2011 Census Fact Sheet

ETHNIC

• The Census will be held on Tuesday 9 August, 2011.
• The Census Inquiry Service (CIS) language helpline caters for 10 of the most commonly used languages in Australia (Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Korean, Persian, Turkish, Spanish, Greek, Russian).
• If the caller is not familiar in any of the10 languages offered by the CIS, they will be connected to an external interpreting service.
• The Census employs Collectors with skills in languages other than English.

Key Statistics (based on 2006 Census data)
• Australians claim more than 250 ancestries and speak 400 languages at home.
• The most common ancestry is Australian, with 7.4 million, or 37 per cent of all people.
• Close to 79 per cent of Australia’s population speak only English at home.
• The three most common languages other than English are Italian (accounting for 1.6 per cent of the population), Greek (1.3 per cent) and Cantonese (1.2 per cent).
• 22 per cent of the Australian population was born overseas.
• Approximately 2.1 million of Australia’s overseas-born population were born in Europe.
• Western Australia has the highest proportion of its total population born overseas (27 per cent) and Tasmania the lowest (11 per cent).
• Sydney is the capital city with the highest proportion of its population born overseas (33 per cent) and Hobart the lowest (12 per cent).