When you sit down to fill in your census tonight – or perhaps you already have – it will look very different from Australia’s first census in 1911, when 7,000 census collectors spread across the country on horse, bike and foot to record details of who we were.

Every census has asked about religion. In 1911, less than 0.4% of Australians said they had “no religion”. By 2021, it was 38.9% – more of us had no religion than any single denomination. Data scientist Afzal Azeem Chowdhary will be filling in his first Australian census, and reflects on how Australians increasingly have no religion – and are increasingly comfortable saying so.

There are new questions, too. Many LGBTQ+ people will be pleased and proud to answer a new question about sexual orientation, after years of fighting to be included. But if you’re unsure what to write, or don’t want to discuss it with your household, Ruby Grant and Adam Bourne have some good advice.

You’ll also be asked if you agree to your survey being stored for 99 years and then released through the National Archives. Demographer Terence H Hull asks us all to say yes. He looks at what he found out about his family through census data, and asks us to imagine what Australia will look like in 2125 – what will they want to know about us?

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