ABS fears census will flop as only four in ten homes complete survey

Nearly one week after the census website crashed, only four out of ten Australian homes have completed the survey and officials now fear others will forget.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 40 percent of households have completed the survey.

The census website was restored on Thursday afternoon, more than 40 hours after it crashed and after an all-clear was given to the ABS.

Officials are worried that even though Australians have one month to do it, many who were willing to completely the Census on the night, will now simply forget.

The government has created a new TV Ad beginning tonight to remind those who have not yet completed the census.

Chief statistician David Kalisch from the ABS told 7 News that the census lockdown was "prudent".

"We're certainly disappointed with the outcome we received," Mr Kalisch said.

"The protections that should have been in place, weren't.

"Those missing protections are right at the heart of a Inquiry ordered by the Prime Minister. As well, some senators want their own investigation."

The hack attack that wasn’t

Earlier, the federal government backed away earlier claims by the ABS that the Census website was shut down by hackers, suggesting instead it was not "attacked or hacked" but shut down intentionally to safeguard users' data.

“This was not an attack, nor was it a hack but rather, it was an attempt to frustrate the collection of Australian Bureau of Statistics census data," said Michael McCormack, the minister charged with overseeing the 2016 Census.

The statement backed away from earlier comments from ABS chief statistician David Kalisch the website came under a "malicious attack" from foreign hackers.

There were 2.33 million online forms submitted before the series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults hit on Tuesday night, the strongest coming at 7.33pm.

The prime minister's cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon described a DDoS as akin to "parking a truck across a driveway".

A "distributed denial of service" attack, or DDoS, occurs when a website is swamped by hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests, causing the it to collapse under the strain.

A DDoS attack does not necessarily mean data or personal information was compromised or internal servers breached.