The Tasmanian Greens today pursued their call for an independent Statistician Office to be established, saying that such a position would help break through the current manipulation of economic data for political purposes.

Greens Treasury spokesperson Tim Morris MP said the continuous manipulation of economic data is causing a lack of confidence in that information, even those published by well-respected organisations, and the best and most cost-effective way to deal with this issue is through the appointment of an independent statistician who reports to Parliament and will be responsible for publishing key economic data on a stand-alone website.

“It is frustrating at the near continuous manipulation and massaging of key economic data by political parties and organisations seeking to gain advantage by confusing the public, and I believe that the commonsense solution is for Parliament to appoint an independent Tasmanian statistician to publish all key economic data on a regular basis,” said Mr Morris.

“The Greens’ proposed independent Statistician will keep continuously publishing and updating key economic data, and ensure that it is presented in a manner that enables the public to clearly see how the most recent data fits into the longer-term trends. The Statistician will also update each set of data whenever the State or Federal Treasuries, or the Australian Bureau of Statistics, release their updates, and would post this data onto an independent website as well as releasing it publicly.”

“The position of Tasmanian Statistician would not be onerous, and could most likely be carried by a part-time appointee with minimal back-up resources, which would mean that the costs involved would be very low, while delivering the benefit of improved transparency and easily comparable economic data for use by all,” said Mr Morris.