We've labelled this card's claim as a "Cherry-Pick" rather than an outright lie. While the quoted statistic is (mostly!) true, it's missing two very important bits of context: - What's the typical rate of closures, for comparison? - Are total business numbers up or down? - ThreadSky

lie-collector.bsky.social • 7 days ago

We've labelled this card's claim as a "Cherry-Pick" rather than an outright lie.

While the quoted statistic is (mostly!) true, it's missing two very important bits of context:
- What's the typical rate of closures, for comparison?
- Are total business numbers up or down?

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lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

The statement "27,000 small businesses have shut their doors" is meant to fool us into thinking that an unusually HUGE proportion of businesses have closed, and that we are down by that many businesses.
Hearing a big number, with no context, we're coaxed into assuming something is going very wrong.

lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

The truth is:

1. The total number of businesses is UP by around 150,000 since Labor took over government from the coalition.

2. The rate of business closures under Labor has been a little above the historical mean... and so has the rate of new businesses starting.

lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

And, of course, as with almost any statistics over the last 5 years, there are clearly pandemic-related distortions in this measure: a dip in business closures when stimulus first started; a huge spike in both new businesses and closures; a tightening in growth (the gap) as global inflation surged.

lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

It's true there's more businesses ending up insolvent than ever, but with there being more businesses than ever, that's not really a surprise.

Samples often need normalisation before we can start comparing them.

Not putting numbers in context is one of the biggest sources of political trickery.

lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

The data for this card came from the ABS's 'Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits'.
You can find it here:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/business-indicators/counts-australian-businesses-including-entries-and-exits/latest-release#seasonally-adjusted-data

lie-collector.bsky.social•7 days ago

The Liberal claim is based off ASIC's insolvency data, so only looking at one type of business closure.

Oh, and you know how we said the statistic is "mostly" true? That's because they're generally saying "small businesses", but the number they use is ALL businesses.
https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/statistics/insolvency-statistics/

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