Chapter 2: Year in Review: 2025–26

During 2025–26, the Minister responsible for the ABS and ASAC was the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury.

The 2024–25 ASAC Annual Report articulated the priorities for 2025–26 as:

1. Advise on the ABS work program under resource constraints.
2. Assist in clarifying ABS roles and responsibilities within an evolving data landscape.
3. Assist in building and maintaining community trust.
4. Advise on opportunities.
5. Monitor and advise on the 2026 Census program.

The Council held three meetings during 2025–26: July 2025, November 2025, and March 2026 (see Appendix 2 for meeting agendas).

ASAC has played a crucial role throughout 2025–26 in supporting the ABS during a period of significant transformation and ongoing challenges. This review outlines the Council’s key contributions across five priority areas.

At each ASAC Meeting, the Council receives reports from the Australian Statistician on relevant ABS business. Similarly, Council members have an opportunity to provide reports to the ABS for consideration and discussion.

At the July meeting, the Council was updated on planned improvements to how the ABS collects the Labour Force Survey (LFS) as part of the Data Acquisition Modernisation Program. The changes are intended to deliver improved provider experience, reduce the risk of a decline in the quality of core labour force statistics, and arrest the growing cost of collecting labour force data. The Council noted the ABS is carefully managing the statistical impact of the transition, drawing on lessons from previous change programs, and will be transparent about transition risks to headline labour force statistics. Members welcomed the early planning and engagement, requested further engagement as the changes progress, and discussed continuity of the dataset. Members also discussed the timing of the release of LFS data into the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) and the sampling methodology.

Additionally, at the July meeting, the Council discussed the outcomes of the Net Interstate Migration (NIM) review which it supported at its March 2024 meeting, and on future directions for NIM estimation. The Council noted the new methodology would have produced smaller 2021 intercensal differences had it been applied over the 2016 to 2021 period, with particularly large reductions for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Tasmania. Members welcomed this work and discussed issues experienced by individual states and territories.

At the November meeting, the Council received an update on the Data Acquisition Modernisation Program. Key outcomes of the Program include improving the digital experience for key surveys, modernising the ABS contact centre, and continuing to replace legacy IT systems with a secure, scalable cloud environment. Since March 2025 the program has focused on transitioning key surveys from legacy platforms to modern data acquisition platforms to reduce cyber risk. The Council noted improvements to the ABS contact centre, including a pilot of new telephony features to automate outbound calls and improved tools to identify and manage large businesses through the ABS’ Customer Relationship Management platform.

Additionally, at the November meeting, the Council noted the ABS was on track to transition from the quarterly Consumer Price Index (CPI) to a complete Monthly CPI as Australia’s primary measure of headline inflation, with the first complete Monthly CPI to be published on 26 November 2025 for the October 2025 reference month. The Council noted that, alongside the Monthly CPI, the Big Data, Timely Insights: Phase 2 (BDTI2) program had successfully onboarded two business collections onto new cloud-based enterprise tools for data cleaning and editing. The Council congratulated the ABS on the imminent release of the first complete Monthly CPI, together with the onboarding of these collections, as major milestones for both the BDTI2 program and the ABS’ broader ten-year modernisation program.

At the March meeting, the Council considered a retrospective on the implementation of the complete Monthly CPI. The Council noted the complete Monthly CPI had been generally well received, bringing Australia into line with other G20 countries that produce monthly inflation data. The Council noted the lessons learnt would inform the remainder of the BDTI2 program and future onboarding of collections, with the ABS planning to complete migration off legacy CPI systems and uplift remaining legacy tools by June 2027.

Additionally, at the March meeting, the Council was updated on changes to the ABS’ organisational structure which took effect on 2 February 2026. The changes consolidated all statistical production into a single Insights and Statistics Group, and merged the Statistical Production and Digital Services Division with the Statistical Infrastructure Division to form a new Statistical Infrastructure and Integration Division. The Council noted the changes reduced the number of divisions, created greater senior capacity to focus on statistical quality and methods, and better aligned work across Groups as the ABS continues to modernise its production and data acquisition systems.

The Council received regular updates on the ABS’ financial position and that budget pressures continued to affect core business throughout 2025–26. The Council noted that internal spending controls on recruitment and supplier expenditure remained in place, and that changes to the work program would be needed to maintain delivery of key priorities, with impacts to be managed proactively with stakeholders.

