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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Moore / Whingers bring on a witch hunt

Roll dpiHISTORY will be kind regarding the 2016 Census. It was so easy to knock the census effort, but chief statistician David Kalisch made the right call.

Michael Moore
Michael Moore.

Following the crisis, completing the census was not difficult but the whingers are in full swing.

The knockers employed the wisdom of hindsight from the minute the Census site went down. Facebook was crowded: “predictable”; “should have left it to the experts”; “hopeless public servants”.

The Prime Minister’s frustration was palpable and understandable. If only every household in Australia had just sat down on the evening of Tuesday, August 9 and completed their form without interruption.

The Canadian Census suffered the same fate in early May. Our Canadian cousins’ website went down a week before census day. The reporting was not left to the knockers. Rather the CBC ran the headline: “Canada’s ‘enthusiasm’ for census brings down StatsCan website”. This was followed by a tagline #Census2016 that was trending across the country one week before census day.

The knockers in Australia took aim at privacy. A few of the cross-bench senators made great mileage of being prepared to sacrifice a recurring $180 fine to make the point. Great politics. The best political lines have an element of truth. Pollies can, and do, ask for privacy on the electoral role and some other personal protections. The electoral commission has the information but protects it. The ABS has promised the same.

The Australia Card marked the epitome of the privacy debate. However, it was long before privacy legislation. It occurred decades before social media and our willingness to hand so much personal information over to big business through our online activities.

Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement of an inquiry was accompanied by a declaration that “heads will roll”. Sounds like a witch hunt rather than an inquiry! Perhaps he should be looking in a mirror. A really open inquiry would examine the role of elected government in setting the groundwork.

Peter Martin, writing in the “Sydney Morning Herald“, has done a masterful expose on the impact of cuts by consecutive governments. Small government, efficiency dividends, public service freezes; why would anyone think that these would not have an impact on outcomes at some time?

In a major way, the chickens have come home to roost. To have any credibility, the “Heads-Will-Roll” inquiry will need to look at the impact of the cuts to the ABS and apply the lesson across the public service. It will need to examine the way the tender was let, the use of the private sector and particularly the role played by IBM who was paid nearly $10 million to build the system.

Chief statistician Kalisch closed the ABS Census website on the night. It was a good call under the circumstances. It showed courage. He should be commended rather than pilloried.

Whether the website was being attacked or overloaded will eventually be determined. However, as the person at the helm, he took the decision to protect the credibility of the Australian Census, to leave no-one in doubt that the priority was privacy. It was a promise he had personally made to the Australian community in the days leading to census night – and he backed it up in the crisis.

A couple of days were lost. Those of us who live and work in Canberra all know a few public servants who fit the clichéd “shiny bum”. But we also know how the vast, vast majority of public servants commit themselves to doing the best job they possibly can within the restrictions of being a public servant.

They constantly have the spectre of double-checking by auditors, the parameters set by their political masters, cuts to their budgets and the limitations of public service practice. These should also be elements of any inquiry.

The wags had so much fun with the census night failure. Social media was flooded. Australians are good at laughing at themselves. However, we are also good at finding scapegoats. We can and should do better next time. Let’s hope for an open inquiry on how to achieve better outcomes rather than simply looking to lay blame.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Michael Moore

Michael Moore

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