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The remainder of this Chapter reviews the activities and achievements of each component of the Population and Social Statistics program during 2001-02.


Census

The census component develops and conducts the five-yearly Census of Population and Housing. The results are used to revise population estimates for each of the states and territories, and to provide detailed statistics on the population and its housing within small geographic areas and for small groups within the population. These statistics are used for electoral purposes, for the distribution of government funds, and for a variety of planning, administration and policy activities of government, business and other users.

The 14th national Census of Population and Housing was conducted on 7 August 2001. Detailed final results of the 2001 Census were released on 17 June 2002, only 10 months following the collection phase, and at least one month earlier than for any previous Census.

Within that context, key achievements during the year included:

• highly successful public relations campaigns for the collection and subsequent release of information that resulted in a high level of public cooperation, media and community awareness and access;

• successful recruitment of over 40,000 staff to deliver Census forms to, and then collect from, over 7.8 million households;

• introduction of new technologies during the collection, processing and dissemination phases, in particular the use of intelligent character recognition and automated coding technologies;

• implementation of continuous improvement strategies to ensure data quality; and

• a significant increase in the range of Census products available from the ABS web site free of charge.

• working closely with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs to recover the delay in processing of passenger cards from August 2000 onwards, with a focus on July to December 2001, for use in preparing population estimates pursuant to the requirements of A New Tax System (Commonwealth-State Financial Arrangements) Act 1999. Final statistics based on passenger cards for July 2001 to March 2002 were released in quarterly issues of Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia (cat. no. 3401.0);

• compilation of revised state, territory and national Estimated Resident Populations from September quarter 1996 to December quarter 2001 based on the results of the 2001 Census of Population and Housing and released in Australian Demographic Statistics, December 2001 (cat. no. 3101.0);

• review and consultation on issues related to the proposed inclusion of unauthorised arrivals in ABS Estimated Resident Population statistics - released for consultation in ABS Demography Working Paper 2001/8 - Incorporating Unauthorised Arrivals into Population Estimates;

• release of ABS Demography Working Paper 2001/6 - Rebasing Australia’s Demographic Estimates Using the 2001 Census of Population and Housing;

• advice and comments on demographic trends and projections to Treasury and the Intergenerational Report Consultative Group;

• continued redevelopment of the ABS processing system to facilitate the timely processing of registered birth, death, marriage and divorce data, and provide the flexibility to respond quickly and effectively to changing client demand; and

• increasing the extent of data available electronically to clients through AusStats.

• Labour market information

• release of Information Paper: Measures of Labour Underutilisation (cat. no. 6296.0), which provided a comprehensive array of labour underutilisation measures including two new measures;

• release of a labour theme page on the ABS web site. The theme page has been designed to provide easier access to the wide range of ABS information about the labour market; and

• release of a new publication Work-Related Injuries, Australia (cat. no. 6324.0).

• development of an Occasional Paper: Measuring Learning in Australia - A Framework for Education and Training Statistics (cat. no. 4213.0) to be released in early 2002-03;

• release of Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED), 2001 (cat. no. 1272.0). This classification has been developed for use in the collection, storage and dissemination of statistical and administrative data relating to educational activity in Australia;

• publication of Education and Training Experience, Australia, 2001 (cat. no. 6278.0); and

• on behalf of the MCEETYA taskforce, completion of a major study into the feasibility of including questions on school enrolment forms to enable the derivation of information about socioeconomic status, socioeconomic disadvantage, and language background other than English.

• a series of seminars for external clients to look more closely at the analyses and issues in the eighth edition of Australian Social Trends (cat. no. 4102.0);

• publication of the ninth edition of Australian Social Trends (cat. no. 4102.0), and its concurrent release on the ABS web site;

• publication of Measuring Wellbeing: Frameworks for Australian Social Statistics (cat. no. 4160.0), which describes the conceptual frameworks underpinning ABS work in social statistics;

• publication of Government Benefits, Taxes and Household Income, Australia (cat. no. 6537.0);

• publication of Superannuation: Coverage and Financial Characteristics, Australia (cat. no. 6360.0);

• completion of the development and field collection phases of the 2002 General Social Survey, which focused on different aspects of personal and family wellbeing; and

• contribution as a member of a small international expert group to review, under the auspices of the International Labour Office, the statistical measurement of household income and expenditure.

