Misrepresentation of statistics, whether due to misunderstanding or mischief, can lead to grievously poor decisions.
At Noosa Council’s July Ordinary Meeting, the Development Assessment Manager quoted a statistic from the Regional Movers Index promulgated by Regional Australia Institute.
The statistic was used as ‘evidence’ in a recommending rejection of applications for short term accommodation.
The statistic was adopted by Cr Frank Wilkie in debate. “Noosa has the highest migration rate of any local government area – a 49% increase,” he said, and soon he repeated it on his councillor Facebook page: “In March 2021 Noosa had the largest growth in inward migration from capitals among all LGAs [local government areas] in Australia (49%).”
Then Councillor Amelia Lorentson offered the same misunderstanding in her article, ‘STAs are not the enemy’ (Noosa Today, 30 July).
But this 49% statistic is playing with us, because the Regional Movers Index in no way indicates a huge increase in migration into Noosa.
In fact, it measures Noosa’s portion of all Commonwealth Bank (CBA) customers who changed their addresses from capital cities to regional areas in one quarter.
And it measures how much those changes increased or decreased compared to a previous quarter. It does not even take into account how many customers migrated out.
An analysis of the latest Regional Movers Index Report shows that Noosa’s share of all CBA customer movements from capital cities to regions was about 1% in the March 2021 quarter compared with 0.7% in the March 2020 quarter. This difference in share was 0.3%, not 49%. Miniscule.
And while Noosa scored 1% of all CBA’s region-bound customers, the same index shows that the Gold Coast scored 11% and the Sunshine Coast 6%.
Percentages of percentages always sound like a lot, easily leading to the misperceptions recently propagated in Noosa Council.
“The Index is clearly an index showing relative movements not absolute movements,” Kim Houghton, the Regional Australia Institute economist has confirmed to me.
“CBA does not provide us with the actual number of movers. The Index is indeed a sample of movements, not a census, and only covers the customers of one bank, [so] it is inherently a somewhat biased sample in that regard.”
Kim went on to reinforce what the numbers did not mean, “It is not reasonable to equate the Index movements with the net annual population growth.”
So there you have it. The percentage change in a small percentage was not evidence that Noosa is experiencing a “pandemic driven stampede” or a “housing crisis” as asserted by Councillors.
I might add that the Regional Australia Institute isn’t doing anyone any favours by not providing hard numbers and in reporting percentages of percentages. What it’s doing is perpetuating errors in logic – where real meanings are lost and can lead to false conclusions and bad decisions.
Councillors need to ensure they understand what they’re talking about before leaping to conclusions.
That is a very useful and well researched analysis. You are a fine fact check.
Perhaps the relevant councillors should amend the record and employees of Noosa and any other council relying on distorted and irrelevant data be provided with this article.