The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has blamed IBM for the dramatic failure of Census 2016.

The ABS has made a submission to a Senate inquiry into the handling of the botched census.

The bureau lodged a 123-page document emphasising that the security measures IBM had promised.

It said that the service provider promised mitigation for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

“During 2016, the ABS had sought and received various assurances from IBM about operational preparedness and resilience to DDoS attacks,” the ABS stated.

“At no time was the ABS offered or advised of additional DDoS protections that could be put into place.

“Additionally, no suggestion was made to the ABS that the DDoS protections that were planned were inadequate.”

The bureau claimed the DDoS protection systems were not independently tested, despite assurances from IBM.

The submission also complained about the media of the census fail, saying the ABS had barely been approached for comment on key stories.

“The ABS is aware of a number of instances where the community benefit of what the ABS was proposing to deliver from the 2016 census was not able to get a reasonable representation in the media,” it stated.

The ABS said people were not being kept away, with about half as many refusals to answer the survey as there had been in 2011.

The question about religious affiliation was the most frequently skipped.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull forecast sackings when the inquiry was first called

“Which heads roll, where and when, will be determined once the review is complete,” he said last month.

“I made it very, very clear that what we needed to do was be absolutely straight and frank with the Australian people.

“This has been a failure of the ABS.”