• completion of the field collection for the 2001 Indigenous Supplement to the National Health Survey, collecting information on: long-term medical conditions; recent injuries; visits to hospitals; consultations with health professionals; use of medications; immunisation status; health-related aspects of lifestyle; and for women aged 18 years and over, information on women’s health issues such as breast and cervical cancer screening and the use of contraception;

• publication of Housing and Infrastructure in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities, Australia, 2001 (cat. no. 4710.0) and related products and services;

• publication of Population Distribution, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2001 (cat. no. 4705.0);

• publication of The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2001 (cat. no. 4704.0);

• publication of a summary of publications 4704.0 and 4705.0 for returning information in an appropriate manner back to Indigenous communities;

• preparation of the 2000 national summary from the jurisdictional reports, against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health performance indicators. The summary was commissioned by the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, and compiled on behalf of the National Health Information Management Group;

• preparation of the draft 2001 reporting protocols to be presented to the Steering Committee of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Indicators; and

• completion of the design and development for the 2002 Indigenous Social Survey, collecting information across a range of areas of social concern for Indigenous Australians so that relationships across different aspects of personal and family wellbeing can be explored and information collected in the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey can be updated.

• conduct of the 2001 National Health Survey (NHS) as the first of a 3-yearly program, under a funding partnership with the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing;

• resolution of threshold issues for the conduct of an Australian Health Measurement Survey (AHMS) in association with the 2004–05 NHS, and the conduct of an initial skirmish for AHMS to provide some indicative data on the achievable response rate. The AHMS is being developed by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare;

• a major contribution to improving analysis of drug-related statistics in Australia by producing and publishing Illicit Drug Use: Sources of Australian Data (cat. no. 4808.0) which provides sources of national data measuring the economic, social, health and crime impact of illicit drug use in Australia, and Information Paper: Drug-Induced Deaths - A Guide to Causes of Death Data (cat. no. 4809.0.55.001), which outlines the definition of drug-induced deaths to be used in ABS output;

• development of a draft framework to measure social capital and wide user community consultation on the framework;

• release of Voluntary Work, Australia - Confidentialised Unit Record File on CD-ROM (cat. no. 4441.0.30.001);

• contribution to international discussions on the development of standards for the measurement of disability; and

• successful development of the Child Care Survey conducted in June 2002.

• the development of an offender based series for the Recorded Crime collection;

• the addition of experimental data for educational attainment in the Prisoner Census collection;

• the addition of experimental data for offence and penalty information for the Higher Criminal Courts collection; and

• agreement to develop National Information Development Plans in the areas of illicit drugs (with the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence), and sexual assault (with the Office of the Status of Women).

• release of the Australian Culture and Leisure Classifications (cat. no. 4902.0) which consists of an industry, product and occupation classification of the culture and leisure sectors. These classifications are expected to be adopted widely by users of culture and leisure data in Australia as a basis for future data collection, dissemination and analysis;

• the launch of a culture and recreation theme page on the ABS web site;

• development of a directory of ABS data sources of relevance to the culture and recreation sector which will be made available on the ABS web site;

• development of a collection of statistics on sport and recreation funding by the Government; and

• release of Work in Selected Culture and Leisure Activities, Australia (cat. no. 6281.0), and Involvement in Organised Sport and Physical Activity, Australia (cat. no. 6285.0).

• release of the 2002 edition of the Integrated Regional Data Base (IRDB), Australia (cat. no. 1353.0), providing clients with access to a broad range of information about Australia’s regions;

• release of the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) (cat. no. 1216.0), 2001 (Census) edition, incorporating, for the first time, a classification of remoteness;

• release of digital boundary files for the ASGC 2001 edition including Census Collection Districts;

• release of digital boundary files for non-ASGC 2001 Census of Population and Housing geographic output units;

• release, in consolidated form, of digital boundary files for previous editions of the ASGC from 1996 to 2000, providing a continuous time series of digital boundaries which are now available at the cost of transfer pursuant to the Commonwealth Spatial Data Pricing and Access Policy;

• release of Statistical Geography: Volume 2 - Census Geographic Areas, Australia (cat. no. 2905.0) describing 2001 Census of Population and Housing geographic output units such as Postal Areas, Commonwealth and State Electoral Divisions and the Australian Indigenous Geographical Classification; and

• production, for distribution to libraries in electronic format, of 2,700 maps describing the geographic output units of the 2001 Census.