If we survive this economic crisis (and it is looking increasingly like we will, although the end of JobKeeper at the end of the month will be a setback) it will in large measure be because this time we’ve had a real-time picture on what’s been going on. Last time, we were flying blind. In what must have been one of the worst-timed decisions of an incoming government ever, in 2008 the newly-installed Rudd government slashed the budget of the Australian Bureau of Statistics ahead of the global financial crisis. In its first budget it hacked A$28 million off ABS budget, and told it to work out what to cut.