It's amazing what gets up people's grills, isn't it? The census website going down is apparently a national calamity demanding urgent action. But children in Australia's care being assaulted and abused in offshore detention camps? No biggie. Move along.

The vastly divergent reactions to the census fiasco and the Guardian's publication of 2000 incident reports from Nauru are a fascinating study of the politics of this country, which appears to care more about an inconvenient IT bungle than systemic abuse of children and refugees.

"I too am very angry about this. I am bitterly disappointed about this," Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday morning. If only he were talking about the kids.

The Nauru files, as they have been termed, are the biggest ever leak of information on what is happening in Nauru in our name. The reports are so valuable because the government won't tell us what is going on, and we're not allowed to go and see it for ourselves.