Aussie PM promises "very serious consequences" after online census "failure"

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday described the nation's first online census a "failure" after it had to be shut down due to overloading and threat of cyber attack on Tuesday night.

Speaking for the first time since millions of Australians were unable to fill in the national survey, Turnbull shifted the blame to software giant IBM and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), saying the overloading of servers and the denial of service (DDOS) attacks which threatened the security of the online event were "predictable".

He told Macquarie Radio there would be "very serious consequences" in the wake of the failure.

"My calm demeanor on your radio program is disguising the fact that I too am very angry about this. I am bitterly disappointed about this," he said.

"Heads will roll is something that will follow."

"Measures that ought to have been in place (by the ABS and IBM) were not put in place. That was a failure."

The ABS' census website is still offline on Thursday, two days after Australians were supposed to have filled in their details for the national snapshot. IBM was reportedly paid around 7.5 million U.S dollars to ensure the smooth running of the census.

Load testing undertaken by the firms in charge of the census had previously indicated the website would be able to handle the traffic. However after 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday night, millions of Australians tried to log onto the service simultaneously, and at the same time hackers allegedly attempted four DDOS attacks on the software.

The ABS shut down the program in order to protect the data which had made it into the system, but only 2 million households managed to fill in the form, meaning around 20 million Australians are yet to add their details to the census. Endit