The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently launched a report, Measuring Australia’s Progress, which it intends to be the first in a continuing series. This initiative threatens to compromise the political neutrality of the ABS, for it blurs the line dividing fact from opinion. Any definition of ‘progress’ will be inherently evaluative, and therefore political. Bias arises in what gets included as ‘progress’ and in what gets left out. In the case of this particular report, the set of indicators of ‘social progress’ that the ABS has come up with reflects a broadly green and left-wing political agenda.
- There is a heavy emphasis in the report on environmental measures. Environmental sustainability is important, but this level of emphasis exaggerates its importance for most Australians. Opinion polls show that most people rank environmental issues well down their list of priorities.
- Bias also occurs in the selection of income inequality as one of the dimensions of ‘progress’. The ABS implicitly equates social ‘progress’ with reduced income inequality, reflecting an unthinking commitment to the egalitarian politics of the left. It is important to recognise that increased equality may mean that a society is going ‘backwards’ rather than ‘forwards’.
- The ABS selected its indicators on the advice of a ‘panel of experts’ whose composition was skewed towards people concerned about environmental and/or social inequality issues. This led to the neglect of other possible ‘progress’ indicators that might have been more favoured by the population as a whole—lower taxation, for example.
- The Australia Institute welcomed the ABS report, claiming that it vindicates its own anti-growth stance. The Institute’s Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) suggests, implausibly, that Australia has made very little ‘progress’ over the last 30 years. Two leading supporters of the GPI, both of whom believe that economic growth produces more problems than benefits, were on the panel of ‘experts’ who advised the ABS in developing its measures.
- There is clearly a danger of the ABS compromising its reputation for political neutrality.
Professor Peter Saunders is Director of Social Policy Research at The Centre for Independent Studies and is an Associate in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University.