The federal government has announced it will begin collecting ethnicity data as part of measuring diversity in Australia
Country of birth and language spoken at home have historically been the main diversity indicators used by Australian government agencies.
But experts say this does not adequately capture the diversity of the community — not least because many Australians from diverse backgrounds are born in Australia and speak English.
"Australia does not effectively measure our diversity," Andrew Giles, the new Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in Melbourne.
He said Australia's failure to collect data on ethnicity or race — unlike the US, Canada and New Zealand — was a "fundamental barrier to understanding the issues that face multicultural Australians".
"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," Mr Giles told the ABC at 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."
Last year, the ABC reported that while the federal government had committed to sourcing ethnicity data during COVID-19 testing and vaccination, Victoria was the only state collecting data on ethnicity.
This was despite indications that culturally and linguistically diverse communities were being harder-hit by coronavirus outbreaks, such as those in Western Sydney and public housing towers in Melbourne.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-16/federal-government-to-measure-ethnicity-data-multiculturalism/101158038
Literally what the NAZI's did