The ACCC declined to make its Appendix S data available for analysis by others, and provided a somewhat confused explanation for its refusal to do so. There are two points worth stressing here. First, Graeme Samuel suggested that the data belongs solely to Informed Sources, and that independent analysts could replicate the ACCC analysis if Informed Sources chose to release the data.[5] But that argument is not consistent with evidence given by other ACCC officials, and I show below that the ACCC data sets do not belong to Informed Sources. Second, the ACCC’s statements regarding peer review might leave an observer wondering if it ever had any intention of allowing its analysis to be peer reviewed.
Graeme Samuel told the Senate:
We were asked by Informed Sources the other day whether the data we had could be made available. We advised Informed Sources that, of course, it is their proprietary data, they can make it available to whoever they want, whenever they want, in whatever form they want and the parties to whom they make that data available can then do whatever they like with it. That is not under our control. That is a matter for Informed Sources. It is their data.[6]
(Senate Estimates Hansard, 5 June 2008: E32; emphasis added)
Informed Sources, however, do not own the entire dataset that the ACCC use. Informed Sources only own the price series. In other words, it is not possible for Informed Sources to make the ACCC data set available to the public. This was acknowledged by another ACCC officer: ‘The other adjustment we made was for fuel premiums. That is not available to people. That is also confidential data so people would need to go [to] the refineries to get that. We could not release that without the refineries’ agreement. That is their data’ (Ibid: E34). In other words, the data do not all belong to Informed Sources.[7]
It looks almost as if the ACCC has worked hard to avoid any peer review, especially relating to any data release. As an ACCC officer told the Senate:
I might add that a peer review would normally involve the peer getting access to the original data and running their own tests on it. That is what a peer review would normally involve. We have provided the results for people to do that. The tests that we ran are known to other econometricians. As Treasury has also verified, they are standard. As long as the owners of the data are prepared to release it, people can go in and apply the standard tests.
(Ibid: E33; emphasis added). The very next speaker in Hansard is Graeme Samuel saying: ‘If Informed Sources wants to release the data that they gave to us to anyone else — they gave it to us under subpoena — they are entirely free to do so.’ Graeme Samuel adds to this perspective:
… I am not in a position to be able to say that we would make our data and our methodology available to anyone out in the public arena. We are not prepared to make all this available for any economic modeller or any economic student to simply go through and then to engage the already heavily worked staff of the ACCC in debate on these issues.
(Ibid: E42, emphasis added). Notice that what was Informed Sources data is now the ACCCs data. The subsequent exchange between Senator Barnaby Joyce and Graeme Samuel is worth quoting in full.
Senator Joyce: Let us cut to the chase: what you are saying is that you will not allow independent reviewing of that modelling work?
Mr Samuel: I would have thought that I did not say that. I said that Treasury had undertaken its own robust analysis. But if there is an economic consulting firm that wants to do its own analysis of the impact of FuelWatch in Perth then they can approach Informed Sources. Not that it is our right to do so anyhow, but we have said to Informed Sources, ‘You are absolutely free to make whatever data you want available to whomever you want on whatever terms and conditions you want to make it, so they are entitled to do their own research and use whatever test they want to use and whatever methodology they want to use. I am sure that there are some economic consulting firms that will find someone prepared to give them a brief to do that.
The extent of Treasury’s ‘own robust analysis’ had been revealed to the Senate Estimates Committee the previous day when Senator Helen Coonan asked for a description of the review that the Treasury had actually done as part of their ‘robust analysis’. A Treasury official replied:
The ACCC sent us the data set that they created to be used as part of the econometric analysis. That was in the form of a starter software that allows you to run these programs. I, myself, actually use Eview[s] and was not able to do that so, …, I referred to one of my colleagues … who has the expertise of this software and I asked him to basically run exactly the same regressional(sic) equation that was provided in the ACCC’s analysis and to check to make sure the results were identical and that it provided statistically significant results. He confirmed all of that”
(Senate Estimates Hansard, 4 June 2008: E90–91; emphasis added).
In other words, the Treasury’s ‘robust analysis’ consisted of them re-estimating the ACCC model, using the ACCC data, and using the same software to determine the same result. Treasury, however, did not undertake a similar robust analysis of the 29 May press release. They told the Senate Estimates committee that they received that analysis on 29 May — the day it was released to the public at large.
[5] Informed Sources (www.informedsources.com) is a market research company that collects, inter alia, data on petrol prices.
[6] Informed Sources did release their data to some individuals and not others. At the Senate Inquiry into FuelWatch in Melbourne, Graeme Samuel described this as being ‘offensive' (Senate Hansard, 7 August 2008: E7).
[7] This became clear when the ACCC gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into FuelWatch in Melbourne. Stephen King told the Senate: 'Professor Davidson has the Informed Sources data, but, as I understand, in his analysis did not adjust that data for taxes and subsidies and did not adjust that data for fuel premium, fuel quality standard-premium' (emphasis added) (Senate Hansard, 7 August 2008: E10).