ABS hits back at Steven Miles’ arrivals claim

The ABS has hit back at Queensland’s Deputy Premier Steven Miles’ claims they no long publish the number of foreigners arriving into Australia every month.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles in Brisbane on Wednesday. Picture: Dan Peled

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles’ claim the agency no longer publishes the number of foreigners arriving into Australia at the behest of the Morrison government is wrong.

Mr Miles on Wednesday said too many nonresidents – some 20,000 in April – were entering the country “permitted by the Morrison government”.

“The borders are not genuinely closed,” he said. “And these travellers are displacing Australians who are genuinely stranded overseas, genuinely trying to get home.

“And I note they have directed the Bureau of Statistics to stop now reporting this data.”

But the ABS data – which shows 16,320 of those arrivals in April were from New Zealand, which has a travel bubble arrangement with Australia – had not been dropped as a result of any government intervention.

The monthly statistics will continue to be published.

“In April 2021 the Australian Statistician, Dr David Gruen, announced the ABS was making changes to its statistical work program to appropriately measure the Australian economy and society from 1 July 2021,” the bureau said. “These decisions were made by the ABS – they were not the result of a direction by government.”

There were 880 visitors from the US and 660 from Britain, the latest ABS statistics on overseas arrivals released in June show.

The Australian Border Force also disputed Mr Miles’ characterisation of arrivals as largely non-Australians, and said on average over 80 per cent of international arrivals required to quarantine “are Australian citizens, permanent residents or their immediate family”.

“Several reports have been combining international arrivals from New Zealand with arrivals from other countries and making the comparison that this high number is contributing to spread of Covid-19 and the lack of quarantine places for Australians however this is not the case,” the ABF said in a statement.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has also criticised the number of Australians travelling overseas, and said it should stop until the vaccination program had rolled out.

“As we know, Australians have been allowed to leave for conferences, for study and for work reasons,” Mr McGowan said. “Tens of thousands, the best part of 100,000, have left Australia over the course of the last 18 months for those sorts of reasons. Some reasons are legitimate, but the vast majority of people going overseas, in my view, shouldn’t have.”

But between March 2020 and April 2021, the ABF said, only 13,762 Australians and permanent residents travelled in and out of Australia on more than one occasion, including those who travelled to New Zealand and those in the defence force.

“All foreign nationals who do not have an automatic exemption … must apply for and be granted an exemption from Australia’s travel restrictions, either because they would be providing skills deemed critical for Australia or demonstrated compelling and compassionate circumstances,” the ABF said.