SBS’ BACKBURNER reckons the Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that they will be escalating efforts to collect censuses from the estimated 2 million houses who have yet to complete it, threatening not only to issue fines but also to send in highly-trained field statisticians who will breach the entrance to your property and count you themselves.
According to The Backburner, Robert Campman, head of operations for the 2016 census, told them that while the teams primarily came from a statistical background, they were trained in armed breaches and 100% ready to break down a door and determine the number of people in a household:
“People often ask us why it costs so much to get people to fill out what is essentially a short quiz. Most of the time we tell them vague things about logistics and infrastructure, but the truth is that helicopters are quite costly and training data entry operators to rappel out of them into living rooms costs even more again.
“It may sound aggressive and perhaps over the top to some unfamiliar with statistics, but it’s critical to understand that we really want these numbers. What if there’s a household somewhere with 12,000,000 children? We need to make sure our averages are correct, and that means finding all of the outliers by means of a SWAT-style infiltration team.
“Fines are mostly a sufficient deterrent, but we want to make sure we catch people who either hadn’t seen any of the communications regarding the fines or perhaps are rich enough to not care about the fines – although obviously we will wait to see if the fines work before we use battering rams and flash bangs to send armoured people with clipboards into the homes of Australian families.
The Backburner story goes on to say that while the teams and gear have been prepped, the ABS says they will have to wait for more data to come in before they can begin the census raids:
“This is a bit embarrassing but, to be honest, we’re not quite sure where to send the teams, as the households who’ve not returned the census have by very definition, not provided us with any info about who or where they are.
“We’re hoping we might be able to catch them out with a second, smaller census about whether or not they’ve filled in the census and also whether they lock their doors or windows.”