By MILLIE MUROI, Economics Writer
Within the world of chaos and uncertainty that economists – and, in fact, many of us – constantly work, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is usually a comforting presence.
Like clockwork, at 11.30am most weekdays, the national bureau releases the latest wave of data: everything from what’s happening in our jobs market to how much prices have risen and how many houses are being built.
These are key numbers that the Reserve Bank uses to set interest rates, politicians use to inform policy, and that we use to hold the government to their word.
So when the bureau declared last week that it would not be releasing statistics from its latest survey of income and housing this year, it came as a bit of a shock … at least to the nerds (myself included) keeping a close eye on the bureau’s homepage.
And it’s actually bad news for everyone.
In a statement to the media, the bureau said this particular set of data – from a 2023-24 survey – failed to meet its high standards.
“While we were compiling the statistics … we found serious shortcomings in the questionnaire design and data collection processes that we could not overcome, despite our best efforts,” deputy Australian statistician Dr Phillip Gould revealed.
It might not seem like a big deal. But it means one of our best trackers of income, housing costs such as mortgages and rent, assets and liabilities such as property, motor vehicles, investments and credit cards – from 30,000 households across the country – has essentially been thrown out the window.
Wasted data is never good. And it’s especially painful during a housing affordability crisis when we need the information to formulate good policies.
And it’s especially a problem given we haven’t had an update to this particular set of statistics since 2019 because of disruptions during the pandemic – and won’t get an update until at least 2027 given the lag with which the results are released.
So, what exactly went wrong?
First, it’s worth noting that the bureau (also known as the ABS), is not alone in some of the hurdles it faces. National statistical organisations around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to collect information from households.
The UK’s statistics agency – the Office for National Statistics (abbreviated to the less, or perhaps more, fortunate ONS) – has had to start fixing some of its “virtually unusable” employment figures as well as some of its data on inflation and trade. Experts have warned these issues have left the UK’s central bank, the Bank of England, “flying blind”.
The problem with its employment data mostly came down to the response rate which plummeted to 17 per cent at its lowest point. Jonathan Portes, an economist at King’s College London, said UK households had become more reluctant to respond to surveys – an issue that worsened during the pandemic.
But he also flagged years of tight budgets and low pay for the office’s statisticians compared with private sector peers as further possible factors in the falling quality of the data.
Independent economist Nicki Hutley says the bureau – which in 2023-24 received about $417 million in government funding – is probably also not adequately funded.
“It would be great if we had a properly resourced bureau that could make sure that it was able to do things in ways that it was comfortable,” she says.
While a spokesperson for the bureau said the overall response rate for the survey of income and housing was “acceptable”, they said the mix of responses was not representative of the population.
There are a few reasons for that, including that people now prefer to interact with the government online, at a time that suits them, with some people being especially difficult to reach.
That’s driving up the cost of conducting these surveys because households are becoming less available and willing to engage, the spokesperson said: “[This] means field interviewers may need to make more frequent contact attempts, including in-person visits, to households.”
While the bureau says it generally receives excellent cooperation from households, it can legally direct people to provide information.
Besides being more annoying and knocking on more doors, the spokesperson said the bureau would make it easier for households to participate in surveys by improving the design of surveys and the ways in which they could offer help and receive feedback.
In December last year, the government committed $98 million over four years for the bureau to improve how it collects data and interacts with Australians, including improving the digital experience for key surveys.
But the bureau has also learned some lessons. It will, for example, monitor response rates more closely and frequently so that it can intervene earlier if the data isn’t looking up to scratch – and therefore avoid having to bin all the findings at the end.
It has also set clearer targets to allow for better tracking of the results as they come in.
While the bureau didn’t point to specific issues with the design of its 2023-24 survey, its spokesperson said some wording of questions had been changed from previous years.
When it came to changes to its 2025-26 survey of income and housing, the bureau undertook “extra user testing”, testing updates with the Australian public more vigorously before sending the survey out widely.
That testing was aimed at more carefully checking the public’s understanding of the questions to make sure it aligned with the things the bureau wanted to measure, and looking at how people worked their way through the survey forms to make sure they were easy to use but collected the necessary information.
While Hutley says the missing data is not catastrophic, she says it is pretty painful.
“A lot of people might think that this is not necessarily significant because there are other indicators that are available and some workarounds for some things, but there’s certainly things you can’t do, and this data gets used for an awful lot of research, especially around things like income inequality which is a growing issue in Australia” she says.
“Being told, ‘well, we’re not confident in the series’, is a little bit concerning.”
It’s also a problem given the data is meant to be an ongoing measure that allows changes and conditions to be tracked over time.
In a comment on LinkedIn, UNSW professor of housing research policy, Hal Pawson, said the missing data, which is supposed to be updated every two years, was a “shocking slip-up” by the bureau.
“This survey provides invaluable official data on rental affordability and housing under-utilisation, as well as on broader topics including the distribution of income and wealth,” Pawson said. “A data series that should be refreshed every two years will be badly damaged by a gap of at least five years [since the last release].”
Although this particular oversight may not be the end of the world, it will have consequences, and it’s an issue the bureau will be acutely aware of for some time.
As the census, the biggest survey of them all, enters the testing phase before its five-yearly distribution in 2026, the stakes will be even higher. That survey is one the bureau can’t afford to get wrong – or ghosted on.
