Lobby groups' figures may not be as rock-solid as they seem.

ONE of my resolutions this year is to spend more time trying to prevent lobby groups from using dodgy economic ''modelling'' to mislead people. Canberra has developed a bad case of modelling mania, but most of it is dubious. The less you know about modelling, the more it impresses you.

Any day of the week you can hear politicians demanding to see the modelling behind some figure the government has produced. But the worst offenders are business interests, which pay big money to Canberra-based economic consultants to produce supposedly independent reports aimed at persuading governments to give them something, or at persuading the public to stop the government taking something from them.

One trick they often pull is trying to make their industry sound bigger and better for the economy than it is. Just last week, Manufacturing Minister Kim Carr was defending the government's grants to the car industry by claiming it provides employment to 46,000 workers and ''more than 200,000 in associated jobs''.

But the industry that has been trying hardest to bolster its economic importance lately is mining. The Australia Mines and Metals Association says ''213,200 people are directly employed in mining, oil and gas operations in Australia, with an additional 639,600 indirect jobs created by the resource industry''.