Aussie Data MCP

What aussie-data-mcp does

The aussie-data-mcp MCP server gives an MCP client access to selected Australian economic and transport datasets. Its sources are the ABS, RBA and TfNSW Opal Tap Data, with Commute Pulse providing the bundled Sydney transport snapshot. This supports questions that compare or track measures such as inflation, labour conditions, the cash rate, lending costs, exchange rates and office-commute patterns.

The server is suited to analysis that needs actual published series rather than generated estimates. For example, an agent can retrieve CPI or rent data from the ABS and compare it with an RBA cash-rate series over a chosen period.

How it works

The server runs as an MCP process and exposes named tools to the connected client. ABS-specific discovery tools can first locate a dataset, describe its dimensions and codes, and then request observations using an SDMX key. Dedicated tools provide common ABS and RBA measures without requiring the client to construct those requests manually.

Tool responses are compact JSON. They include named series, measurement units, the latest and starting values, the change across the requested window and notes about relevant caveats. Responses are cached for six hours in memory and a temporary directory by default.

Setup and configuration

The aussie-data-mcp MCP server can be started with npx from an MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aussie-data": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "aussie-data-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

A local checkout can instead launch the built entry point with Node:

{
  "command": "node",
  "args": ["/path/to/aussie-data-mcp/dist/index.js"]
}

No API keys are required. Developers working from a clone can run npm install, use npm run smoke to query each live source, or use npm run inspect with MCP Inspector. The cache duration and location can be changed with AUSSIE_DATA_CACHE_TTL_HOURS and AUSSIE_DATA_CACHE_DIR.

Tools and capabilities

Available tools include:

• get_cpi for monthly ABS CPI by item and capital city, including measures such as headline CPI, trimmed mean, rents and electricity.
• get_labour_force for ABS unemployment, participation and employment data by state.
• get_cash_rate for the monthly RBA cash-rate target from table F1.1.
• get_lending_rates for RBA home-loan, business and personal lending rates from F5.
• get_exchange_rates for the Australian dollar against 18 currencies and the trade-weighted index from F11.1.
• rba_series for listing and retrieving other RBA statistical-table series.
• get_commute_pulse for Sydney Friday-gap and return-to-office patterns since 2020.
• abs_search_dataflows, abs_describe_dataflow and abs_get_data for discovering, inspecting and fetching ABS Data API datasets.

Limitations and notes

Commute Pulse is a bundled snapshot of pipeline output, not a live query of the full Opal processing pipeline. After regenerating that data, the repository documents npm run sync:commute as the refresh step.

ABS and Opal data are identified as CC BY 4.0 sources. RBA material is subject to the RBA's copyright terms. The six-hour cache means a repeated request may use a recent stored response rather than immediately querying the source again. The code is licensed under MIT.