Australia's LGBTQI community has expressed anger, saying they were being treated as a political football.
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said the choice to not include the question in the 2026 census was to avoid opening "a divisive debate".
LGBTIQ+ Health Australia CEO Nicky Bath wants gender and sexuality questions in the census. (Mick Tsikas/AAP PHOTOS)
But LGBTIQ+ Health Australia chief executive Nicky Bath says her community already experiences controversy.
"We know at times we have to trade on those divisive debates for us to be able to progress," she told AAP.
"When we're now placed in this position where we're surrounded by these divisive conversations for no gain, it's even more distressing."
While Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he understood the feedback from the community, "the census is still a couple of years away and our focus has been on other things, including the cost of living".
"Our goal here has been to try and avoid some of the nastiness ... in the lead up to the census," he told ABC radio on Thursday.
He said he took "people's feedback seriously" but would not reverse the decision.
"We know that people are unhappy about this, we don't take that lightly," he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the government is focused on the cost of living crisis. (Darren England/AAP PHOTOS)
The LGBTQI community had only asked to be captured in the census, Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said.
To assume all Australians would be angered by a basic acknowledgement of that fact was "insulting", she said.
"How counting the queer community in the next census could possibly be responsible for a lack of social cohesion is preposterous at best and victim-blaming at worst," she said.
A 2019 report by the federal health department estimates about one in 10 Australians identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or gender diverse.
These Australians have disproportionately worse mental health outcomes and illicit drug use rates, and experience sexual, family and domestic violence at a higher rate than heterosexual people.
Dr Chalmers said the census was only one way to gather data.
But without population-level data like socio-economic analyses, long-term trends and geographic information, researchers cannot fully understand what leads to these health disparities.
"We're too often political footballs, rather than being seen as human beings who have health and wellbeing needs," Ms Bath said.
"For us not to have these questions in the 2026 census will exacerbate that and leave us unable to have the clarity needed to best respond."
The 2021 census did not include any questions about sexual orientation or sex characteristics and a complaint was made to the Australian Human Rights Commission about the exclusion of LGBTQI people.
This prompted the Australian Bureau of Statistics - which runs the census - to apologise, establish an expert advisory committee and "invest in the support for the LGBTQI+ community ... to fully participate in the 2026 census".
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