It is interesting to note the collective description of the Australian Year Books in Sir Ninian Stephen's preface to Year Book Australia 1988 as "... that faithful mirror of Australia past and present, ...". The full text of Sir Ninian's preface can be viewed here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6100#89052 . The facsimile of his signature could not be reproduced.

Throughout all the years of their publication, right up until the year the Governor-General wrote his preface, Australian electoral and referendum results had been promptly, and repetitively, reported in the Year Books.

Curiously, half of that tradition seems to have been abandoned the very year after the Governor-General made his Bicentennial remarks. Year Book Australia 1988 was the last edition of the Year Books to report the results of Commonwealth referenda, those of the referenda held in 1984. Neither the results of the four 3 September 1988 referenda, nor the two 6 November 1999 Preamble and Republic referenda, have ever been reported in the Year Books.

I had been of the opinion that this represented two successive instances of a regrettable disregard for Australian traditions in public administration of which Australians could previously have been proud, and upon the upholding of which they could have previously relied. I now think this opinion to have been wrong.

In the light of the information in, and revealed by, gazettals mentioned in the preceeding posts, it now appears that failure to publish the 1988 referenda results in the Year Books, far from betraying a falling standard of reporting, constitutes a beacon witness to fidelity on the part of the Australian Bureau of Statistics! It would appear that with no source document for results, no publication was undertaken.

It is to be hoped that similar deficiencies in the availability of originals of instruments for verification of Year Book copy by the ABS did not lie behind the failures to publish the 1999 referenda results.

It is reassuring knowing that the non-judicial member of the three-person Australian Electoral Commission has, since its inception, been the Australian Statistician.