What happens if I lie on the census form? “It’s important to know that it’s an offence to provide false or misleading statements or information,” the ABS warns. The penalty is a fine of up to $2220.Some lies would be pretty obvious to census officials. During the 2001 census, there was a debacle as thousands of people lied about their religion for a laugh. Officials knew they were lying because, well, it was pretty obvious.They identified as being from the religious order of the Jedi – which is a Star Wars reference. Glenn Capuano, a demographer who worked at the ABS for 10 years, wrote a humorous blog post about all the Aussies who decided to have a laugh at the census in 2001. “A lot of people … answered ‘Jedi’, or some other variant such as ‘Jedi Knight’, ‘Jedi Master’, ‘Sith Lord’, or ‘Padawan’,” he explained for the religious question in the census. “In the 2001 Census, there were just over 73,000 Jedi in Australia, or 0.37 per cent of the population. “To put in perspective, if it was allowed as an ‘official’ religion, it would’ve been larger than the Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventists, and only slightly smaller than Judaism.”Census was furious, and put out an official statement disavowing any legitimate religious movement to the popular Star Wars franchise.
