A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
Welcome to the October 2012 edition of the Migrant Statistics News brought to you from the National Migrant Statistics Unit (NMSU).
As anticipated, 2012 has been a very busy year for the ABS and the NMSU as we continue in our quest to ensure relevant, timely data are available to inform debate, research, and facilitate policy formation and evaluation.
It has been an exciting time for those who have eagerly awaited the 2011 census data. The last three months have seen the progressive release of 2011 Census products. This will culminate later this month as the second release Census data becomes available. Hopefully you have had a chance to look at the QuickStats, community profiles, and the new TableBuilder products available on the ABS website. The NMSU is also currently working with the Census output team to produce a new QuickStats product which will focus on providing similar community level data with the additional feature of being able to select by both a region and country of birth. This is anticipated to be released in January 2013.
With the availability of the Census data, the NMSU has been able to progress to the next phase of the Census Data Linkage Enhancement project. This project brings together Census and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's Settlement Database data to produce a new Census data set enhanced with variables including visa. More information about this project is available in this newsletter.
Since our last newsletter, some significant migrant related products were published on the website. The fifth edition of the Migrant Data Matrices (cat. no 3415.0) was released late July. For those who haven't yet visited this product, the Matrices provide users with links to data on migrants from a wide range of ABS surveys. Each of the datacubes contains a broad selection of demographic, geographic, socio-economic and survey specific items. There are also links to the main features and explanatory notes of the source product or collection.
Adding to our Perspectives of Migrants series. (cat. no. 3416.0), a new Perspectives article was released last month using 2010 General Social Survey data to look at the Social Connectedness of Migrants. Comparing two arrival groups, those arriving prior to 2006 and those arriving between 2006-2010, the article explores the types of social activities migrants engaged in and with whom, frequency of engagements, types of social organisations participated in, as well as their general levels of life satisfaction and trust.
The NMSU has also been busy reviewing two ABS standards, Citizenship and Ancestry. We have now finalised the stakeholder consultation phase. If you have provided input to these reviews we would like to thank you for your much appreciated contribution.
If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to consider nominating for the NatStats 2013 Conference, to be held in the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, 12-14 March. The Conference will build on the success of the first and second NatStats conferences held in 2008 and 2010. The theme of the 2013 conference is “A better informed Australia: the role of statistics in building the nation”.
Finally, there is the 16th Biennial Australian Population Association (APA) Conference which will be held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, South Wharf, 5 – 7 December 2012. This important event is the primary meeting place for leading Australian population researchers and policy makers. I hope to see you there.
As always, I hope you find this newsletter both informative and interesting. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about the work of the National Migrant Statistics Unit please feel free to contact us.
Andrew Middleton
Director
Culture, Recreation and Migrant Statistics
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