Statistical Services Group

Michael Smedes is the Acting Deputy Australian Statistician leading the Statistical Services Group. The Statistical Services Group has responsibility for producing the ABS’ demographic, economic and social statistics.

Michael Smedes has an extensive background in official statistics having worked at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations across a broad range of statistics. Prior to his current role, he was most recently the global advisor on national accounts at the United Nations.

Gemma Van Halderen is a member of the ABS’ Executive Team, leading the Population, Labour, Industry and Location Statistics Division. She joins the ABS after a three year placement with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific where she led regional statistical capability programmes, was responsible for Inter-Governmental Meetings and initiated a popular Asia-Pacific Stats Cafe series in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, Gemma was seconded to the Commonwealth Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to prepare the Government’s response to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Data Availability and Use.

Gemma is a professional statistician with extensive domestic and international experience. She has represented Australia at the United Nations Statistical Commission and United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management, led Australia’s contribution to OECD Guidelines on Research Ethics and New Forms of Data for social and economic research, and was inaugural Co-Chair of a United Nations Expert Group on the Integration of Statistical and Geospatial Information. Her interests are in improving the range, accessibility and visibility of statistics and data for research, analysis and public policy.

Gemma holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the Australian National University. She is an Accredited Australian Statistician and an elected member of the International Statistics Institute. She is a member of the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) Executive Committee, the regional editor of the Statistical Journal of the IAOS and an advocate for the IAOS Young Statistician Prize. In 2013, she was a Telstra Business Women finalist in the Community and Government sector (ACT).

Denise Carlton

Program Manager
Population Statistics Branch

Bjorn Jarvis

Program Manager
Labour Statistics Branch

Sybille McKeown

Program Manager
Location Insights Branch

Amanda Clark

Program Manager
Physical Environment Accounts and Statistics Branch

Robert Ewing

Program Manager
Business Indicators Branch

Jacqui Vitas is the General Manager of Macroeconomic Statistics Division.

Prior to joining the ABS in February 2016 Jacqui worked in the UK Office for National Statistics, on the 2001 Census, in the Methodology Division and in National Accounts. She has extensive experience of business survey methodology and is co-author of the Wiley book 'Designing and Conducting Business Surveys'.

She joined the ABS as Program Manager of the Labour and Income branch and took up the General Manager position in June 2017.

Jacqui has a BA (Hons) in Social Policy Administration and an MSc in Social Research.

Michelle Tan*

Program Manager
Finance and Wealth Branch

Katherine Keenan

Program Manager
Production, Income and Expenditure Branch

Grace Kim*

Program Manager
International Statistics Branch

Benjamin Mitra-Kahn

Michelle Marquardt

Program Manager
Prices Branch

Tom Joseph

Program Manager
Business Statistics Futures Branch

Andrew Tomadini

David Zago is the Acting General Manager of the Social Statistics Division.

Linda Fardell

Program Manager
Health and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics

Michelle Ducat

Program Manager
Education and Crime Statistics Branch

Georgia Chapman*

Program Manager
Household Surveys Branch

Xia Du*

Program Manager
Household Income and Expenditure Data Branch

*Individual is acting, temporary or contractor in this role