Media outlets have been called out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for inflating their data ahead of anti-immigration 'March for Australia' rallies. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.
THE FIRST ANTI-IMMIGRATION RALLIES, possibly since the start of the post-war migration program, are planned for 31 August 2025. To promote these rallies, many anti-immigration media outlets, think tanks and political groups have been caught out misusing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data.
The most egregious has been Ben Fordham on Sydney 2GB radio, who said:
“Get a load of this every single day, Australia is now taking in 1544 new people; 1544 per day. These are the latest numbers. Now that's the equivalent of five fully loaded Boeing 787 Dreamliners, Day after day, week after week, in the first six months of this year, we've had 279,000 arrivals”.
Fordham was actually referring to net permanent and long-term (NPLT) movements for the first six months of 2025. These totalled 279,660. He was making the same mistake, deliberately or otherwise, as Adam Creighton made in The Australian, who said:
“The Government promised to cut net immigration back to sustainable, pre-COVID levels before the Election, which would imply around 250,000 a year, where it had hovered for years. For this calendar year, it’s on track to exceed 550,000.”
Creighton and Fordham assume NPLT is identical to net migration. The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) issued a media statement also making the same mistake in respect of 2024–25 NPLT movements data. The Daily Mail copied them, trying to whip up a frenzy of anti-immigration hate.
The ABS sought to correct this via this media statement, in which the ABS said:
Multiple media stories have been published this week using Overseas Arrivals and Departures (OAD) data to make commentary on migration numbers. This data does not reflect the official ABS definition of migration and may lead to inaccurate conclusions on migration.
Overseas Arrivals and Departures (OAD) data is a count of border crossings rather than migration. Permanent and Long-term movements come from traveller declarations and are not contingent on the traveller’s residency status prior to travel. For example, this means a person who has been living in Australia for three years on a temporary visa, and travels overseas multiple times, can count as a long-term visitor arrival many times, even though they only migrated here once.
But rather than accept the mistake, these anti-immigration groups have doubled down, accusing the ABS of being politicised or indulging in censorship on behalf of the Government. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ABS has simply corrected a very basic misunderstanding of NPLT movements data.
NPLT movements data can be used as a lead indicator of net migration, but only in conjunction with other corroborating evidence. As it happened, NPLT movements in 2023–24 was very close to net migration in that year, and these anti-immigration groups have assumed it will always be the same. But in other years since COVID, it has been very different to net migration.
Once corroborating evidence for 2024–25 is considered, it is clear net migration in 2024–25 will be nowhere near the 457,000 the IPA, The Daily Mail and others are saying. An outcome of around 350,000 to 380,000 is more likely. That would be well down on net migration in 2023-24 of 445,000, and hence contrary to the picture these anti-immigration outlets are trying to paint.
Moreover, in 2025, it will be nowhere near the 550,000+ that Ben Fordham and Adam Creighton are suggesting, although the Treasury may well have to increase its net migration forecast for 2025–26 of 260,000.
We will get some confirmation of the net migration outcomes for 2024–25 and 2025 when the ABS publishes data on net migration for the March Quarter of 2025. Unfortunately, that won’t be until 18 September 2025 — well after the anti-immigration rallies planned for 31 August.
It is likely that until then, these anti-immigration groups will continue to misuse NPLT movements' data to push their agenda. Indeed, in classic Trumpian mode, they may just continue to assert the ABS has rigged the data.
Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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