The Australian Bureau of Statistics is responsible for some of Australia's largest surveys, including the Census of Population and Housing, held every five years. At its head is the Australian Statistician. The current Statistician, Brian Pink, started in his position on March 5, 2007, following the retirement of predecessor Dennis Trewin. Wikinews recently caught up with Brian Pink to talk with him about his first year in the position, as well as his previous tenure as Government Statistician at Statistics New Zealand, and the state of mathematical education in Australia.
((WikiNews)) : Good afternoon.


((WN)) : And congratulations on spending a year as Australian Statistician.


((WN)) : So firstly, just for the benefit of Wikinews readers, can you give a bit of a background as to what the Bureau of Statistics does, and what your responsibilities are as the Statistician?


((WN)) : You used the word "leading", and I know that in 2005 the Bureau's mission statement changed from "providing ... a national statistical service" to "leading ... a national statistical service". So what does it actually mean to be a statistical leader over a statistical provider?

—On the results of the Allen Review
((WN)) : And of course that change was made before you became Statistician, and in fact you weren't actually in the Bureau at the time - you rose through the ranks here and then went to New Zealand for a few years.


((WN)) : So the two organisations were taking very similar directions. Have you noticed any major differences between the two?

((WN)) : I thought that we might look at some of the things that actually happened during the past year, firstly just things that have happened with the Bureau, and probably one of the biggest things that happened last year was the release of 2006 Census data. That was the first eCensus?


((WN)) : And I read that about 10% of households used it.


((WN)) : Did you see any significant differences between how people responded between the paper and the electronic census forms?


((WN)) : Are there any other innovations in the works for the 2011 census, or is it still fairly nebulous?

((WN)) : The other thing that's happened in the past year is the release of the 2008 Year Book, and in fact the release of all the Year Books from 1908 to 2008 on the ABS web site.


((WN)) : That must have been a huge effort.

—On reading past Year Books
((WN)) : Have you heard of any results from people looking through these Year Books and finding any interesting statistics?


((WN)) : Obviously the ABS doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it has to work in the wider political world in Australia, and of course last year the November Federal election saw a change of government. Has this impacted much on how the Bureau works?


((WN)) : So have any of the new politicians come in and say "We'd like our numbers to looks a little bit better for us than they did for the previous lot"?

—Billy Hughes, [1]
((WN)) : Also, earlier this year Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations, and this was on the basis of the "Bringing Them Home" report which incorporated some of the ABS' National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander surveys. To what extent does the ABS actually collect Indigenous statistics?


((WN)) : Were there any similar initiatives in New Zealand when you were there?

((WN)) : Just on a last note, there are reports every few years talking about the decline in certain skills in graduates, in particular mathematics and science seem to be one of the more heavily affected. As an employer of obviously a lot of statistical graduates, has the Bureau had problems in finding candidates?

—On mathematics graduates from Australian universities
((WN)) : And is there another concern with the loss of skilled professionals overseas - the "brain drain"?


((WN)) : Brian Pink, thank you very much for your time.


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Wikinews interviews Australian Statistician Brian Pink