Census officers cop an earful

A CENSUS field officer has given an insight into the abuse, scepticism and even death threats that are part of the job of being at the frontline after the shemozzle of Census night.

The census field officer, *Chloe, has a collection area of about 500 homes and is one of the 38,000 people hired to be the frontline in what is Australia’s largest operation.

Chloe, after having visited each home in her area twice, estimated only 15 per cent of the people she spoke to were still positive about the Census in the wake of the failure of the IBM-built system on Census night.

“There are people in the community who do the Census form and they post it quickly and they think it’s a worthwhile process,” she said.

“Then you meet people who say ‘why do I have to do it, it’s a useless system anyway, the computer doesn’t work, it’s been hacked into – I’m not going to do it’.

“I think that the public are fed up with what they are hearing and the Australian Bureau of Statistics has lost the confidence of the Australian public because they have so badly managed their public interface.

“I was told to tell people nothing had happened that wasn’t expected and nothing had happened that hasn’t been fixed quickly. That was an official line given to me. “That’s bulls**t.” She said the Census field of- ficers were instructed to lodge their own Census forms online so they could explain to the households they visited the simplicity of electronic lodgement.

“I went to do it online. I gave up, It was so slow. My life is too short for that Census form online,” she said.

Chloe, who is one of the tens of thousands of people who signed up for Census collection, has a corporate background at management level.

She said her experience of dealing with people in the community with Census collection was evidence that the integrity of the Census had been damaged by the fallout of this year’s system failure.

“People will remember this Census. People do have a fiveyear memory and the memory of this Census will really stick,” she said. “There is not one person out there who thinks this Census went well.

“The man in the street is actually must smarter than people give him credit for. A significant number of people have said to me: Why are they asking exactly the same questions as they asked five years ago? Why aren’t they capturing social change?”

While negativity is one thing to deal with, one person threatened to kill her if she returned to collect his Census.

“I have to fill out some sodding great form, scan it and email it in to say ‘someone threatened my life today’,” she said.

*Chloe is not her real name.