2026 Census to be replaced by a chain email questionnaire you’d send your crush in the 90s

The ABS has announced that they will be doing away with the traditional Census format next year and opting for a bit of 90s charm.

On Census night in 2026, you will be forwarded an email containing 40 questions from your crush. They will include things like where you met, their birthday, what you think they’d most likely get arrested for and what’s their favourite song lyric at the moment.

The ABS believes these more intimate questions will provide a more useful set of data for them to work with. A spokesperson told The Times,

“We’ve tried the traditional approach, and we find out people just talk shit. So we’ll go back to when people actually were authentic. You wouldn’t want to get an important detail about your crush wrong would you?”

The genius of the plan is that they won’t have to set up expensive servers that are destined to crash or print out millions of paper copies. As in their words,

“After you’re done with your questions you will be warned to pass the email onto as many friends as possible of you’ll meet some grisly fate. Just cc us in”

Sounds like a good system ABS.

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