EXPLANATORY NOTES


MOTOR VEHICLE CENSUS

1 This publication presents statistics relating to vehicles which were registered with a motor vehicle registration authority at 31 January 2013.

2 Motor Vehicle Censuses (MVC) have been conducted periodically from 1971 on each of the following dates:

2013, 31 January 1999, 31 October
2012, 31 January 1998, 31 October
2011, 31 January 1997, 31 October
2010, 31 March 1996, 31 October
2009, 31 March 1995, 30 May
2008, 31 March 1993, 30 June
2007, 31 March 1991, 30 September
2006, 31 March 1988, 30 September
2005, 31 March 1985, 30 September
2004, 31 March 1982, 30 September
2003, 31 March 1979, 30 September
2002, 31 March 1976, 30 September
2001, 31 March 1971, 30 September

SCOPE AND COVERAGE

3 The 2013 MVC includes all motor vehicles that are registered with an Australian state or territory motor vehicle authority for unrestricted use on public roads as at the census date, 31 January.

4 The scope of the MVC excludes:

• recreational vehicles such as trail bikes, quad bikes, and sand dune buggies intended for off-road use;
• veteran and vintage vehicles registered for restricted use only;
• consular vehicles; and
• vehicles registered by the defence forces.

5 Data provided to the ABS includes road-registered caravans, trailers, tractors, plant and equipment. These particular vehicle types are out of scope and hence are not included in the Motor Vehicle Census publication.

6 Coverage currently extends to data collected by all eight Australian states and territories.

7 Vehicles whose registration has lapsed up to 30 days prior to the MVC snapshot date are deemed to be in scope. This is because payments may be processed by motor vehicle registries within this time and the vehicle treated as being continuously registered.

8 In Victoria and Queensland, recreational vehicles such as trail bikes, quad bikes, and sand dune buggies are required to be registered. These are included in the MVC as these vehicles are not able to be discretely identified and removed. In these states, trail bikes are included in motor cycles while other off-road vehicles could be included in various vehicle types depending on how the MVR coded the body type.

9 Veteran and vintage vehicles with restricted use are included in the count of registered vehicles for New South Wales as there are no distinguishing identifiers in the data supplied by the MVR to enable them to be extracted from the count. Where possible, data on most Victorian veteran and vintage vehicles are excluded from the files loaded by the ABS.

10 Motor vehicle registration statistics are derived from data made available by various state and territory motor vehicle registration authorities and reflect the information as recorded in registration documents.


ATTRITION

11 The estimated proportion of motor vehicles, excluding motor cycles, taken off the register since the previous MVC is referred to as the attrition rate. The attrition rates in the following table have been calculated using Motor Vehicle Census and New Motor Vehicle Sales data. Motor cycles are excluded from the attrition rate calculation as they are not included in New Motor Vehicle Sales data.

ESTIMATED ATTRITION(a), State/territory - Census years
	BETWEEN 2008 AND 2009		BETWEEN 2009 AND 2010		BETWEEN 2010 AND 2011		BETWEEN 2011 AND 2012		BETWEEN 2012 AND 2013
	no.	%	no.	%	no.	%	no.	%	no.	%
NSW	256 868	5.5	197 826	4.2	171 296	3.6	230 825	4.7	240 228	4.8
Vic.	176 676	4.4	165 499	4.0	152 483	3.6	184 384	4.3	203 361	4.6
Qld	105 556	3.3	135 271	4.1	127 418	3.8	130 856	3.8	131 452	3.7
SA	36 588	3.0	35 204	2.9	33 639	2.7	50 430	3.9	47 901	3.7
WA	38 675	2.2	68 840	3.7	61 357	3.3	53 003	2.8	65 214	3.3
Tas.	10 111	2.5	9 661	2.4	7 927	1.9	4 880	1.2	13 379	3.1
NT	4 761	3.7	4 034	3.0	6 042	4.4	6 263	4.4	4 596	3.1
ACT	11 073	4.5	9 206	3.7	8 567	3.4	8 232	3.1	11 040	4.1
Aust.	640 308	4.1	625 541	3.9	568 729	3.5	668 873	4.0	717 171	4.2
(a) These estimates exclude motor cycles. For more details on calculation of attrition rate refer to Glossary.

METHODOLOGY

12 The 2013 Motor Vehicle Census is a count of all in-scope vehicles registered with a state or territory motor vehicle registration authority (MVR) at 31 January 2013. All records are compared to previous MVC data for vehicles that match (on-going registrations) and details are updated for these vehicles where applicable.

13 The unmatched records (new vehicle registrations) undergo editing of individual data items. The editing of on-going registrations is limited as these records have been edited in previous years. Aggregate data is checked across time, states and vehicle types to ensure coherency.


DATA QUALITY

14 The primary use of the MVC is as a frame for the Survey of Motor Vehicle Use (SMVU). Editing of the data is designed to maximise data quality to the level required for the SMVU. The size of the fleet (over 17 million vehicles) dictates that quality assurance of each record is not possible. Therefore, while the data are made available at a detailed level, the ABS is unable to guarantee that it is necessarily sufficient for all purposes for which it may be used. There is also some variation in the reporting from different state and territory registries and care should be taken when comparing data across jurisdictions.

15 The information provided to the ABS and included in the estimates for any month may be revised or corrected in later months. Where corrections are made to original data they will be identified by the annotation (r) revised.


STATISTICAL GEOGRAPHY

16 Geographic data available from the MVC are postcode of owner and state or territory of registration.

17 If analysis of regional data based on postcodes is being undertaken, the following considerations need to be taken into account:

• there are some instances where the postcode of the vehicle's owner is in a different state or territory from that in which the vehicle is registered. For example, the postcode of the owner of the vehicle could be in Sydney, yet the vehicle could be registered in Queensland;
• some official postcodes (PO boxes, competition postcodes) do not correspond to residential areas;
• some postcodes could be invalid.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

18 This publication draws extensively on information provided freely by the state and territory motor vehicle registration authorities. Their continued cooperation is very much appreciated. Without it, many of the transport statistics published by the ABS would not be available.


RELATED PUBLICATIONS AND PRODUCTS

19 Users may also wish to refer to the following publications and products which contain information relating to motor vehicles in Australia:

• Sales of New Motor Vehicles, Australia, (Electronic Publication) (cat. no. 9314.0) (issued monthly)
• Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, Australia (cat. no. 9208.0)

ABS DATA AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

20 As well as the statistics included in this publication, the ABS has other relevant data available on request. Inquiries should be made to the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.