Fears over re-count of homeless.   


A BUREAU of Statistics bid to revise the method of calculating national homelessness has provoked concern among advocates for the homeless who fear the statisticians will undercount the realities of the street.   

The ABS will revisit figures based on the 2001 and 2006 censuses using a new formula devised by in-house statisticians in a discussion paper to be released this month.

Some anti-poverty campaigners have told said that they fear that homelessness could be revised down by as much as a third, providing a ''miraculous'' solution to the homelessness figure that the federal government pledged to halve by 2020. The Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness, Mark Arbib, has been made aware of the concern.


There were 105,000 Australians who were homeless on census night in 2006. The count was derived by a method developed by two leading Melbourne academics and has long been accepted by state and federal governments. ''It's important not to move the goalposts while the federal government has identified homelessness as a key priority,'' says James Farrell of the Homeless Persons' Legal Clinic.

Determining the extent of homelessness is a complex exercise. Since the mid-1990s a national estimate has been reached by the two independent researchers using raw ABS census numbers and other data, supplemented by fieldwork.

The ABS said the method lacked transparency and undertook an 18-month consultation for alternatives. Bob McColl, the ABS statistician leading the review, said there were concerns about the ''consistency'' of the process used by the academics. He said none of their counts had been peer-reviewed.

He conceded that any different methodology could result in a different estimate of the number of homeless people in Australia. A new formula will be tested by the ABS discussion paper and possibly revised again to devise a workable method that can be applied to the August 2011 census, Mr McColl said.

The census has never included a direct question on homelessness.

The existing formula was developed by Associate Professor David MacKenzie, from Swinburne University, and Professor Chris Chamberlain, from RMIT. Their method, using a relatively broad definition of ''homelessness'' and applying an algorithm, has received international recognition and been published as a paper by the ABS since the 1996 census.

Nicole Lawder, from Homelessness Australia, which represents 200 community groups, said she was satisfied with the present method, ''and would need a good explanation from the ABS as to why they should be changing''. However, Tony Nicholson, executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence who chairs the Prime Minister's Council on Homelessness, said he supported a review.

He said it was always good to ensure data was ''as accurate as we can make it''.

The definition of homelessness used by the academics includes rough sleepers, those in emergency shelters and ''couch surfers'' - people staying temporarily with friends.

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If they were to release the REAL numbers of both homeless and unemployed they wouldn't be seen by the rest of the world as a shining beacon of economic and social success.

It could be Australia's best kept secret. I wonder what else they're hiding?

longweekend58 wrote on Mar 14^th, 2011 at 12:06pm:



We could of course copy Spain's model and count all people on government benefits and wanting to work, as being unemployed. Then we must also count those who are looking for work but are not on benefits for one reason or another.  And we must count students who are wanting work but cannot get it.

In short count all people actively looking for work, or long term unemployed who have given up looking for work. There are only so many years a person can look for work and remain unsuccessful....without going barmy.

Underemployment must also come into the equation because a lot of people are working some hours but still receiving some dole payment.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Mar 14^th, 2011 at 12:44pm:



I know what you mean, it's not like they can supply more housing or pull jobs out of thin air. If they keep the unemployment figures low, they can have a stab at setting a time limit for dole payments....so it's a win win for the govt.