The grand tradition of quirky bureaucracies

Nearly all of the holiday tweets, which also appear on the ABS’s Instagram account, seem like a savvy, innocuous, social-media strategy for an important agency that wouldn’t otherwise get much attention—in the grand tradition of quirky bureaucracies ranging from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which marks holidays with increasingly bizarre memes, to Sweden, which famously turned over its Twitter account to citizens.

In that context, even the greeting for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, is just harmless engagement. But the ABS ought to reconsider this one, a common pie-chart meme, wishing too much of the country a Merry Christmas. (ABS didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Atheism is the fastest-growing religious belief in Australia

If the agency wants to educate the public about Australia’s religious tapestry, it should also highlight that the most common religious affiliation, listed by 9,767,448 Australians in last year’s census, is no religion at all. That’s more than the 5,075,907 Catholics and 2,496,273 Anglicans who once dominated the country but, in the latest count, are now a minority.

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