Australian Bureau of Statistics

Australian statistics and census agency

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is an Australian Government agency that collects and analyses statistics on economic, population, environmental, and social issues to advise the Australian Government. The bureau's function originated in the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, established in 1905, four years after Federation of Australia; it took on its present name in 1975. The ABS conducts Australia's Census of Population and Housing every five years and publishes its findings online.

Efforts to count the population of Australia started in 1795 with "musters" that involved physically gathering a community to be counted, a practice that continued until 1825. The first colonial censuses were conducted in New South Wales in 1828; in Tasmania in 1841; South Australia in 1844; Western Australia in 1848; and Victoria in 1854. Each colony continued to collect statistics separately despite attempts to coordinate collections through an annual Conference of Statisticians. The first simultaneous census across all the Australian colonies occurred in 1881. The final unification of all state statistical offices with the CBCS occurred in the late 1950s under the guidance of Sir Stanley Carver, who was the New South Wales Statistician acting as the Commonwealth Statistician. In 2015, the Australian Government announced a $250 million five year investment in the ABS to modernise its systems and processes.

Once every 5 years, the ABS conducts the Australian Census of Population and Housing as stipulated under federal law in the Constitution of Australia. The most recent was conducted on 10 August 2021. Statistics from the census were published on the ABS website in June 2022. The census aims to accurately measure the population, number of dwellings in Australia, and a range of their key characteristics. Census data is used for defining electoral boundaries, planning infrastructure, establishing community services, and formulating public policy.

In 2016, the ABS conducted its census largely online through its website and logins rather than through paper forms. The bureau took the form offline for 43 hours from 8:09 pm on 9 August until 2:29 pm on 11 August. On 10 August, the Australian Statistician, David Kalisch, stated that the website was closed after denial of service attacks from an overseas source targeted the online form; "the first three were successfully repelled and the fourth one caused the difficulty that then led us to bring the system down as a precaution". A comprehensive review by Alastair MacGibbon, Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security, tabled in October, concluded that five distributed denial of service attacks – in which incoming traffic from many different sources "floods" the site – had occurred. They had been much smaller than attacks experienced by other Australian Government websites and the preventable outages had resulted from a failed geoblocking strategy, compounded by a hardware failure when the contractor, IBM, attempted to reboot the system after the fourth attack. There was no indication that the census data was insecure or was compromised. Many recommendations of the review included that the ABS should strengthen its approach to managing the performance of outsourced ICT suppliers and that the ABS "should draw upon the lessons it takes from the Census experience to help to guide and to advocate for the cultural change path it is following". An independent panel was also established by the Australian Statistician to help to ensure the quality of the 2016 census.

The 2021 census was conducted during the height of the global Covid 19 pandemic. In obtaining data from 10,852,208 dwellings, it exceeded the ABS target. The dwelling response rate was 96.1%, an increase from 95.1% in 2016.

The ABS publishes monthly and quarterly economic information spanning interest rates, property prices, employment, the value of the Australian dollar, and commodity prices. Publications include things such as: the Key Economic Indicators, Consumer Price Index, Australian National Accounts, Average Weekly Earnings, and Labour Force.

The ABS engages in international and regional statistical forums including the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy (CSSP), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Conference for European Statisticians (CES). The ABS has a partnership with DFAT to deliver statistical and institutional capability building programs for the Indo Pacific region, both in country and by hosting development visits. The ABS has also hosted international development and study visits from countries including China, Japan, Canada, Korea, and Nepal.

Since 1975, the head of the ABS has been known as the "Australian Statistician". The title has been previously known as the "Commonwealth Statistician". The incumbent since 11 December 2019 is David Gruen. Previous incumbents have included David Kalisch and Brian Pink. Pink retired in January 2014. Ian Ewing acted in the role from 13 January to 14 February 2014, and Jonathan Palmer acted from 17 February to 12 December 2014.