Here we go again.....blaming third party agents for their own stuff-ups AND having the audacity
to demand compensation for decisions they made themselves!
Census: Scott Morrison says Government may seek compensation over website failure
By political reporters Francis Keany and Stephanie Anderson
Updated
Treasurer Scott Morrison has not ruled out seeking compensation over the census website failure, as his senior Cabinet colleague Christopher Pyne indicates the issue may have been domestic.
The site went back online yesterday, almost two days after denial of service attacks were blamed for forcing Australian Bureau of Statistics staff to pull it offline, preventing millions of Australians from submitting their forms.
IBM, the company contracted to the ABS to provide the software platform enabling the online census form, has since issued a public apology.
When asked if the Government would be seeking compensation, Mr Morrison told the ABC it would be thoroughly investigating Tuesday night's failures.
"If there are issues that relate to the service provider in this case, then you could expect us to peruse that to the nth degree," he said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday took aim at the company, saying that the service provider should have been prepared.
"Part of the job of the service provider, in this case IBM, was to ensure that there were measures to repel denial of service attacks," he said.
"The fact is the measures that were put in place were inadequate."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has criticised the Government over its comments regarding IBM.
Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney that the Coalition had "rushed to being judge, jury and carrying out the sentence".
"It seems the Government — even though we haven't heard from the [Australian] Signals Directorate what happened, even though we saw theories about Chinese hackers — they've already decided that IBM is the guilty party here," he said.
"Why on Earth are you going to spend money on lawyers getting compensation when, if you'd done your day job properly to begin with, none of this mess would have occurred?"
Cyber attack may have been from within Australia: Pyne
Mr Pyne has indicated that the site may have been disturbed by domestic forces.
"Obviously it was disrupted on Tuesday night by elements here in Australia, but that doesn't mean anybody's privacy has been breached," Mr Pyne told Channel Nine.
But Mr Turnbull contradicted Mr Pyne, saying the attacks came from overseas.
Addressing media in Perth, Mr Turnbull said he had been informed the attacks "appeared to originate from the United States".
"That does not mean they were American actors," he said.
"It is not very difficult to route traffic through another country using private networks and virtual techniques … it was not hacked, Australians' information was never compromised, it was never accessed by third parties."
ABS staff 'gutted' over census as unions blame budget cuts
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which represents public servants, said Government actions such as budget cuts had contributed to the issues surrounding the shut down of the census website.
The CPSU's Nadine Flood said staff at the ABS were "gutted" over the census and that the agency had been battling efficiency dividends and low morale.
"The ABS has 700 fewer staff than when the last census was done five years ago," she said.
"[The Government] didn't appoint a chief statistician for a full 12 months in the lead-up to the census. The Government's got to cop some of the responsibility.