An SA2 is an ABS Statistical Area Level 2. It is often one suburb, but it can be several suburbs, or a large rural area. Do not read an SA2 as a suburb. The Modified Monash Model (MMM) sorts areas by remoteness and town size into seven classes.
Download the file: mmm_sa2_2023.csv (188182 bytes), 2,954 rows and one header line. Columns: sa2_code, sa2_name, state, sa2_area_km2, mmm_2023, erp_2023, mmm_area_in_sa2_km2. Source and licence are on this page, not repeated in each row.
SHA-256 of the CSV: 85046ff31626cda8c781bf8ca4ab488c2e829d248c34fcefdbac1eb23116c88e
Source file: asgs-sa2-2021-mmm-2023.xlsx (3036188 bytes), SHA-256 f3a6ab0bafcf836f818c5afc248d39197753be5dbd1524b1cde341dfc3038007, listed at data.gov.au.
Source: Australian Government Department of Health, ASGS SA2 2021 Modified Monash Model 2023, via data.gov.au. Licence: CC BY 2.5 AU, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/. Cleaned and reformatted; not endorsed by the Department of Health.
MM 1 major cities. MM 2 regional centres. MM 3 large rural towns. MM 4 medium rural towns. MM 5 small rural towns. MM 6 remote communities. MM 7 very remote communities.
Each row is one SA2 and MMM class pair from the Department of Health workbook, as published. mmm_2023 is the class number, 1 to 7. erp_2023 is the estimated resident population in that part of the SA2. sa2_area_km2 is the whole SA2; mmm_area_in_sa2_km2 is the part in that class. Areas are rounded to 4 decimal places.
408 of the 2,454 SA2s are split across more than one class, so they have more than one row. The file has 2,954 rows. Use sa2_code with mmm_2023 together as the key, and sum or pick by erp_2023 or area if you need one class per SA2.
The SA2s here are exactly the 2,454 SA2s in the population file, so the two files join on sa2_code with no gaps.
Checks run before publishing: every SA2 code is 9 digits, every class is 1 to 7, every erp_2023 is a whole number, sa2_code with mmm_2023 is unique, and the SA2 codes match the population file.
Joined to the population page by sa2_code: Population by SA2 2024-25.