The finger-pointing has begun as the federal government attempts to contain the fallout over last night's chaotic shutdown of the census website that left millions of Australians unable to complete the national survey.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the website was forced off-line after repeated attacks by foreign hackers, but the minister in charge of the census denied the site had been "attacked."
"It was an attack and we believe from overseas [and] it was quite clear it was malicious," the ABS chief statistician David Kalisch told ABC. "The first three caused minor disruptions and did not stop more than 2 million census forms being submitted and safely stored. After the fourth attack, which took place just after 7.30pm [Tuesday AEST], the ABS took the precaution of closing down the system to ensure the integrity of the data."
But the minister in charge of the census, Michael McCormack, disputed that account.
"This was not an attack," he said. "Nor was it a hack but rather it was an attempt to frustrate the collection of Bureau of Statistics Census data. ABS Census security was not compromised. I repeat, not compromised and no data was lost. The good news is the firewalls help up." The minister said the ABS had been "overcautious" in shutting down the site.
The privacy commissioner is now investigating the ABS over the reported cyber attacks and shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh has called for an investigation into the government's handling of the matter. Australian Signals Directorate - an intelligence agency within the Australian Department of Defence - is also investigating but said it would be difficult to find the source of the attack.
Print and paper initiative Keep Me Posted (KMP) said the chaos could have been easily avoided if the ABS had simply allowed people to use paper forms as the primary option.
"The paper forms should have been the primary channel," said KMP executive director Kellie Northwood. "People could have then opted-in to digital forms if they chose to - not the other way around. That would have created a steady flow on-line rather than a stampede. Innovation is all about being intelligent but it doesn't mean just shifting the everything across to digital."
In the lead-up to this year's census, the ABS had resisted calls that it be postponed until more paper forms were made available.
The census website was back online late on Wednesday morning but the form could still not be accessed as we went to press.