Edward Tannock McPhee was appointed to the Colonial Treasury in 1885. He transferred to the Government Statistical Department in 1891, and was a Commonwealth Statistician with the Commonwealth Bureau of Statistics from 1933 to 1935. In this role, he had a number of articles and essays published in educational and scientific journals. He also contributed a chapter titled 'The Urbanisation of Australian Population' to Peopling of Australia, edited by P. D. Phillips and G. L. Woods (1928).
