The Coalition's chief economic managers remain as fixated as ever on reining in government spending in order to balance the budget. Last week Finance Minister Mathias Cormann announced that a scoping study was being undertaken with a view to selling six Commonwealth properties in the Parliamentary Triangle, including the John Gorton and Treasury buildings in Parkes.
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And it has emerged that the government and the Australian Bureau of Statistics are pondering cost-saving changes to the nation's most important survey – the census. Asked about whether next year's census would be going ahead as planned, a spokeswoman for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Kelly O'Dwyer, said the ABS was "consulting with a wide range of stakeholders about the best methods to deliver high quality, accurate and timely information on the social and economic conditions of Australian households". The ambiguous nature of the response immediately led to speculation that the government is considering extending the time between counts from five years to a decade, truncating the census, or perhaps even axing it entirely.
In fact, major changes to the way the census is conducted have been contemplated for many years. The 2016 census, for example, will be a paperless affair. Preparing for that eventuality, however, has been an expensive exercise, and the price tag for the 2016 census is expected to be somewhat higher than the $440 million the 2011 census cost.
The push for the census to become a decennial affair appears to be coming mostly from within the ABS, though of course Senator Cormann would doubtless relish the prospect of a significant reduction in costs. Recently appointed chief statistician David Kalisch has argued that "the census only provides a snapshot of Australia for one day every five years" and that the lengthy delay in releasing this information after census night detracts from its usefulness, particularly for business and local government. Moreover, according to Mr Kalisch, the bureau now has the capability to provide updated information on state populations every three months and smaller populations annually.
The ABS has worn significant budget cuts in recent years, and last year had its funding for the next three years reduced by $50 million. Not surprisingly, it has trimmed the number of surveys it conducts. The axing of the Work, Life and Family survey in 2013 was particularly contentious, and cuts in the number of business surveys have led to protests from the affected sectors.
Though changing the timeframe of the census might have attractions for the ABS and the government, and while the government might not mind it being axed all together, there are many who believe it would be a mistake. Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald argues that it does what sample surveys cannot do: "it can track what is happening to comparatively small groups of people, such as those born in other countries". And with census statistics traditionally predicated on quinquennial data updates, a shift to longer intervals would complicate the work of policy planners, social researchers and demographers.
Is there an ideological element to the Coalition's thinking on the census? Adding weight to that suspicion is the fact that the Harper Conservative government has made significant changes to the way Canada's census is conducted. Britain's Conservatives have flirted with similar reforms. There appears to be no doubt whatever that Senator Cormann's enthusiasm for selling more Commonwealth buildings is ideologically driven. Large property investors queue around the block to buy purpose-built offices with tenants who pay the rent promptly and are more or less locked in. The budget bottom line, however, can suffer in the long term from such deals, as the sale of the R.G. Casey building underlines. Sold in 1997-98 for $217 million, it's estimated that the Department of Foreign Affairs will have paid out $310 million in rent for the building by 2017.
That's the risk with many cost-cutting measures. While any government is entitled to – and indeed should be expected to – search under every rock for savings, it's essential they look to the long-term and not just the immediate budget impact. While there are cautionary examples of the false economy that can be found in selling off Commonwealth assets likes buildings, the true cost of cutting the census will be much harder to quantify but perhaps much greater.
