Today, an opinion piece authored by Alan Gamlen was published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. This piece contained two fundamental errors and one unexplained statistic in reference to research published by the Institute of Public Affairs. This included stating;
- “A press release from the Institute of Public Affairs two weeks before the rallies claimed 457,560 net migrants had arrived in the 2024-25 financial year.” This is factually false. The IPA’s press release does not say this at all.
- The release states “Net permanent and long-term arrivals in the financial year ending 2025 [was] 457,560.” The release also made clear that net permanent and long-term arrivals is a different measure than Net Overseas Migration.
- “The release misused Australian Bureau of Statistics data on tourist movements rather than net overseas migration data.” This is also not true.
- Tourist movements are captured in the short-term visitors movement data which was not used in the IPA’s research. The data the IPA referred to was the permanent and long-term arrivals and departures data, which explicitly excludes short-term visitor movements.
- Referring to the 457,560 figure, the online version of the piece stated “but that number is wrong. In fact, it’s off by more than 30 per cent”. This reference was removed from the print edition without explanation.
- Nowhere does the article explain why the figure is inaccurate. Further, it cannot be the case that it is referring to the FY25 Net Overseas Migration figure as that has not been released yet.
The Institute of Public Affairs immediately informed Nine Newspapers of these errors, however it still decided to publish them, claiming “the piece and the figures it contains are accurate”.
It was also made clear to Nine Newspapers that the federal government agency, the Centre for Population, explicitly states in its handbook, Fundamentals of migration in Australia: Migration concepts and measurement, that the net permanent and long-term arrivals measure is “an early indicator of future migration flows”.
“It is disappointing that the Nine Newspapers have proceeded to publish inaccurate claims about the research of the Institute of Public Affairs on a critical public policy matter,” said Daniel Wild, Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs said.
The Institute of Public Affairs will be making an official complaint to the Australian Press Council.
“The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2025 revealed that 68 per cent of Australians worry that journalists and reporters “purposely mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations”, and given the article today, this sentiment is completely understandable,” Mr Wild said.
“There is growing anger in the community about Australia’s out-of-control migration program. What we have seen again today is Australia’s political class and elites will do whatever it takes to shut down debate about topics it does not agree with.”
