The latest Census figures are in and they show an increase in single parents and renters, a decrease in Christians, and that more than half the country is made up of first or second-generation migrants.
The new figures also show a large increase in Australia's Indigenous population, with some age groups showing an almost 30 per cent jump in the numbers since the last Census in 2016.
One of the several reasons for that is a slowly abating fear of identifying as Indigenous and of some of the serious risks that has entailed.
Not identifying 'about survival'
Kris Rallah-Baker, a Yuggera Warangu Wiradjuri man, and Australia's first and only Indigenous ophthalmologist, says the state defines who can and can't identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian.
The three parts to identity are that "you have to have descended from one of the original groups who were here before British arrival", "you have to identify yourself" and "your community has to recognise you as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander", Dr Rallah-Baker tells ABC RN's Saturday Extra.
He has long suspected the number of Indigenous people was larger than what the Census showed and say that in his local community, "we haven't been surprised" by the increase.
There's been "a decreasing fear about identifying as being Aboriginal and an increasing pride to be able to go out there and say, 'Yes, I am Aboriginal. This is a part of me. This is who I am'," he says.
"The identity issue is a large part of this," Dr Rallah-Baker says.
He is from a large Indigenous family in Brisbane and grew up identifying as Aboriginal. But he's known plenty of Indigenous families who didn't.
"Particularly in the darker days, through the [19]50s and '60s, and the Joh [Bjelke-Petersen] era, there were lots of people around who we knew had Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage, but chose not to divulge that," he says.
"A number of those families now do identify. And then further on through my career through medical school, and in the medical system as well, I've certainly continued to see that trend."
Choosing not to identifying as Aboriginal had nothing to do with data collection.
"Originally, it was about survival," Dr Rallah-Baker says.
"That's how basic it was. If you identified as Aboriginal, you were subject to increased risk of having your children taken away, increased discrimination [and] less opportunities presented to you in life.
"So there was a driver for people to not identify in order to try and get ahead in Western society. And a lot of those drivers we're now seeing significantly reduced."
Rapid growth, but more work still to do
The number of Australians identifying as Indigenous is up about 25 per cent from the 2016 Census count, says Nicholas Biddle, associate director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods. He is also a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander demographic statistics expert advisory group at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
That means Australia now has an estimated Indigenous population of "about 952,000 to a million Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Australians, so a little under 4 per cent of the total population", Professor Biddle says.
He describes it as "quite a rapid growth". He attributes this to several factors, including Indigenous communities' high fertility rates compared to the rest of the population, and that a child from a family with one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous parent is likely to identify as Indigenous.
"That's an additional growth [and] a relatively young population … so most Indigenous Australians are in age groups where mortality rates are quite low," Professor Biddle says.
Government and societal changes – the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations, for example – have an impact, too.
Indeed there was another spike in people identifying as Indigenous in the Census after the Apology was made.
"We certainly saw [that the Apology] appeared to be a factor in people feeling that [identifying as an Indigenous person] wasn't necessarily as damaging to them," Professor Biddle says.
"Remember the Census is a state apparatus, and therefore people need to feel comfortable with making that decision to identify or be identified by their family."
He says despite this large growth, the figure of Indigenous Australians is still "likely to be an underestimate" as there are still likely to be people who, for "either personal family [reasons] or a negative experience in the past with government services, may still not feel comfortable to identify".
Dr Rallah-Baker says there are "some communities and some individuals not wanting to join the electoral roll and partake in activities like the Census" for philosophical reasons.
"A number of Aboriginal people say, 'Well, I'm an Australian Aborigine not an Aboriginal Australian'. They make that distinction."
Every Indigenous community is different and every community is influenced differently by their "varying experiences with colonial activities", he says.
Professor Biddle believes the varying influences on someone choosing to identify their indigeneity means policymakers and governments must do more to get accurate data, so that all Australians are represented by it.
"We still need to work harder and make sure that our accounts and our estimates are as accurate as possible, and people who aren't comfortable in doing so are able to feel comfortable to identify," he says.
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