{"id":226915,"date":"2025-10-20T07:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226915\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T07:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T07:30:07","slug":"head-of-abs-defends-debunking-far-right-mass-migration-claims-after-censorship-accusations-australian-bureau-of-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226915\/","title":{"rendered":"Head of ABS defends debunking far-right \u2018mass migration\u2019 claims after censorship accusations | Australian Bureau of Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s chief statistician, David Gruen, has defended the Australian Bureau of Statistics<\/a>\u2019 recent public debunking of far-right claims of \u201cmass migration\u201d, as he said the independent agency \u201cstands ready to respond\u201d to \u201cegregious misrepresentations\u201d of its data.<\/p>\n

The biennial World Stats Day on 20 October comes amid a rising tide of mis- and disinformation around the world that has propelled often anonymous statistical bodies and their officials into the public eye.<\/p>\n

While regimes in countries such as China and Russia have long massaged official data to match political agendas, Donald Trump\u2019s brazen sacking of America\u2019s labour statistics chief after claiming jobs figures were \u201crigged\u201d shocked public officials across the world, including in Canberra.<\/p>\n

Gruen, who was appointed head of the ABS in 2019, said reliable data was a pillar of an informed debate and good policymaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt degrades the democracy if the stats agency is not independent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

While wary of compromising this independence, he said the ABS was prepared to step in when statements being made in the public arena using agency data was \u201cflat-out contradicted by the statistical evidence<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ABS took the relatively unusual step on 22 August of issuing a press statement<\/a> publicly contradicting rightwing claims<\/a> which misused overseas arrivals figures in order to make \u201cinaccurate conclusions\u201d to support inflated claims of mass migration. The figures count people coming in and out of the country, but not necessarily staying.<\/p>\n

The Institute of Public Affairs, a rightwing thinktank, in turn accused the Albanese government of \u201cweaponising\u201d the ABS in order to \u201ccensor\u201d its views.<\/p>\n

Gruen rejected those claims, saying the decision to release a clarifying media statement was made by ABS experts within the division responsible for issuing the data.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo claim that we were censoring anyone is an odd claim, because nothing\u2019s being censored. We went on publishing all the same data. We simply were making a statement about its appropriate use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the IPA has since continued to make the same claims of \u201crecord\u201d migration levels, despite the ABS migration data showing a clear downward trend.<\/p>\n

Gruen said this recent episode highlighted the \u201ctrade-offs\u201d of inserting the bureau into hotly contested policy areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to be seen to be taking sides; I mean, you are taking sides in the sense that you\u2019re trying to take the side of truth, and you\u2019re trying to take the side of explaining what the statistics say and what they don\u2019t say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cProvided we can be clear about and open about what our statistics say<\/a>, there is a sense in which we want to leave it to others to do the interpretation and draw conclusions, if you like.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we don\u2019t want those conclusions to be flat-out contradicted by the statistical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s chief statistician, David Gruen, has defended the Australian Bureau of Statistics\u2019 recent public debunking of far-right claims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-226915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}