Australians can now fill in their census online, bureau says, but users continue to report problems

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The head of the Bureau of Statistics has called an end to the 2016 census debacle, declaring Australians can now fill in their census online.

But as of early Thursday evening, the online census was still not fully operational for all users. On Thursday evening, some members of the public were still greeted with: “This site can’t be reached.”

David Kalisch, head of the ABS, apologised for the inconvenience at a press conference in Canberra on Thursday afternoon, claiming the census form was now back online, saying: “We are on track to conduct a high-quality online census.”

Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) The online census form is open? And yet right this minute I'm getting this pic.twitter.com/b2nLU24Zjy

He gave a short statement and then declined to take questions from the media.

Thursday was a day of recriminations. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and senior ministers blamed the ABS and IBM for the failure which saw the system taken offline on census night.

At a press conference in Canberra earlier on Thursday, Turnbull said the government’s primary objective was to restore the online site before determining what punitive actions would be taken in the wake of the event spiralling into a managerial debacle.

“I know people have said to me will heads roll?” Turnbull told reporters. “Which heads roll where and when will be determined once the review is complete.”

“Right now, my objective, as prime minister, is to ensure that the site is back up, it should be restored today, that is the advice I have as of a little while ago and that when it is restored the protections that ought to have been in place are in place.

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“But there has clearly been a failure.”

Labor rounded on the government for blaming the ABS for the failures. At a press conference in Melbourne, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said: “The census happens every five years. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars. There are ministers responsible for the census.

“Now we wake up Thursday morning and Malcolm Turnbull and his whole Liberal-National ministry frontbench, none of them are apparently responsible for anything. How can it be?”