Sunrise presenter Nat Barr has fired up over the “frustrating” cost of the new Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) website during a heated morning debate.
BOM chief executive Stuart Minchin, who is two weeks into the job, revealed in an open letter that the new site cost $96.5m.
Speaking with Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, Barr asked how the federal government could justify the price tag.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today
“Can you justify spending almost $100m for a new website that nobody asked for?” Barr asked.
Plibersek, who was also the former environment minister overseeing the BOM from 2022 up until earlier this year, said the new website, which took six years to build, didn’t deliver.
“I don’t think the new website has been a good exercise for the Bureau of Meteorology,” Plibersek told Sunrise.
“An unpopular website that doesn’t tell people the weather, well, that’s not really delivering, is it?”
Plibersek referred to public criticism over BOM’s new website, specifically people who were unhappy with the new radar system, which has since been upgraded to reflect previous visuals as a user option.
The $96.5m was seen as a blowout from the $4.1m first reported by the bureau after the new site was rolled out in October.
However, Minchin explained the $4.1m was for the redesign of the front-end of the website, while the remaining costs reflected the “significant investment required to fully rebuild and test the systems and technology that underpin the website”.
This included behind-the-scenes testing and building of new scientific systems used by meteorologists to make weather predictions.
Minchin also said of the amount spent, $12m was used for security testing for the website, “making sure it is secure and stable and can draw in the huge amounts of data gathered from our observing network and weather models”.
Backflipping from her remarks just moments earlier, Plibersek confirmed the system’s security needed an overhaul.
“The reason the whole back end of the system has had to be rebuilt is because the previous government had information that it was very vulnerable to attack. Now, you can imagine a cyber attack takes out all of our weather information as a storm is approaching, that is a very serious risk to Australians’ safety,” she said.
Barr asked Plibersek if someone wanted to spend that much on the rebuild of a website, would they “need to go to the minister for approval?”.
“The Bureau of Meteorology is obviously an organisation whose budget the government has oversight of. They also have to show up to senate estimates, and they have to turn up to parliament,” Plibersek said.
However, Plibersek said there had been revelations in recent times that have “surprised everyone”.
Joyce said it wasn’t good enough.
“We spent $96m to put a B at the end of the BOM site. It’s now a bomb. It’s hopeless,” he said.
“It infuriated so many farmers and the people who worked it because we really liked the old site.
“Now we’ve got this fiasco, and we find out it’s cost us $96m to stuff something up completely.”
The BOM website is one of the most popular in Australia, with millions visiting each day for their weather forecasts.
Murray Watt, who took over ministerial responsibility for the agency from Plibersek, said he had met with the acting chief executive and now Minchin to reset expectations.
“I met with him on his very first day to outline my concerns and my request for him to get on top of this,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to a bit of a change in the culture and the approach of the BOM, and I want to make very clear that it’s an institution and has staff that I very much support.”
Minchin also said a new, refreshed website was coming as soon as this week, after an update was postponed due to Tropical Cyclone Fina, which battered the Top End over the weekend.
The new executive said it was vital that Australians didn’t lose faith in the organisation.
“I have seen up close the dedication and expertise of our people working to deliver timely forecasts, warnings, updates and briefings that we all rely on,” he said.
“I’m personally committed to ensuring the new site supports all sectors of the community with the information needed to make decisions, both for safety and daily planning.”
– With AAP
