Malcolm Turnbull Says People Will Probably Be Fired Over #CensusFail

Makes sense-us.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, despite being previously impressed with the ease in which he could complete his 2016 form online, has confirmed “heads will roll” over Tuesday night’s #Censusfail.

We filled in the @ABSCensus tonight online - v easy to do. And so important for planning better Govt services & investment for the future

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) August 9, 2016

Speaking to press in Canberra today, the PM pulled no punches, calling the outage of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Census websites “a failure of the ABS”.

This is despite the ABS’ claims that attacks from overseas hackers caused them to pull the sites down as a precaution.

Turnbull insisted that the result “inconvenienced millions of Australians” and would likely result in firings once an investigation had been made, ABC News reports.

(How many millions were inconvenienced? Well, consider this: 16 million Aussies of an estimated 24 million were expected to fill in their Census forms online. Only two million households managed to do so before the outage. So: Many millions.)

"Which heads roll, where and when, will be determined once the review is complete," he said.

An investigation into the source of the cyber-attacks will also be conducted (though he says it looks as if hackers from the United States are the likely culprits).

However, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has had a spray at Malcolm Turnbull for attempting to distance himself from the ABS, calling it “one of the biggest shambles in government”.

As of this writing, the Census websites are now back up and running, so feel free to complete it at your convenience. (You won’t be fined for a late submission, so long as you can get it done by September 23.)

But maybe move quickly, as the PM’s cyber security advisor Alastair MacGibbon has warned that hackers are likely to strike again.

Photo: ABS.