Head of ABS defends debunking far-right ‘mass migration’ claims after censorship accusations | Australian Bureau of Statistics

Australia’s chief statistician, David Gruen, has defended the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest public rebuttal to the far-right’s “mass migration” claims, saying the independent agency is “prepared to respond” to “appalling misrepresentations” about its own data.

World Statistics Day, held every two years on October 20, comes amid a rising tide of misinformation and disinformation around the world that has brought often anonymous statistical organizations and their officials into the public eye.

While regimes in countries such as China and Russia have long sought to push official data to suit their political agendas, Donald Trump’s brazen sacking of America’s labor statistics chief, claiming employment figures were “fraudulent”, shocked public officials around the world, including in Canberra.

Gruen, who was appointed head of the ABS in 2019, said reliable data is a pillar of informed debate and good policymaking.

“The lack of independence of the statistical institution weakens democracy.”

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While wary that this independence would be compromised, he said the ABS was prepared to intervene where statements made in the public domain using agency data were “clearly contradicted by the statistical evidence”.

ABS took a relatively unusual step on August 22 a press release Claims that clearly contradict right-wing claims that misuse figures of arrivals abroad to draw “false conclusions” to support inflated claims about mass immigration. The figures take into account people entering and leaving the country, but not necessarily staying in the country.

The Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank, accused the Albanian government of “weaponizing” the ABS to “censor” its views.

Gruen denied these allegations, saying that the decision to issue an explanatory media release was made by ABS experts in the department responsible for publishing the data.

“To claim that we were censoring anyone is an odd claim because nothing is being censored. We just kept publishing the same data. We were just making a statement about the appropriate use of it.”

Indeed, the IPA has since continued to make the same claims about “record” immigration levels, despite ABS migration data showing a clear downward trend.

Gruen said this latest episode highlights the “violence” of bringing the bureau into hotly debated policy areas.

“You don’t want to appear to be taking sides, so you’re taking sides in the sense that you’re taking sides on the side of truth and trying to take the side of explaining what the statistics say and what they don’t say,” he said.

“As long as we can be clear and open about what our statistics say, we kind of want to leave it to others to interpret and draw conclusions, if you will.

“But we don’t want these results to completely contradict the statistical evidence.”