The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has revealed how the country has changed in the past five years with the release of the 2016 census data.

But this census was dogged by an online debacle that embarrassed the government, inconvenienced millions of Australians and even earned the hashtag #censusfail.

After the fallout, can the new census data be trusted?

Here are three key data points worth keeping in mind as we try to answer that question this week.

What was 'census fail' again? The ABS hailed the 2016 census as "digital-first", where for the first time the majority of Australians would complete their forms online, saving taxpayers $100 million in salaries for field workers.

The ABS hailed the 2016 census as "digital-first", where for the first time the majority of Australians would complete their forms online, saving taxpayers $100 million in salaries for field workers. But instead, on August 9, census night, millions of people were locked out of the website.

But instead, on August 9, census night, millions of people were locked out of the website. The ABS decided to shut down the website over fears it was being hacked — although the Australian Signals Directorate subsequently found that no data was accessed or extracted.

1. Response rates were still high

The census website was offline for more than 40 hours from census night but after it returned the ABS reminded the public they had until September 23 to complete the forms.

Around 58 per cent, or 4.9 million households, submitted their forms online and another 3.5 million filled out paper forms.

Alastair McGibbon, the Prime Minister's special adviser on cyber security, noted in his report on the census issues that a response rate of 96.5 per cent would mean the census was "fit-for-purpose".

As of October, the response rate was more than 96 per cent and on Tuesday, the ABS will reveal what rate was achieved.

Edith Gray, head of the school of demography at ANU's College of Arts and Social Sciences, said the high response rate was encouraging but only if the non-responders were spread across all demographics.

Young men and people living in CBD apartment blocks were hard to find and had typically high non-response rates, she said.

As of October, 10,531 people had refused to complete their census forms, less than the 13,000 who refused in the 2011 census.

The ABS had referred 239 people to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, who decides whether the matter will go to court.

2. Did people answer all the questions?

In every census, there are questions that people are not keen to answer, particularly about their religion and how much they earn, and this can affect the quality of the data.

Glenn Capuano, a demographer with ID The Population Experts, said that any census questions where the "not stated" category was large would raise a red flag that the quality of the data had been compromised.

Religion is the only census question that is optional.

The ABS told the Senate inquiry into the census failures that non-responses for these types of questions were lower than for the 2011 census, though not all the forms had come in when the analysis was done.

3. False and nonsensical answers — the Jedis

Some people respond to census questions with false or nonsensical answers.

In the 2011 census, more than 64,000 people reported that their religion was 'Jedi' or some variation of it.

Those answers were coded as "not defined".

Mr Capuano said he did not expect the nonsensical answers to be any higher with this census but an increase in the "not defined" categories would be a warning sign that people had given more false answers.

The census website outage could also have affected time-sensitive data.

People were asked to answer the questions relating to August 9 but with the delay from the outage, people may have forgotten, for example, what transport they took to work that day.

Professor Biddle said he was less worried about the response rate than about people deliberately providing false information, particularly names and addresses, which the ABS uses to link to other data sets.

'Trust us' won't be enough

Alastair MacGibbon noted in his report on the census that the website outage raised public concerns about the quality of information.

He quoted an ABS survey conducted after the census that found:

42 per cent agreed, to some extent, that the census had been a failure

42 per cent agreed, to some extent, that the census had been a failure 33 per cent agreed, to some extent, that the data collected from the census was unreliable

Mr Capuano, who uses census data to advise organisations, said the ABS would not be releasing the data if it was not reliable.

"I think we can be confident that this census is at least as good as any previous censuses," he said. "I don't think there's any reason not to trust the dataset."

Nicholas Biddle, demographer at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods said he was more relaxed now about the data than on census night.

He said there had always been an element of "trust us" in the way the ABS communicated with the public — but that would not be enough this time.