Labor has called on Australians not to spoil the census, slapping down a growing revolt led by minor parties to withhold names when filling it out.

But the shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh, criticised the federal government for failing to explain changes to hold name and address information for four years, up from 18 months, after two Greens senators joined the push to withhold their names.

On Monday Nick Xenophon announced he would not include his name on his census form, risking prosecution and a fine, over privacy concerns.

He said he would contest any notice or fine, and would bring an amendment so people who withhold their names cannot be prosecuted.

On Monday Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Sarah Hanson-Young announced they too would withhold their names when completing the census, to be conducted on Tuesday night

Senators Janet Rice and Lee Rhiannon said they would withhold their names ahead of Tuesday’s party room meeting in which the Greens will discuss their stance on the census, in addition to other business including reshuffling portfolios.

Leigh told ABC’s AM: “Labor’s view is everybody should fill in the census.”

He said the minor party push and the government’s failure to sell its changes “imperils the quality of census data”.

Asked about the minor party push to withhold names, Leigh said: “I won’t be following that mode. I would encourage Australians not to spoil the census because when you do so you deny your community and neighbours the resources they’re entitled.”

Leigh said the census was critical for allocating funding to schools, homelessness and employment programs. Business and the not-for-profit sector also relied on the information.

Asked about the specific uses of collecting names, Leigh said this information could be matched to the death registry to calculate the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Duncan Young, the Australian Bureau of Statistics census project head, tried to reassure Australians on Tuesday that their data would remain private.

“You’ve been separated from the internet and the risks of the net and ... the information is isolated so people who can access names can’t access the rest,” he told the Nine Network’s Today Show.

But Anna Johnston, a former deputy privacy commissioner of NSW, told Radio National on Tuesday there was a “delicate balance” between collecting valuable information and respecting privacy.

She said the “quite dramatic” change of linking name and address data to other information such as education and mental health data and holding it for longer had upset that fine balance.

Johnston said the ABS and federal government might have benign uses of data but “we can’t protect against future governments [and instances] where people might want to misuse the data”.

Citing Japanese internment in the second world war, Johnston said: “We’re only one Trump-esque leader away from the person who says ‘let’s find out where all the Muslims live’, from the census data.



“The only way to protect against that happening is to ensure that data remains as a national anonymous snapshot, as the census has always been, rather than an individual record for linking purposes.”

Speaking with ABC News Breakfast, the small business minister, Michael McCormack, said the census had bipartisan support and urged “ all parliamentarians to talk it up [and] promote it”.

“There are legitimate penalties in place for those who wilfully obstruct the process of the census,” he said.

Failure to comply with a notice to fill in the census can result in a $180 a day fine.

McCormack sad it was up to the ABS to decide if Xenophon and the two Greens were wilfully obstructing the census, but he hoped they could get on board.

He said it enabled governments “to resource and fund communities right across the nation – remote, regional, capital city, and it is an important, absolutely critical part of absolutely being able to set those agendas and that funding process”.

Holding information for four years allowed the ABS to track population flows and life expectancy trends for longer.

“The ABS has an impeccable record when it comes to privacy and security,” he said. “Courts can’t access the information, ministers can’t and indeed the [prime minister] can’t.”

The defence industries minister, Christopher Pyne, accused Xenophon of engaging in a “tin-foil hat kind of politics” – a reference to conspiracy theorists – and damaging South Australia for leading the push to withhold names from the census.



Pyne told ABC Radio: “If people follow his lead in South Australia and they are not counted, our population in South Australia will be underrepresented and we could well lose a seat in the house of representatives in the next redistribution.



“So in fact, Senator Xenophon, in gaining a political point and creating an issue which isn’t there, is actually damaging the very state that he represents.”

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm said he was “broadly sympathetic” to the idea of withholding names but would provide his because “it is the law to provide your name and I wouldn’t endorse breaking the law”.