Statistics at twenty paces............

In The Far North Coaster last week, Nationals State MP for Ballina, Don Page, went into print crying out that the sky is falling in New South Wales and like lemmings people are abadoning this state.

The latest ABS population figures should be a cause of great concern for the NSW Labor Government, Shadow Minister for Small Business and Regulatory Reform, Don Page, said.
"The ABS figures showed that in excess of 22,000 people had fled NSW in the year to 30 September 2008 while Queensland increased their population by around the same figure," Mr Page, the Member for Ballina, said.
"The NSW Labor Government is doing nothing to stem the tide of people leaving the highest taxing and highest regulated State in Australia, which also has one of the highest unemployment rates.

Forgive me if I smile.
Mr. Page obviously took one look at a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) media release and thought this was the entire story or at least the story he should run with to produce some political mileage.

He neglected to mention that despite interstate movement, the New South Wales population actually rose to 7 million people.
Which gave it the highest total population of any Australian state or territory (as of 30 September 2008) and that the state had experienced its highest growth rate since 2000-01.

He also neglected to point out that population numbers on the Northern Rivers have risen as well, with the Richmond-Tweed region having the highest 2006-07 NSW growth rate (outside of Sydney) at 1.3% which represents 3,000 or more people.

Perhaps his failure to mention the fact the Ballina local government area growth rate was up 1.7% and Coffs LGA up 1.4% was due to the fact that this was indeed an inconvenient number for his argument.

Indeed, the Member for Ballina was very silent on a number issues relating to population.
Like the fact that population movement in the period covered by the statistics was obviously affected by the mining booms in several states and the prolonged drought.
These were important enough factors for the ABS statisticians to mention, but seemingly strangely irrelevant to Mr. Page.

Don Page should ask himself this question.
At what point does selectively quoting population numbers morph into an effort to deceive?

No-one would deny that New South Wales is likely to feel the impact of the current economic downturn sooner and perhaps harder than those states which up to recently were experiencing a mining boom.
It doesn't take dodgy use of official statistics to bring that point home.