Government Services Minister Stuart Robert is encouraging people to skip the Centrelink line and access the MyGov website despite it crashing yesterday.

Long queues are forming outside Centrelink offices across the country after the MyGov website was down for most of Monday.

The Minister has assured Alan Jones they have improved the system so that the website can account for the unprecedented demand after hundreds of thousands of people were left unemployed when the government introduced a shutdown of non-essential services to help contain coronavirus.

Mr Robert originally claimed the website crashed due to a cyber attack but now admits that wasn’t the case.

“I probably should have waited for the investigation before jumping the gun.

“We prepared, over the weekend, for 55,000 I didn’t think I’d have to prepare for 100,000 concurrent users.

“My bad, not realising the sheer scale of the decision on Sunday night by national leaders that literally saw hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, people unemployed overnight.”

Australians are being urged to access the website later in the evening if they can’t get through, with the Minister assuring everyone will be backpaid from Monday “so no one will go without”.

Call centre hours will be extended to 8am to 8pm to deal with the unprecedented demand.

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Image: Twitter/ Hannah Sinclair