Within the world of chaos and uncertainty that economists – and, in fact, many of us – constantly work, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is usually a comforting presence.

Like clockwork, at 11.30am most weekdays, the national bureau releases the latest wave of data: everything from what’s happening in our jobs market to how much prices have risen and how many houses are being built.

The bureau generally receives excellent cooperation from households, but it can legally direct people to provide information if it sees fit.Credit: Matt Davidson

These are key numbers that the Reserve Bank uses to set interest rates, politicians use to inform policy, and that we use to hold the government to their word.

So when the bureau declared last week that it would not be releasing statistics from its latest survey of income and housing this year, it came as a bit of a shock … at least to the nerds (myself included) keeping a close eye on the bureau’s homepage.

And it’s actually bad news for everyone.

In a statement to the media, the bureau said this particular set of data – from a 2023-24 survey – failed to meet its high standards.

“While we were compiling the statistics … we found serious shortcomings in the questionnaire design and data collection processes that we could not overcome, despite our best efforts,” deputy Australian statistician Dr Phillip Gould revealed.

It might not seem like a big deal. But it means one of our best trackers of income, housing costs such as mortgages and rent, assets and liabilities such as property, motor vehicles, investments and credit cards – from 30,000 households across the country – has essentially been thrown out the window.

Wasted data is never good. And it’s especially painful during a housing affordability crisis when we need the information to formulate good policies.

And it’s especially a problem given we haven’t had an update to this particular set of statistics since 2019 because........

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