By Senator Alex Antic
In July of this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics introduced its new excess mortality modelling methodology when it released its excess mortality estimates for January 2024 to December 2025.
The previous methodology, used throughout the pandemic period from 2020-2023, was replaced because Australia is apparently now “in a context where COVID-19 is a persistent contributor to mortality.”
The excess mortality figures for January 2024 to December 2025 appear to be low when compared with the figures from 2020-2023. In fact, they are now in the negative after being in the positive throughout the pandemic period.
This raises questions. Not all excess deaths were COVID-19 deaths, so what caused the additional excess deaths during this period? What is the scientific justification for the change in modelling? How different would the figures be if the previous modelling had continued to be used, and would they tell a different story?
During the recent Senate Estimates hearings, I asked the ABS what the rationale for changing the modelling method was, and what the figures might look like if it had not been changed.
You can watch that line of questioning here:
Excess mortality estimates from 2020 to 2023, using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Official Serfling model, reveal that 8,744 more Australians died in 2023 than would be expected from pre-pandemic mortality level
No equivalent estimates using that methodology have been published for 2024 or 2025, and on 3 July 2026 the ABS introduced a further change, adopting a Generalised Additive Model (GAM) incorporating mortality data from COVID-affected years into its expected deaths baseline.
I asked the ABS why.
We know that many of the excess deaths of the pandemic period were not “from” or even “with” COVID-19, according to the ABS’s own data, so can it be just the virus that has been contributing to the new baseline?
The previous modelling method used mortality data from 2013-2019 to establish an expected baseline and showed a high number of excess deaths above that baseline across the years 2021-2023. For example, in 2022 there were 20,022 excess deaths, 13,317 of which were “from or with” COVID-19, hence many were not directly attributable to the virus.
However, in the new modelling the pandemic years are now incorporated into the expected baseline (except for 2022, which is excluded for its especially high mortality). The baseline against which excess deaths are measured is now higher than in previous years measured under the original model, meaning the excess deaths figure is lower.
As part of the Senate estimates process I have asked the ABS to provide the excess death rates from 2024 and 2025 utilising the pandemic era model. I await a response.
Australians deserve answers to these and other questions and I am going to keep asking them.
I wouldn’t be holding my breath for any answers that make any sense from the ABS. They are in the same business that every other Ozzy bureaucracy and govt is in since Covid – That is covering their @rse.
If you get any answers at all it will with be…
“I’ll take that on notice” which the entire Australian public translates as “ I’m not gonna answer that question”
Or some nonsensical word salad that is so long winded and convoluted that everyone will forget what you even asked.
We already know that the level of corruption and the bureaucracy is rife.
The more they try to cover up their corruption the more it proves their corruption. The Australian public doesn’t need a lying govt agency to tell them about the excess death since Covid and the government mandated DEATH JAB. Everybody has family or friends that took the VAX that “died suddenly” before their time.
This is why nobody trusts them anymore.
It’s not because of social media or “ the algorithm”. It’s because people personally experience it in their own lives and they know who is to blame.
They know they were lied to and they know who lied to them and who killed them.
But when it comes to the ABS and them “changing the models” to cover up their corruption truth about Covid and Covid Vax excess deaths there it a very famous quote by Mark Twain that says it perfectly….
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”
It was true then and it’s even truer now.