Good morning.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Cadigal people, and their elders both past and present.
I'd like to thank the ABS, and in particular Brian Pink, for inviting me to give the opening address to this year's NatStats Conference.
Being here today has got me wondering what is the collective noun for a group of statisticians?
Is it a series, a correlation? I think the most appropriate noun would be a service, because of the service that you provide to this country.
I have only been the Minister for Statistics, as Brian called me, for a day-and-a-half, but I can tell you that I am excited by the role and its possibilities.
I am also excited to be working with Wayne Swan, the Treasurer who kept Australia out of recession and led the world in response to the Global Financial Crisis, and being part of Julia Gillard's government, which will be committed to keeping our economy strong.
Richard Dawkins – the noted evolutionary biologist – once said:
"The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale."
Yet here we are … gathered together in the name of statistics in search of statistical probabilities.
In search of truth, in other words – because that's what statistics can and should and must lead us towards.
The truths about:
- The challenges we face as a society,
- Our place in the global economy,
- The ways in which we can improve our quality of life,
- And the measure of our progress as a nation.
I'm a believer in progress …
… and the pursuit of truth …
… which is why the work of institutions such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the National Statistics Service are fundamental to good governance and a participatory democracy.
After all, considering the size and scope of challenges we face – ranging from our ageing and growing population to climate change to the uncertainties of the global economy – we need to ensure that the decisions we arrive at as a nation are founded on informed debate and solid fact.
Because that's our best chance to secure our future prosperity and sustainability.
In other words, statistics matter.
They matter because they tell us where we are and where we are headed.
The word statistics comes from a latin phrase (statisticum collegium) that means council of state.
In the medieval Italy the word statista emerged, which meant a statesman or, and this may scare some of you, a politician.
In 18th century Germany the word Statistik was coined, which meant the collection of facts by the State.
The original purpose of statistics as a discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries was driven by the need of Governments to know more about the people they were governing.
While statistics is now used by businesses and other organisations, its role is a key part of modern government.
I can name numerous policies where statistics have been pivotal in designing, delivering and evaluating government policies.
In my previous policy area of disability you only had to look at the numbers to see the problem caused by decades of policy neglect.
There are 1.5 million Australians with a disability.
That number is set to increase to 2.3 million by 2030.
What do those numbers tell us?
Two things.
That not only is it hard hearted to neglect disability reform …
… it's soft headed.
Soft headed, because the rising service costs, shrinking workforce and falling tax base that go hand in hand with that spike in the disability population is a threat to our nation's future.
The statisticians and demographers have warned us, and it is up to us to act.
We have to act now – just as we had to act when we introduced mandatory superannuation in 1992.
Nearly 2 millenniums ago, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:
"What is the use of having countless books and libraries whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is not instructed but burdened by the mass of them."
What would he have made of the hundreds of thousands of books now published each year, of the 1 trillion links Google can offer you, or the world of blogs and emails?
Those who work with statistics are keenly aware that data is not the same as information, and information is not the same as knowledge.
That the analysis of information is equally as important as its collection.
The ABS's existence is foreshadowed in section 51 of our constitution, which gives the Federal Government power over censuses.
The ABS was founded in 1905, as the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics under the leadership of George Knibbs.
It predates its counterparts in most other nations.
In the UK the Central Statistical Office was not founded until1941, at the direction of Winston Churchill, to deliver statistics crucial for the war effort.
I want to give one historical example of the value of statistical work, and how it can advance our knowledge.
The 1911 Census asked about the incidence of deaf-mutism, as it was then known and picked up the surprising result that it was abnormally high in the 10-14 year old age group.
The 1921 and 1933 censuses confirmed that people born in Australian in 1898 and 1899 had a high incidence, and there was speculation that infectious diseases were to blame.
In 1951 the puzzle was finally solved, when Australian statistician Oliver Lancaster linked the high rates of deaf-mutism to an outbeak of Rubella that affected mothers around that time.
This was the first time in the world that a link between rubella and congenital problems had been established.
None of the statisticians who collected the 1911 census would have had any idea where there work would lead 40 years later.
In more recent times the ABS played a vital role in seeing Australia through the toughest economic challenge the world has faced since the Great Depression – the Global Financial Crisis.
The Australian policy responses to the global financial crisis were timely, temporary and targeted.
