RMIT ABC Fact Check was a partnership between RMIT University and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Frydenberg's claim is not clear cut. There is no doubt that Melbourne ranks among the cities to have faced the longest and most arduous series of lockdowns. But whether it ranks as number one is questionable. Several…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Joyce's claim doesn't stack up. By treating fossil fuels as a single category of export, Mr Joyce is making an arbitrary distinction. Fossil fuels represent a type of carbon-based energy product derived from the foss…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Ms Steggall's claim is close to the mark. Experts consulted by Fact Check said there were no catch-all federal laws to prevent lies in political ads, though they said existing laws might apply in narrow circumstances. F…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Morrison's claim is not the full story. Experts told Fact Check that businesses have the right to set conditions of entry to their premises, including a requirement to be vaccinated. It's also correct that an unvacci…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Ms Palaszczuk's claim is misleading. The outcome the Premier selected refers to a graph in the modelling report, which contains the results of just one of the scenarios modelled by the Doherty Institute. The graph conta…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Butler's claim is not the full story. Official figures for teenagers — those aged from 13 to 19 — are not available. National data available when Mr Butler made his claim showed 2.9 per cent of those aged from 10 to …
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Hawke’s claim is cherrypicking. Australia "resettles" more refugees than most, but this only accounts for people transferred to Australia from other asylum countries, including refugees referred by the United Nations…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Labor's claim is not the full story. Real wages — that is, wages adjusted for inflation — were 2.1 per cent lower in the June quarter of 2021 compared to the June quarter of 2020, when calculated using headline figures …
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Palmer's claim is doubtful. Experts told Fact Check that in order to mount a successful challenge to WA's border restrictions under section 117 of the constitution, Mr Palmer would need to demonstrate discrimination …
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Bandt's claim is overreach. While his claim accords with the average daily increase in the median house price in Sydney, the situation in the rest of the country is different. For the eight out of 10 Australians who …
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Ms Berejiklian's claim is wrong. While some of Sydney's rules were harsher than those tried elsewhere, many were less strict. Fact Check has assessed Ms Berejiklian's claim against the toughest rules in NSW, which at th…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Tudge's claim is exaggerated. Childcare subsidies can be measured either as the total spent by the government or the amount spent per child. In addition, government support can be considered solely as means-tested fe…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Albanese's claim is misleading. In more than seven years of Coalition government, the average out-of-pocket cost for GP visits for those patients who are charged fees increased by 38 per cent. However, more than 66 p…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Hunt's claim is over-egged. The share of patients who are bulk billed may be rising. However, Mr Hunt's numbers relate to the proportion of GP services that were bulk billed, not patients. Patient numbers would be lo…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Morrison's claim is spin. Experts contacted by Fact Check took issue with his measure of the "success" of hotel quarantine. However, there were differing opinions on which numbers should be used to measure success. S…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Albanese is close to the mark. Over the eight years to December 2020 real wages -- that is, wages adjusted for the impact of inflation — grew by 3.1 per cent. That represents an annual average growth rate of about 0.…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Bandt is correct in saying that a payment of $325 is below the poverty line. Having said that, comparing a one-off payment with the poverty line is problematic because it fails to consider the total income of the per…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Frydenberg's claim is a fair call. The April 2021 jobs figures show there were roughly 46,000 more Australians working than in March 2020, when the pandemic struck. As experts noted, there are other ways to assess th…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Morrison is comparing apples and oranges. Economists contacted by Fact Check said Mr Morrison's approach of comparing the size of the GDP contraction in each of the two years was not the normal way of assessing two e…
RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Morrison's claim is exaggerated. As Mr Morrison pointed out, the $50 fortnightly increase in April lifted the payment (excluding the coronavirus supplement) from 37.5 per cent to 41.2 per cent of the minimum wage. Ho…