At the November meeting, the Council discussed a paper on the national data integration landscape, which built on the update of the ABS’ own data integration program considered at the March 2025 meeting to look at the broader national picture. The Council noted the national landscape had evolved substantially over the past five to ten years, with the Data Integration Partnership for Australia having helped to accelerate technical infrastructure and integration capability across the public service. The Council also noted that data integration activity now spanned Commonwealth data assets – including the ABS’ PLIDA and Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE), and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s National Health Data Hub – alongside separate person-level linkage systems developed by several states and by not-for-profit and research bodies.

The Council noted this proliferation of largely separate infrastructure, governance and funding arrangements had created challenges, including domain- and jurisdiction-specific fragmentation, duplicated data supply and rising governance costs for data custodians. The Council discussed opportunities to improve the landscape in the short to medium term, including broader adoption of the Australian National Data Integration Infrastructure (ANDII), to which the ABS is migrating PLIDA and BLADE by the end of 2025–26; reforms to the governance of ABS data assets, including a proposal to bring PLIDA and BLADE under a single Board with broader custodian and researcher representation, and to streamline project-by-project data custodian approvals – noting BLADE approvals, which already use a streamlined model, average one business day compared with four to six weeks for PLIDA; working with States and Territories to fill high-priority data gaps; and new, lower-barrier modes of access such as the ABS Information Consultancy service and TableBuilder products for BLADE and PLIDA. Members complimented the progress made in this space and discussed duplication of effort, national governance arrangements, access to data, data custodian approvals, and broadening the membership of the PLIDA Board.

The Council also received regular updates on the APS Data Profession, which had grown to over 18,300 members on the Data Profession Members’ Community Platform as at 30 June 2026. This includes state and territory government membership of just over 2,650, approximately 15 per cent of the total.

Community trust remained a central focus throughout 2025–26, with the Council providing guidance as the ABS reported on the results of its trust survey and responded to a statistical error.

At the July meeting, the Council was updated on the results of the 2025 Community Trust in ABS Statistics Survey (CTASS), for which fieldwork was undertaken in May 2025. The Council noted the CTASS is conducted every five years and drew responses from 2,267 members of the general public and 325 informed users of ABS data. Results showed continued high levels of trust, with 90 per cent of the general community reporting they tend to trust or trust a great deal the ABS as an organisation (up from 87 per cent in 2020) and 89 per cent trusting ABS statistics (up from 85 per cent); among informed users, trust was 99 per cent for the ABS as an organisation (down from 100 percent in 2020) and rose to 100 per cent for ABS statistics (from 98 per cent in 2020).

At the November meeting, the Council was updated on the 2023–24 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) and the Review Report which was published on 12 September 2025. The Council noted the ABS would not be publishing results due to data quality concerns identified during processing. These arose from questionnaire changes, a truncated development period and changes to field procedures which meant the collected data were not sufficiently representative of the Australian population to produce fit-for-purpose statistics. The Council noted the ABS had applied lessons from this experience to the 2025–26 SIH, which was then in the field.

At the March meeting, the Council was updated on the ABS’ response to an error in the January 2026 Consumer Price Index (CPI) publication. The ABS advised that the ‘contribution to percentage change’ figures in five supporting analytical tables had used incorrect, outdated weights, and that a media statement was published on 26 February 2026 announcing the tables would be removed and republished; the corrected tables were republished on 27 February 2026. The Council noted the error was isolated to the listed analytical tables and the associated commentary graph and table, and did not affect any headline CPI figures, including the headline measure of inflation, the trimmed mean, or index levels and movements. The ABS advised it had identified the cause of the error and was conducting a lessons-learned exercise to help prevent similar issues in future.

During 2025–26, the Council advised the ABS on emerging statistical challenges and opportunities across the jurisdictions and sectors represented. The Council noted the importance of data to inform state and territory priorities, such as housing.

At the July meeting, the Council discussed a paper on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at the ABS and other national statistical offices (NSOs), reflecting strong interest across NSOs in applying AI to both the production and dissemination of statistics. Members discussed the challenges of AI, including hallucinations and misinformation, alongside Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems, AI governance, implications for recruitment, and how to measure AI’s impact on the economy.

