Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I think that the board should decide. If it chose to make that recommendation I could live with it, but I suspect it is extremely unlikely that an independent board would make such a recommendation. It is enormously important to get the pre-release issue right if the Bill is genuinely to work and to achieve the Government’s aims, but the board should also be able to make rules on how statistics are released to the general public. I welcome the indication that the Financial Secretary gave about a central hub to release all statistics. It will be necessary to scrutinise the small print in detail to establish what is being contemplated, but it seems that a step is being taken in the right direction. The issue is crucial. Professor Holt points out that"““press offices within policy departments have the simultaneous task of releasing statistics… and issuing the Minister’s view of the statistics and their policy implications””." That, he says,"““creates an impossible tension at the heart of the release process.””" Bill McLennan, another former head of the Government Statistical Service and also of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, puts it more bluntly:"““The National Statistician has about as much chance of being able to ensure that political influence is not a factor in the release of statistics… as a snowflake in hell has of not melting.””" There are attractive arguments in favour of requiring all official statistics to be released through a central, independent press office, physically separate from the departments producing the figures.