Australia’s chief statistician, David Gruen, has defended the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) rare public intervention to debunk claims of “mass migration”, saying the independent agency “stands ready to respond” when its data is misrepresented.
Gruen told The Guardian that reliable statistics are crucial for informed debate and sound policymaking.
“It degrades the democracy if the stats agency is not independent.”
While cautious about compromising the bureau’s independence, Gruen said the ABS would step in when statements using its data are “flat-out contradicted by the statistical evidence”.
On 21 August, the ABS issued a public statement clarifying that overseas arrivals figures had been misused to suggest inflated migration numbers. The figures track people coming in and out of the country, not those permanently settling.
It us reported that The Institute of Public Affairs accused the Albanese government of “weaponising” the ABS to “censor” its views.
Gruen rejected the charge. “To claim that we were censoring anyone is an odd claim, because nothing’s being censored”
“We went on publishing all the same data. We simply were making a statement about its appropriate use.”
Gruen acknowledged the “trade-offs” of the bureau entering contested policy debates.
“You don’t want to be seen to be taking sides; I mean, you are taking sides in the sense that you’re trying to take the side of truth, and you’re trying to take the side of explaining what the statistics say and what they don’t say.”
The ABS explained that Overseas Arrivals and Departures (OAD) data counts border crossings rather than actual migration, and should not be used to measure population change. “For example, a person living in Australia on a temporary visa who travels overseas multiple times can count as a long-term visitor arrival many times, even though they only migrated once,” the bureau said.
Accurate insights on migration come from official publications on Overseas Migration and National, State and Territory populations, with data available to the 2023–24 financial year. Preliminary figures for 2025 will be released in September.
Historically, net overseas migration (NOM) has ranged between 206,000 and 263,000 annually before COVID-19, when border closures saw it turn negative. After restrictions eased, NOM surged, hitting 342,000 in the year to September 2022, and 433,000 by December 2022.
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