Aug 7, 2026 – 4.50pmIt has taken seven years to organise and will cost $726 million to run, but the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics insists the upcoming census is still necessary – even in this age of mass data collection – to draw election boundaries, distribute tax dollars and collect information on remote parts of the country.David Gruen, whose agency will oversee the five-yearly exercise to count every person and household in the country on Tuesday evening, said the 2026 tally could be one of the last before the results were possibly supplemented with data from other sources.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles
$726m and seven years in making: Is the census still worth it?
A proliferation of modern data sources make the population snapshot look like a relic of the past, but ABS boss David Gruen explains why it is still worth doing.
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