Retail gets some tax-payer funded propaganda

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It always pays to be an interest in Australia. From the The Oz:

The online shopping habits of Australians will be tracked for the first time by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The Gillard government today announced $2.1 million over four years for the ABS to get a better picture of online spending habits and help inform government and industry decisions.

The funding will enable the ABS to track Australian spending data from domestic and overseas online retailers, as well as retailers that sell in both “bricks and mortar” shops and online.

…Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said he had previously called for online retail sales to be reported as a separate category within ABS retail trade figures rather than lumped in with “other retailing”, and was happy with today’s developments.

There are, of course, already two private surveys doing a good job of tracking online retail. Nothing wrong with the government paying for obsolete industry research that will be recycled as a vested interests campaign. Not to mention the ABS recently said it couldn’t find $1.5 million needed to fix its unemployment survey. Nor does it have a monthly CPI, nor hedonic house price index, but those are a lower priority for sure.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.