From: fun@thingy.apana.spaaaamtraaaaap.org.au (David Gerard) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Called up Australian Bureau of Statistics today Date: 8 Aug 1997 20:05:59 +1000 Organization: Bruderhof Xenuetics Australia Corporation Lines: 55 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: thingy.apana.org.au X-Newsreader: slrn (0.9.4.3 UNIX) Data from the 1996 Census is finally coming through. I had a look at the Web site (http://www.abs.gov.au) and it had nothing about religions. So I gave 'em a call. SUMMARY: If you want to know the actual count of self-proclaimed Scientologists in Australia as per Census, you can either buy the complete classification count of 'Religion' right now from the ABS for $100, or wait till December 1997 (or mid-1998) for the CLIB CD-ROM to hit your library and look it up yourself. Data for past Censuses should be in your State library - at some point in my copious free time I will check these past figures myself (or maybe you can, Frank). The 'Religion' question was the only voluntary question on the Census, but that's OK because that's what I'm after: the number of people in Australia who will say that they do indeed consider themselves Scientologists when filling in a census form anonymously. Summarised data for the major religions (generally the Christian ones) is available now. The publication is titled 'Census of Population and Housing: Selected Social and Housing Characteristics', the one for all of Australia is catalogue number 2015.0 and you can buy it from the ABS for $26 (you can also get separate ones for each State for $25), or go to your State library and look it up yourself (it should be on the shelves soon or now). Summarised data for the small religions is more trouble. The ABS can sell you the data right now - a full classification count of 'Religion' - for $100, if you're that burningly keen (I'm not). Else, you can wait for CLIB (the Census on CD-ROM) to show up at your State library and look it up yourself. CLIB comes in three releases (as more data is processed - millions of Census forms do take a while to get through). The first release will be in libraries by December 1997 and *may* include a full classification count for 'Religion'. The second release will be around May to July 1998 and will *almost certainly* include the small religions. The third will be around March 1999 and should include everything. By the way, I filled in 'SubGenius' on my form, and urged all others who sincerely (hand on heart) felt this was their religion to do so as well. -- http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/scn/ http://www.suburbia.net/~fun/scn/ I hereby encourage all earthlink.net users to leave for a provider whose email and Usenet messages are not boycotted by the rest of the net, and for ISPs to continue to block earthlink.net email and Usenet messages from Earthlink, until earthlink.net *stop* the flow of junk email and spam.