• 35 mins ago

Treasurer Scott Morrison has flatly dismissed conjecture that he kowtowed to protectionist crossbenchers in rejecting a Chinese bid to lease NSW electricity assets, labelling such claims "complete crap".

• 59 mins ago

Human rights groups have made the case for the child abuse royal commission to investigate Australia's immigration detention centre in Nauru, following new reports of endemic sexual violence, abuse and self-harm at the facility.

Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne has contradicted previous government claims the census was attacked from overseas, stating the interference came from "elements here in Australia".

The cyber attacks that sparked a deliberate shutdown of the Census website on Tuesday night appear to have been small-scale and likely carried out by ordinary "hacktivists" rather than sophisticated organisations or governments, experts and insiders say.

• ANALYSIS

Denial of service? Denial of common sense more like. And the net result is a denial of public confidence and just as inevitably, a denial of prime ministerial good will.

Millions of Australians can now complete their census after the ABS finally brought the survey back online on Thursday afternoon, nearly 48 hours after the survey went online on Tuesday evening.

• ANALYSIS

Ordinary Australians are unlikely to ever be told the details behind these events. And there's another commonality too - if not a proved one. China.

Marathon runner and former Liberal MP for Macarthur, Pat Farmer, will run City2Surf for the Cancer Council

Treasurer Scott Morrison has blocked the sale of the country's biggest electricity network, Ausgrid, to foreign companies, citing national interest grounds.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has accused some asylum seekers and refugees of making false abuse allegations and self-immolating in order to get to Australia.

More than three quarters of Australians say they would oppose a popular vote on their right to marry, a new survey has found.

The census website should be back online "some time today", the Prime Minister says.

An "angry" and "bitterly disappointed" Malcolm Turnbull has lashed out at the Australian Bureau of Statistics for census failures he said should have been anticipated and prevented.

Chinese fighter plane hangars revealed in disturbing new satellite images of the South China Sea would allow Beijing to rapidly shift military hardware onto artificial islands to control the key waterways, Australia's former national security adviser says.

A Nauru detention centre guard hurled rocks at a group of young children which allegedly struck a young Iranian boy in the face, cutting his lip and chipping teeth, official documents show.

The Turnbull government has welcomed the Australian Bureau of Statistics' "cautious" approach to the census, insisting the public's data had been protected in the wake of a barrage of cyber attacks that eventually led to the website being shut down.

A leading expert in electronic voting says proposals for an overhaul of Australian elections could be slowed by Tuesday's census debacle.

"Great big man he was. How he never got hit surprises me to this day."

Television personality Andrew Denton has criticised Catholic MPs Kevin Andrews and Tony Burke for their role in scuttling voluntary euthanasia laws in Australia, decrying "subterranean forces" for preventing reforms to help the sick and dying.

The personal website of the minister in charge of the Census was hacked on Wednesday afternoon.

The Turnbull government has no intention of watering down or delaying its changes to media ownership laws despite signs the package will struggle to pass the Senate, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield says.

Newly extended consultations on the referendum to recognise Indigenous people in the constitution - delays that render a 2017 vote unlikely - have been embraced by the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples as acknowledgement that a "historical opportunity" should be approached in the right way and not rushed.

Australians who failed to fill out the census because of the hours-long website outage will not be fined, and have until September 23 to complete the survey, the federal government says. 

Moves to coincide a referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution with the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1967 vote on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights have been abandoned, as a consultation report is delayed until mid-2017.

Former US Ambassador and Labor leader Kim Beazley has warned that "immense responsibilities" will fall on Australia's shoulders to steer Donald Trump towards a more responsible foreign policy should the erratic billionaire become US President.

Crossbench senators and other MPs pledging not to comply with rules for the census will be treated like any other citizen and risk fines of $180 per day, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

Retired Labor Senator and champion Olympian Nova Peris has landed a job with the Victorian Andrews government to promote sport in young Aboriginal people in the state.

Crossbench senators concede their plans to amend Australia's racial discrimination laws are doomed to fail in the short-term, but will push ahead regardless when the new Parliament resumes.

The minister responsible for the Census has compared it to Facebook, saying concern about its ability to track people is "much ado about nothing".