While live recording last week’s podcast, Alex jumped on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website and found something startling: In July 2026, the ABS “updated” their methodology on how they calculate “excess deaths”. They subsequently released excess death data from 2024 and 2025 under their new method, which showed -1.7% excess deaths for 2024 and -2.0% for 2025. These figures stand in stark contrast to the excess death statistics during the 3 full years of the pandemic (2021-2023) as seen below: 2021: 1.6% 2022: 11.7% 2023: 6.1% 2024: -1.7% 2025: -2.0% So, what changed? According to the ABS website, the existing methodology using an average over the years 2013-2019 was no longer appropriate now that Covid was endemic in the community and would continue to cause deaths either directly or indirectly. Which seems fair enough at first glance. However, the new methodology employs a “rolling 7-year average, excluding 2022 (because the deaths were so high it would skew the results)”. This means, that for 2024 and 2025, the “expected death” number is calculated using the unusually high numbers of 2021 and 2023, resulting in a higher “expected death” number and therefore results in the negative excess death numbers we see in subsequent years. This also means, if death numbers stay higher for longer, “excess deaths” would appear – on paper – to be decreasing. This also ignores the obvious fact that deaths associated with Covid have steadily decreased since 2023, with 5128 recorded in 2024, 2246 in 2025 and only 408 in the first 7 months of 2026 (which would extrapolate out to roughly 700 total for the year if trends continue). So why would the ABS change their methodology, when the very illness (covid-19) they blame for the change is becoming less and less of a factor as years go by? Would it not make more sense to keep the existing method and separate out the covid related deaths so we can assess whether government interventions either helped us get back toward baseline, or contributed to an increase in excess mortality? Of particular interest to me is the “expected death” numbers for each year which show the change in the calculation compared to actual deaths. They are as follows: 2021: expected 169,048 – actual 171,469 2022: expected 170,933 – actual 190,939 2023: expected 173,121 – actual 183,131 2024: expected 189,304 – actual 187,268 2025: expected 191,509 – actual 187,703 From 2021-2023, the expected death number rose by just over 4000. Under the new method in 2024, it rose by over 16000 with an additional 2000 in 2025. A much higher “expected death” rate means a far lower “excess death” number – even though the total deaths are as high as the actual pandemic years, with far lower covid deaths. So, by quietly changing the BASELINE, the ABS and the government get to report a positive HEADLINE – and in an age where our attention spans typically last as long as the headline and first sentence, that’s usually enough to cover up the problems hiding in plain sight. We see this constantly. Here are a few more quick examples: - The Housing Australia Future Fund which was set up to BUILD houses and increase supply, was instead buying pre-existing houses – effectively competing with Australia citizens with their own tax dollars – to boost it’s on-paper housing numbers. - As Gerrard Rennick often spoke about during his time in the Senate, the Bureau of Meteorology reports its “homogenised data sets” instead of basic historical temperature data to support the global warming narrative. (A great read about this can be found here https://jennifermarohasy.com/2026/07/quantifying-uncertainty-rutherglen-minimum-temperatures-background-information/ ) Time and again, it’s the same old story. A (previously) reputable institution providing contrived data purely to support government policy and manufacture the consent of the people through catchy headlines. As always, the devil is in the detail – do your own research.