The funniest responses to the great Census bungle of 2016

THE Census and Australian Bureau of Statistics websites were shut down overnight after a cyber attack and Australians have reacted with fury. Photo / AP

One savvy Australian has used his spare Census time to hit back at the government, in a most unusual form.

Amid the spinning "wheels of death" and error messages staring out of their computer screens as the ABS and Census websites crashed on Tuesday evening, Australians found time for some surprisingly good gags.

But it was Toby Lynch who won the night, inventing a rather clever rap to express the feelings of the nation.

Meanwhile, Census ads have screened on breakfast TV this morning, telling Aussies to "complete your Census now" - even though the site is still down.

While many Australians raged at the outage from an organisation whose sole purpose was to collect and collate information, others found irony in the supposedly state-of-the-art system driving people nuts.

Alex Ward said the "census is driving me senseless", after trying to log on through three different web browsers, devices and networks.

"The whole situation is chaos. I would just like to get home from work on census day and do my census without issues," he said.

"Sure it's a one-off event that only happens every 4 years or however long of a time interval it may be, and they can't expect to have servers perfectly tuned, but come on."

Others took to Twitter to poke fun at everyone from Malcolm Turnbull to the ABS. Here are the best reactions.

BREAKING: @TurnbullMalcolm berating @ABSCensus on tonight census fiasco pic.twitter.com/mfOrYXpHLY

— Finnigans 天有道地有道人无道 (@Thefinnigans) August 9, 2016

# down down, the census is down. pic.twitter.com/2V6TeeEA6j

— Billy Sugger (@badministrator9) August 9, 2016

I know the guy in the ad being blanket bombed by the Census account. Hope he doesn’t get typecast. #censusfail pic.twitter.com/VzAcqDMvB8

— buckleup (@buckleup) August 9, 2016

@ABSCensus pic.twitter.com/5eWJZurn4x

— Chris Coleman (@CJCau) August 9, 2016