The Government implemented a three phase stimulus package to support growth and jobs.
We provided a guarantee for the banks, we immediately stimulated the economy and the retail sector, and we began an infrastructure program that secured hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Would our response have been as successful without the guidance of credible, reliable and accurate statistics?
I doubt it.
The fact that people felt they could rely on the accuracy of the ABS statistic itself lifted confidence and helped us to avoid the worse of the global recession.
The GFC also highlights how hard the statistician's job is in this age of electronic financial systems.
Information has entered an age of acceleration – in the causes and effects of information.
Traditional strong relationships between sources of data and economic variables — that have held for a decade or longer — can suddenly break down.
This complexity has manifested itself during the GFC, with the three measures of GDP – income, expenditure and production - diverging significantly.
This has meant that the ABS has had to work even harder than usual to put the pieces of the puzzle that is the economy together into a coherent picture.
Importantly, the ABS resisted the temptation to provide more timely, but less accurate, estimates of key data.
Countries where "flash" estimates of GDP were prepared shortly after the end of a quarter found that they were subject to a high degree of volatility — adding to uncertainty and anxiety in the community.
We need to get this balance right: statistics need to be timely to be useful for policy makers.
But if they are not also reliable and accurate then they are not only not useful, but they undermine the credibility and reputation of those who produce them — and that is in no one's interest.
In the world of the Internet and the 24-news cycle we are all data hungry — we all need our daily sugar fix.
But as Minister responsible for the oversight of the ABS I am all too aware that data comes at a cost.
The direct costs of data collection on the statistical agencies and the community are generally understood. More broadly, there can be indirect costs — including in the quality of data provided.
Reflective of ABS' efforts, data quality is in fact instilling community's trust in its products and services.
This year an independent survey has been commissioned to measure the public's trust in the ABS and its statistics.
This was part of a project initiated by the OECD to provide national and international benchmarks on trust in official statistics.
I am delighted to tell you that the results show that the Australian community places a very high level of trust in the ABS and indeed it is one of the most trusted National Statistical Organisations in the world.
The recent outcome of the Federal elections will further cement the importance of statistics in informed policy decision making.
The Gillard Government will need to negotiate outcomes in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and will need to rely heavily on evidence based policy and in turn quality statistics to help it support negotiations.
A strong national statistical system lead by a trusted institution – the ABS – is essential to providing the statistical foundation for evidence based policy.
One of the crucial collections for evidence-based policy decisions will occur next year when ABS conducts the 16th national Census on 9 August.
The Census will count the number of people and their key characteristics on Census night, as well as collect details about the dwellings in which they live.
It will hold a mirror up to the nation, and tell us who we are.
It is our way of making sense of the myriad of lives and circumstances experienced by people in modern Australia.
For instance we are likely to have over 10,000 centenarians by 2011.
That half of Australians will have moved since the last census.
And, that due to the population of oil rig workers, the richest postcode in Australia is in Bass Strait – where there is no land at all.
How we plan for the demographic challenges of an ageing population will be shaped by what comes out of the census.
It will provide a reliable basis to estimate the population of each state and territory, including the distribution of electoral boundaries and for the distribution of Government funds to the States (including Goods and Services Tax revenue).
Information from the Census is critical to all levels of government in developing policy, especially regional and indigenous policy, and infrastructure planning.
Another Latin author Horace once wrote: "We are just statistics, born to consume resources."
Horace was right and wrong.
He was right in that statistics is all about people.
But he was wrong to define us as just consumers.
We are part of a national community that spans a continent.
When you consider how this nation began – as a prison on the far side of the world – it is, to paraphrase Dawkins, a statistical improbability that we have become the diverse, democratic, prosperous nation that we have.
But here we are.
We are a prison that defied the odds to become, at first ironically, then actually, the Lucky Country.
One of the secrets of our success has been our pragmatic pursuit of truth.
And that is why there's nothing more Australian than a beautiful set of numbers.
On that note, I would like to congratulate and thank the ABS for this event and for providing the statistics that helped the government steer Australia through the GFC.
I wish the ABS the very best for the 2011 Census; and remind you that, as stated, the coming Parliament will rely more then ever before on the information you collect.
And it's great work you do. We stand in your light. We see the distance, we view the horizon, because of the light you shed on the world as it is.