A decade ago in the lead-up to the global financial crisis, the Bureau of Statistics dimmed the lights. It suspended its job vacancies survey and slashed its employment survey by a quarter.

When the crisis hit, the new treasurer, Wayne Swan, was in the dark. Without the job vacancies data, he didn't have a check on employment data that had itself become erratic and unreliable at the local level. He and the Reserve Bank had little idea how things were panning out across the country.

The Bureau eventually got extra funds and restored the surveys (after the worst of the crisis had passed), but more recently it has been cut and cut again.

Labor cut $10 million on the way out in 2013 and the Coalition cut $68 million on the way in in 2014. So hard up was it before it got a reprieve in the lead-up to this year's census that it asked the government for permission to abandon it so it could use the funds to fix its antiquated computer systems. In 10 years its workforce has shrunk by one sixth.