SEPTEMBER KEY FIGURES

	Sep qtr 12	Jun qtr 12 to Sep qtr 12	Sep qtr 11 to Sep qtr 12
	$m	% change	% change
TREND ESTIMATES(a)
Value of work done	19 404.0	-0.9	-2.9
New residential building	9 522.8	-0.4	-3.0
Alterations and additions to residential building	1 679.9	-2.7	-11.8
Non-residential building	8 208.3	-1.0	-0.6
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES(a)
Value of work done	19 247.7	-2.6	-4.9
New residential building	9 574.9	0.8	-1.6
Alterations and additions to residential building	1 683.4	-2.4	-12.2
Non-residential building	7 989.4	-6.3	-7.0
(a) Reference year for chain volume measures is 2010-11.

Value of work done, Chain volume measures

Value of work done, Chain volume measures - Trend estimates

SEPTEMBER KEY POINTS


VALUE OF WORK DONE, CHAIN VOLUME MEASURES

BUILDING WORK DONE

• The trend estimate of the value of total building work done fell 0.9% in the September 2012 quarter.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate of the value of total building work done fell 2.6% to $19,247.7m in the September quarter, following a rise of 0.2% in the June 2012 quarter.

NEW RESIDENTIAL BUILDING WORK DONE

• The trend estimate of the value of new residential building work done fell 0.4% in the September quarter. The value of work done on new houses fell 0.9% while new other residential building rose 0.6%.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate of the value of new residential building work done rose 0.8% to $9,574.9m. Work done on new houses rose 0.2% to $6,169.8m, while new other residential building rose 1.8% to $3,405.1m.

NON-RESIDENTIAL WORK DONE

• The trend estimate of the value of non-residential building work done fell 1.0% in the September quarter. See data notes below.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate of the value of non-residential building work done in the quarter fell 6.3%, following a rise of 2.4% in the June 2012 quarter.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
December 2012	17 April 2013
March 2013	17 July 2013

ABOUT THIS ISSUE

This publication updates the preliminary estimates released in Construction Work Done, Australia (cat. no. 8755.0) on 28 November 2012. The data in this publication are based on a response rate of approximately 92% of the value of building work done during the quarter. The data are subject to revision when returns from the following quarter are processed. Final data for the September quarter 2012 will be released in the next release of this publication, Building Activity, Australia (cat. no. 8752.0) on 17 April 2013.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

A new base year, 2010-11, has been included into the chain volume estimates which has resulted in revisions to growth rates in subsequent periods. In addition, the chain volume estimates have been re-referenced to 2010-11, thereby preserving additivity in the quarters after the reference year. Re-referencing affects the levels of, but not the movements in, chain volume estimates.

A readily printable (PDF) publication is no longer released for this and future issues. Headline data items are presented in HTML format. Data series in the Time Series Spreadsheets are maintained and produced to the same timetable currently in place for this release.

This issue contains the first release of Relative Standard Errors (RSEs) as Data Cubes. These replace tables 38 and 39 from the former readily printable (PDF) publication. See the Data Cubes section under the downloads tab for more details.

This release includes three Time Series Spreadsheets that were previously included in Construction Work Done, Australia, Preliminary (cat. no. 8755.0), with some changes to state groupings where applicable. The following Time Series Spreadsheets are now available as part of this release:

• TABLE 78. Value of Work in the Pipeline, Current Prices, Original, Australia (previously TABLE 11 in 8755.0)
• TABLE 79. Value of Work in the Pipeline, States and Territories, Current Prices, Original (previously TABLE 12 in 8755.0)
• TABLE 80. Number of Dwellings Approved but Not Yet Commenced at End of Quarter, States and Territories, Original (previously TABLE 13 in 8755.0)

SIGNIFICANT REVISIONS THIS ISSUE

Compared to the estimate published in Building Activity, Australia, June quarter 2012 (cat. no. 8752.0) released on 17 October 2012:

• the total value of work done in Australia during June quarter 2012 has been revised upwards by $819.3m or 4.3%.
• the total value of work commenced in Australia during June quarter 2012 has been revised upwards by $2,719.4m or 15.5%. This was driven by revisions to both non-residential commencements ($2,049.0m) and residential commencements ($670.4m).
• the number of dwelling unit commencements in the June quarter 2012 has been revised upwards by 2,510 dwellings or 7.4%.

DATA NOTE

Wholesale revisions have been applied to the Value of Building Work Under Construction series as a result of fixing a minor aggregation error. The revisions span the period December 2003 to March 2012 and result in a decrease of approximately 1.0% at the national level.

Several time series spreadsheets for the September quarter 2012 contain 'np' (not available for publication) annotations. This is due to confidential data being contained in these series.

The seasonally adjusted and trend values of Residential Building Work Commenced for the March, June and September 2012 quarters should be interpreted with caution and will be reanalysed for future publications. For more information about seasonal adjustment and trend estimates please refer to paragraphs 22 and 28 of the Explanatory Notes respectively.

The trend estimates should be interpreted with caution as the underlying behaviour of building activity may be affected by Government stimulus packages as well as other developments associated with global economic conditions. For more details on trend estimates, please see paragraphs 28 to 30 of the explanatory notes.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.