Freedom of Information documents show the Bureau of Statistics spent a good deal of effort toning down news of rising inequality. The Productivity Commission seems to have been at it too.
We’ve been in the dark about how we use our time for more than a decade. It’s the decade that saw the rise of the smartphone, streaming and social media.
Peter Whiteford, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest analysis of the impact of government benefits and taxes on household income shows this reduces income inequality by more than 40% in Australia.
The people who have the most to gain from the extraordinary resources of the internet are missing out, including those not employed, older Australians and migrants from non-English speaking countries.
The squeeze on wealth in the middle class by those at the top is a long established trend in international inequality data. But the ABS doesn’t provide this information.
Politics Podcast: Mathias Cormann on the same-sex marriage postal survey
Since announcing that the ABS would be responsible for carrying out the same-sex marriage postal survey, Mathias Cormann has had no shortage of questions.
The key question in a legal challenge to the ‘postal plebiscite’ is whether information about Australians’ opinions on same-sex marriage constitutes ‘statistical information’.
New ABS figures on film, TV and digital gaming show that subscription broadcasters and online content creators are booming. Yet local content quotas only apply to free-to-air broadcasters.