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Pubs free to good home

Free publication downloads are now available from the ABS web site, with more data expected to become available in early 2006.

In his Budget announcement on 10 May 2005, the Treasurer announced that the ABS would receive additional funding to improve Australia’s official statistics. His press release stated that “the Government believes that official statistics should be readily available to all Australians. To support this aim, the ABS will make all of its statistical publications available for download free of charge from the Internet.”

The free content on the ABS web site has previously been limited to “Main Features” for most statistical releases.

To improve the availability of data to the community,from 1 July the range of free content on the ABS web site has been expanded to include:
• electronic publications
• electronic tables which otherwise would have been included in a publication;
and in particular
• electronic State/Territory tables that complement national tables.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, The Hon. Chris Pearce MP, was one of the first to download a free copy of an ABS publication. “This is an historic outcome for an informed community and it’s pleasing to see the realisation of this recent Federal Government initiative”, said Mr Pearce.

“This is a good day for Australia,” Mr Pearce said. “With more than four million internet users throughout the country, I expect that many businesses, community organisations, schools, non-government organisations and citizens will be able to better inform themselves about the economy and our society."

Mr Pearce said the ABS expected that its web site use, which is currently about 50 million page views per year, would receive a large boost as a result of the new policy. The ABS’s free email notification system alerts subscribers to new material on the web site and enables interested people to be aware of and able to download new publications within minutes of their release.

Members of the public will still be able to use the ABS’s e-commerce facility to buy their own printed publications if they prefer to receive them that way.