September 2026

The great weakness of the Census events every five years is that the information is out of date before it’s processed and published.

It will be close to a year after Census night before the first information is released – and much will have changed by then. The Australian population will have grown by at least 350,000 between 11 August 2026 and the first data release.

Despite the possibilities of AI for organising and analysing the statistic, the process is not speeding up. We can’t expect to see any data released by the ABS before mid-2027.

I asked one of Australia’s best analysts of demographic data, .id (Informed Decisions), why it would take so long – especially when technology provides the ability to analyse large amounts of information very quickly.

Glenn Capuano of .id commented:

“I, too, am a little surprised that the time for the ABS to process the data has not changed in the last 20 years – with the last four Censuses, it’s been released 10 months after Census date (1^st release).

“However .id are not the ABS and not privy to how the processing side of it works, so I can’t give you an answer on this.  I’m sure there are good reasons, most likely related to ensuring data quality, why it takes that amount of time.”

The ABS itself says the delay is due to “the massive scale of the operation and the complex quality checks required”.

Jenny Telford, the ABS’ general manager of the Census and population statistics, said:

“June 2027, it might sound like a long time away, but Australia is a really big country. It takes us quite a while to bring in every paper form from every part of remote Australia. Lots of work ahead of us, but June next year is when we’ll release that picture of the nation.”

By which time the nation will have changed.