[AusNOG] census issues tonight

[Mark Newton]

On Aug 11, 2016, at 1:14 PM, John Lindsay <johnslindsay at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> The Act doesn't allow for fines until you have refused to submit a completed form.

No — It doesn’t allow for fines until you have failed to comply with a written order issued by the Chief Statistician to provide a statistic.

If you don’t receive such an order, you haven’t failed to comply with it.

The census workers may be empowered to act under delegation to issue an order; but until they do, no offence has been committed.

Given the parlous state of the ABS’s IT systems, if I received such an order, I’d be saying, “I already submitted the census form as required. Prove I didn’t.”

The onus of proof rests with them.

(I’m overseas at the moment, and was on census day, so what I’ll actually say when they knock on my door next week is, “Ha-ha no,” and that will be that)

> The question is will the system be running by then or will they have to send everyone a paper form or will they just give up?

It’s up now. 50/50 that it dies tonight.

    - mark