ABS releases annual report on social trends.

Non-interesting results from the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics annual report on social trends, which was released today.

Australians are better educated, hard-drinking and childless car addicts with massive mortgages and a growing penchant for alternative medicines, according to a new statistical snapshot.

Which just goes to show that there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

I do not know one person who is well educated, drinks hard, has no kids, is addicted to his car, has a massive mortgage and trots off to Nimbin every few months to catch up on the latest alternative medicine trends.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) annual report on social trends says the number of people aged 25 to 64 with a degree, diploma or certificate jumped from 46 to 59 per cent between 1996 and 2006.

What's that show? That people are achieving at a higher rate or that standards have been lowered? I'll give you some time to think about that...

Tick...tock...tick...tock...

But despite better qualifications, almost half of all Australians aged 15 to 74 had literacy skills below the minimum level required to "meet the complex demands of a knowledge society", the report said.

Taaaadaaaa! An increased number of people with formal qualifications are in the market but almost half lack relevant literacy skills. The education unions and self-serving establishment must be jumping for joy at having achieved such terrific results. Not.

The report also looked into fertility, showing the number of women of peak child-bearing age without kids is on the rise.

In 2006, 37 per cent of women aged 30 to 34 had no children, increasing from 29 per cent in 1996.

Sounds like the Eurofication of Australia to me. Single women are large Labor voters. Female Labor voters, like their left wing counterparts the world over, breed at a lower rate than their conservative sisters.

The report found Australians are still lukewarm on public transport, with just one in five adults using public transport to get to work or study in 2006.

The only decent public transport in Australia is in Melbourne, especially if you live close to the city.

Three-quarters used cars as their main form of transport, while five per cent either walked or cycled.

Australia is a big place. People live a long way from work. You can't expect them to sit on a train for two hours to get to work.

The report also looked into home ownership, finding the amount first home buyers borrowed to buy a house doubled in the 10 years to 2005-06.

The average loan per household rose to $213,000, as the average value of first-buyer homes rose to $310,000.

The proportion of first-home buyers purchasing new houses fell to 14 per cent, from 23 per cent.

The report gave further credence to claims the country is beset with a binge-drinking culture, finding about one in five men and one in six women aged 18 to 24 regularly drank risky amounts of alcohol in 2007.

What is a 'risky amount' of alcohol? Is it enough to be a health risk? Let's find out...

While very few young people drank enough to be admitted to hospital, hospitalisation rates were up by 62 per cent for young men and doubled for young women in the seven years to 2005-06.

...I think that someone is trying to support the government's insane attack on the non-problem of binge-drinking.

The number of people visiting a "complementary health professional" such as a chiropractor, naturopath or acupuncturist increased by 51 per cent in the decade to 2005, the report also found.

A 51% increase could mean that the number moved from 2 in 10,000 to 3 in 10,000. What's the real number?

And for the first time more households are using broadband than dial-up to connect to the internet.

In the eight years to 2006-07, household internet connections jumped from 16 per cent to 64 per cent, with broadband accounting for between 50-75 per cent of connections.

The report also found trade union membership rates have almost halved overall in the two decades since 1986.

So it should. Trade unions have been a blight on the Australian economy for 50 years.

Nothing really too interesting in the figures but I'm sure that governments around Australia will find a way to use them to increase public 'investment' aka taxes.

(Nothing Follows)