The federal government is sheeting home the blame for the online census debacle to computer contractor IBM, as Labor points the finger at the prime minister.
The census is back online after being taken down for more than 40 hours after a series of denial-of-service attacks and a computer hardware failure.
It is understood the Australian Bureau of Statistics and IBM were offered extra protection from DOS attacks by contractor NextGen Networks before Tuesday's problem but knocked it back.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whose cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon is investigating the incident, says IBM has questions to answer.
"The fact is the service provider for the ABS - IBM - did not put in place sufficient measures to deal with an entirely predictable circumstance - denial of service attacks," Mr Turnbull told reporters near Perth on Friday.
Treasurer Scott Morrison said the investigation would be thorough and if there were issues with contractor IBM, people could expect the government to pursue it to the "nth degree".
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten criticised the government for deciding IBM is the guilty party.
"I say to Mr Morrison, 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," he told reporters in Sydney.
He also pointed the finger at Mr Turnbull.
"We had a prime minister who is, you know, self-styled as having brought the internet to Australia, who said we needed to have an ideas boom but when it comes to practising what he preaches he's been a bungler of the first order."
Cabinet colleague Christopher Pyne, who is responsible for the top cyber security agency the Australian Signals Directorate, said it was a "knee-jerk reaction" to blame the government.
IBM in a statement said its priority was to work with the ABS to restore the census site and it remained committed to delivering the project.
Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne on Friday appeared to confirm the denial-of-service attacks were launched from within Australia.
"Obviously it was disrupted on Tuesday night by elements here in Australia, but that doesn't mean that anybody's privacy has been breached," he told the Nine Network.
Mr Turnbull said his advice was the attacks appeared to originate from the United States, but that did not mean they were "American actors".
Chief Statistician David Kalisch conceded the events of Tuesday night were very embarrassing for the ABS, but insisted he was focused on delivering a high-quality census.
"As a public servant I do continue to take responsibility for our work and our decisions," he said.
He declined to comment on whether his agency had knocked back an offer of extra IT defences.
"I'm not aware of that," he said, adding the ABS had denial-of-service facilities provided by NextGen Networks.
The public sector union said staff saw the problems coming "a mile off", as the ABS shed 700 staff since the previous census five years ago.
"Critical planning time was lost as the government foolishly considered axing the census, chopped and changed ministers three times and dilly-dallied for nearly a year in appointing a new chief statistician," union boss Nadine Flood said.
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