It’s a public holiday, here in Brisbane, which means my favourite cafe is closed and I have not had my morning coffee and Brisbane folks have a whole lot of extra time to get cranky about the Australian census today.
And, going by the #CensusFail hashtag on Twitter, there is a lot of anger out there. People are yelling about the already-understandable concerns about the changes in the way Australia is keeping its census data, which raises privacy concerns (that we’re raising these on Facebook amuses me, ’cause…well, Facebook); people are expressing rage at a website that crashed more-or-less immediately when all of fucking Australia tried to log in on the same evening. People are losing their minds about the mixed messages from the Australian Bureau of Statistics regarding what they’re meant to be doing, especially in light of the “do the census or get fined, motherfuckers” tone that has been adopted in recent weeks.
I have sympathy for all of that. I do.
But lets be clear: it’s not going to get any better. We’ve got a government that has slashed the fuck out of the public service, which includes the Bureau of Statistics, in the name of efficiency and budget savings. This has been standard operating procedure for the last four years, will be for another four.
Oddly, when you tell an essential public service to do more with less resources, things get fucked up. ‘Cause doing more, with less, is hard. You have to make concessions, and weigh up cost-to-benefit ratios.
I’m not mad about the census. I’m mad about the recent election, and the collective decision of Australia that they were okay with this approach and wanted to see more of it.
