We petition the Australian Government and Australian Bureau of Statistics to respect the privacy of Australian residents and to destroy personal identity information (names and addresses) as soon as the census collection is finished.

Individual respondents should continue to have the ability to opt-in to having their identifying data stored in perpetuity, as has been the case in previous Censuses.

The ABS's Census Privacy Impact Assessment and website do not make any compelling case for the retention of names and addresses. The ABS originally wanted to keep names and addresses forever. Now they have changed that to a maximum of 4 years after community concern. There has been no reasonable justification or reasoning given for either the original proposal or the changed proposal.

Name and address information is personal information. The information given in the census about religion, income etc is sensitive information. There is a real risk of this information being re-identified or the access to this information being increased in the future. In addition, data leaks continue to occur despite the best efforts of governments and organisations. The safest way to avoid risk is to destroy the names and addresses immediately.

That's why we call on you to ensure that the ABS does not store names and addresses of people without their consent.