There was some reasonably good news in today’s interstate trade figures for Queensland released by the ABS.  Through the year to March 2010, there was a 17% increase in Queensland’s exports to other States, while imports remained roughly constant.  (Note I had to look back to the ABS’s March 2009 release to get the exact figures to work this out.)

The ABS summary of the data (at the link above) is pretty confusing.  The ABS reports that exports fell over 20% from December quarter 2009 to March quarter 2010, but the data don’t appear to be seasonally adjusted, rendering the quarterly change meaningless. This is because we’d expect interstate trade to have jumped up in December, due to the Christmas period.  It’s great to have the numbers, but if anyone from the ABS is reading this, could you please improve their presentation to avoid misinterpretation.