Census returns better than expected: ABS

Census organisers are happy to see more than six million Australians have filed out their online forms.

More than six million of Australia's nine million households have completed the census, despite problems with the online national survey.

The result is well above the 4.5 million responses the Australian Bureau of Statistics had expected after the online form was taken down for 40 hours due to cyber attacks.

"We actually thought that as few as 50 per cent of the Australian population would respond before we needed to start visiting households," census head Duncan Young told Fairfax Media on Monday.