Transgender Australians have long been the focus of debates about the future of sport, schools, healthcare and public bathrooms.

But there has never been a single, official tally of how many Australians identify as transgender – only a patchwork of estimates.

In just a matter of days, this will change.

New questions about Australians’ sexuality and gender will be included in the 2026 census, overcoming a politically bruising debate within the Labor Party that forced the prime minister into a series of backdowns after he tried to abandon a plan to include them.

Advocates have spent years lobbying for more detail on LGBTQ Australians to be tracked, arguing it is crucial to properly inform decisions about public services.

Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said the improved data would transform the way programs tackled challenges facing the LGBTQ community, such as higher rates of homelessness and suicide among queer youth.

“The ABS will have data that maps the picture of what our communities look like and where we live, the health conditions we face, and in a whole range of areas of demographic information that will be crucial to driving these policy decisions,” she said.

In the census, to be held on August 11, a new question will ask what a person’s sex recorded at birth was. Another will ask those aged 16 and above what their gender is.

The bureau explains: “Gender relates to a person’s social or cultural identity as a man, woman, non-binary person or another term. A person’s gender may change over time and may not be the same as their sex recorded at birth.”

Taken together, the questions will provide a national picture of how many Australians are trans or cisgender (meaning having a gender identity that matches one’s sex assigned at birth).

Another question will ask Australians aged 16 and above how they describe their sexual orientation.

“This question is about sexual identity and attraction, how a person thinks of their own sexuality, the term they identify with, and their romantic or sexual attraction to others,” the ABS says, noting it is not meant to collect information on sexual behaviour.

Individuals wanting to keep their answers private from others in a household can apply for a separate census form, and answers are kept confidential by the ABS.

The bureau has previously estimated about 0.9 per cent, or 178,900 Australians aged 16 and over are trans and gender diverse, and 4.5 per cent, or 910,600, are LGBTQ.

The Federal Court in May dismissed an appeal from the creators of social media app Giggle, upholding a finding from 2024 that they had breached Commonwealth discrimination laws in blocking trans woman Roxanne Tickle from an app they described as a “safe space” for women.

The finding kickstarted a fresh political debate about the definition of biological sex, prompting both One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and the Coalition’s Angus Taylor to pledge to rewrite the Sex Discrimination Act to include biological definitions of women and men.

The prime minister attempted in 2024 to head off what he predicted would become a divisive culture war by abandoning the party platform to count LGBTQ Australians in the census. The move instead sparked an internal revolt, with six Labor MPs speaking out in favour of the questions’ inclusion in a rare show of defiance. Coalition MPs were largely ambivalent about the change.

Under pressure from his own caucus, Albanese agreed to include a question about sexual orientation. About a week later, he agreed to another about gender identity.

Jade Barber, a trans woman who runs mentoring programs for LGBTQ people at a Melbourne not-for-profit, said calling trans representation a culture war reinforced the idea that trans people were a new phenomenon or their gender was not real.

“The important thing for people to recognise is that transgender people’s identities and genders aren’t made up, and that diversity has existed within gender forever,” she said.

Barber welcomed the new questions, and said they would help minimise the feelings of exclusion experienced by the trans community.

“Not being represented takes a toll,” she said. “Knowing ... you’re not truly going to be counted or understood or represented in the biggest survey in Australia has its own impacts.”

The ABS has for years been grappling with how best to articulate questions about sexuality and gender to ensure they are easily understood.

It was for this reason that the bureau had not recommended including a question about intersex people who have genetic, hormonal or physical characteristics that mean they do not conform with medical norms for female or male bodies.

“Testing did not provide the ABS with confidence that the question would be understood and answered accurately in the census,” a spokesperson said.

“Respondents found the question complex, but expert opinion ... was that further simplification of wording would risk misinterpretation and increase misreporting.”