myGov logins surpass 3 million in less than 24 hours

Millions of Australians have accessed the government’s online services portal myGov in less than 24 hours, as the fallout over the coronavirus induced shutdown continues.

Government services minister Stuart Robert revealed the figure late on Tuesday, highlighting the unprecedented number of people currently seeking welfare services.

“We have facilitated 3.2 million logins to myGov over the past 20 hours. This is just extraordinary,” he said on Twitter.

“We will continue to run this service 24/7 and progressively increase its capacity as we have over recent days and months.”

myGov was still facing problems for a second day on Tuesday, even after site capacity was almost tripled overnight, from 55,000 to 150,000 concurrent users.

All of that capacity was being used at midday on Tuesday, according to social services minister Anne Ruston.

The problems have led the government suspend "all mutual obligations requirements for jobseekers until capacity can be restored" on the site.

But the number of Australians flocking to myGov to access the recently boosted jobseeker payment or $10,000 from their superannuation is only expected to increase.

On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced tighter social distancing measures from 12am Thursday to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections, which now stands at 2044.

Shutdowns that first extended to “non-essential services” like pubs, gyms, cinemas and places of worship will now include food courts, real estate inspections and auctions and other services.

Morrison said Services Australia was once again working to boost the site capacity to allow for even more concurrent users.

“No system is built to deal with the circumstance of events that we are now facing as a nation,” he said.

The myGov meltdown, which began on Monday, was initially blamed on a “significant distributed-denial-of-service attack” that didn’t happen.

Robert has now admitted he ‘jumped the gun’ and did not wait for the outcome of Service Australia’s investigation before blaming the traffic surge on a cyber attack.