Additionally, at the July meeting, the Council was updated on the ABS’ modernisation of its core analytical tools. The ABS will transition from SAS to Python and R as the ABS’ core analytical tools for statistical production, reflecting the cost and skills advantages of these more widely used open-source languages. The Council noted the ABS is engaging closely with international counterparts including Statistics Canada, Statistics New Zealand, the UK Office for National Statistics and the Central Statistics Office of Ireland, which are undertaking similar transitions. The Council noted the Data Science and Analytics Roadmap is being developed with a seven-to-ten-year horizon and will be shared with the Council once endorsed.

At the March meeting, the Council discussed the implications of the illicit tobacco market for official statistics. Given the hidden nature of illegal activity, the ABS advised that measurement would rely on model-based estimates, including the use of wastewater data to estimate national tobacco consumption, and that it did not intend to introduce illicit tobacco prices into the CPI, because the available information for prices does not reach the very high standard required. The ABS also outlined plans for public release, including experimental estimates alongside the March quarter national accounts in June 2026, and to seek user feedback on their usefulness. The Council discussed the source of illicit tobacco, the use and coverage of wastewater data, pricing for illicit tobacco, and different nicotine products, and were broadly supportive of the ABS’ proposed approach.

The Council also noted that, following its agreement at the November meeting, the ABS had developed a proposal to reinstate the Estimated Dwelling Stock publication, with a paper provided to State and Territory Members on 24 February 2026 to consult on its scope and potential funding options. 

The Council received regular updates on the Life Course Data Initiative (LCDI), a pilot delivered in partnership with the ACT and South Australian (SA) Government and Adelaide University’s BetterStart. During 2025–26, all data-sharing agreements were finalised, enabling creation of the Life Course Dataset. The Dataset safely links ACT and SA jurisdictional data, Commonwealth childcare data and national birth registry data, with PLIDA. The Council was also briefed on new location-based indicators on distance and travel time to services such as childcare, schools, hospitals and general practitioners. The Council noted a range of new insights and products have been published as part of the LCDI. The pilot concludes in mid-2027, and the ABS is evaluating the pilot to inform future directions.

The 2026 Census remained a critical focus, with the Council providing ongoing advice on Census preparations.

At the July meeting, the Council was informed that the Census and Statistics Regulation 2016 had been amended to require the ABS to collect data on a new topic: sexual orientation and gender in the 2026 Census, for people aged 16 years and over. The amendment also returned the ‘number of children ever born’ topic to decennial collection, removing it from the 2026 Census.

At the November meeting, the Council was updated on the outcomes of the August 2025 Census Test (the Operational Readiness Exercise), involving around 60,000 dwellings across five collection models, including third-party vendors and field staff. The Council noted the Census Test achieved a response rate of over 50 per cent (above target), identified no major issues with the ABS’ operational readiness, and provided practical insights to inform improvements to operations, communication strategies, logistics coordination and data processing workflows. 19,000 people subscribed to the new myGov pathway, and almost 10,000 completed a test form. Given the cancellation of the 2024 Census Test, the Council noted that this large-scale test was of particular importance in providing assurance of Census operational readiness, with Census Day confirmed as 11 August 2026.

At the November meeting, the Council was also updated on the ABS’ plans to use administrative data to improve the quality and efficiency of the 2026 Census, building on successful applications in 2021, and on work under the APS Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data guided by the ABS Round Table for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics to consider whether administrative data could help mitigate the effects of lower response rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, while continuing to prioritise participation as the ABS’ primary goal.

Additionally, at the November meeting, the Council was updated on Census program assurance activities, including publication of the Phase 3 Census Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on 26 September 2025, with the ABS accepting all recommendations arising from the three PIA phases, and completion of a review by Dennis Trewin AO of progress against recommendations from the 2021 Statistical Independent Assurance Panel, which found the ABS had made important improvements and was implementing all outstanding recommendations.

The Council further noted the ABS had developed a strategic communications approach to address mis-, dis- and mal-information and scam activity, and that the Department of Finance’s Independent Communications Committee was considering the Census communications campaign submission, with an outcome expected in the first half of 2026 and, if approved, the campaign to commence in July 2026.

At the March meeting, the Council noted the final questions and data release plans for the Census had been published on the ABS website on 25 November 2025. Data will be released in June 2027, October 2027 and early-mid 2028. The Council discussed the benefits of the Census Statistical Independent Assurance Panel providing an update at a future Council meeting.

The Council was also updated on the progress of the Australian National Audit Office’s Performance Audit Report on Cyber Readiness for the 2026 Census and received an out-of-session update when the ANAO tabled the final report in Parliament on 27 May 2026.