bridge the gap, census field officers have been stationed at Pete's Place and the Coffs Harbour Uniting Church Soup Kitchen over the past week. From tomorrow, these officers will conduct interviews with willing participants to record details on a specialized, two-page homeless census form.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has initiated early collaboration with support services to identify the best ways to collect this data. ABS census national spokesperson Emily Walter noted that a targeted strategy is now in place. "We've now got in place a strategy where we are in locations where we have known higher populations of people sleeping rough," Walter said. "We are onsite at support services, where people sleeping rough seek support, so places like soup kitchens [and] streetside medical facilities." She added that they are "Importantly, [we are] working really closely at those locations across Australia during the week of census, to conduct face-to-face interviews with people sleeping rough."

Australian National University demographer Liz Allen, who was missed in the 1996 census while couch surfing as a teenager, remarked that the ABS has developed a more comprehensive approach. "The Australian Bureau of Statistics has matured in their definition of homelessness and made the collection of data very deliberate and sensitive," Dr. Allen said. "This enables them to build a workforce to go into these areas and sensitively ask about living circumstances and collect vital census data from people living in improvised dwellings and having a rough go of things."

In 2021, an estimated 122,494 people were experiencing homelessness on census night, representing a 5.2 percent rise from 2016. "People can be homeless and working full-time jobs, in full-time education, with children, living next door to us," Dr. Allen noted. Because the previous census occurred during the COVID pandemic—when government housing initiatives temporarily sheltered rough sleepers to reduce infection risks—Dr. Allen anticipates a shift. "I do expect that we will see a change in the proportion of people doing it tough; it's likely to increase," she said.

Minority Communities Seek Representation

For multicultural and refugee households, such as the Al-Hassan family, children often take the lead in completing the census. Sixteen-year-old Bahin Al-Hassan has been volunteering to produce community language videos about the census in Ezidi (also known as Yazidi or Yezidi). "The census has been a very important thing to our community and they are trying to get recognised as a region, a religion, as well as a language," Al-Hassan said.

The local Yezidi community in Coffs Harbour gathered recently for Roja Resh, a day of mourning commemorating the 2014 genocide and attacks by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which resulted in the displacement, death, and enslavement of thousands. Currently, Yezidi is not listed among the top nine religions on the census form, requiring individuals to tick "other" and write in their faith. Community leader Sami Sheebo is campaigning for a dedicated checkbox for the Yazidi community. "Basically, we want to recognise [the] Yazidi community. So, we want to be recognised as Yazidi," Sheebo said. "We will keep advocating, educating people and try to prove to the Australian government how many Yazidi people there are, through this census." Australia's Yezidi population recorded a significant increase from 63 people in 2016 to 4,123 in 2021.

Similarly, the Jewish community is calling for improved recognition. Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), estimates the Jewish population in Australia to be around 117,000, though the 2021 census recorded 99,956. "The tick box answers to the religion question have never included the numerically smaller faith communities, like the Jewish community," Wertheim said.

Wertheim highlighted that rising antisemitism has impacted trust in recording religious affiliations. "It's heightened the sense of exclusion, but it has also heightened the traditional concerns of confidentiality and data protection of census data," he said. "Any Jewish family can tell you of experiences in previous times when totalitarian regimes have used censuses to make lists of Jewish people, who are then targeted for persecution or even worse."

The national census is scheduled to take place on Tuesday.