Census

China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit which has failed to lead to a sustained upsurge in births.

The cost of raising children in cities has deterred many Chinese couples.

The latest move was approved by President Xi Jinping at a meeting of top Communist Party officials.

The Federal Government has not ruled out seeking compensation over the failure of the website, which IBM was contracted to run on behalf of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The website was shut down after numerous denial of service (DoS) attacks, along with hardware failure, prevented millions of Australians from filling out their census forms online on Tuesday night.

Michael McCormack spent the morning defending the Government's handling of the census rollout, after the site was shut down following a series of "denial of service" cyber attacks last night.

An errant link labelled "gay sex" was spotted on Mr McCormack's official website this afternoon.