TRANSCRIPT
The Bureau of Meteorology's website redesign now carries a hefty price tag of $96 million dollars - significantly exceeding previous cost estimates.
The agency quickly apologised last month after the new site drew criticism from both the public and politicians.
The Bureau responded by making changes to help users locate familiar functions.
On Sunday, the BoM's new chief executive, Dr Stuart Minchin, revealed that the website cost significantly more than the previously stated $4.1 million dollar revamp.
The Federal Environment Minister, Murray Watt, told the ABC that he was “not happy” with the cost blowout and that it was Dr Minchin's job to get on top of the situation.
"I think the BOM has got some explaining to do about that. We do have a new CEO of the BOM who only started two weeks ago after this all occurred. I met with him on his very first day. I've met with him since. So twice in his first fortnight. And made very clear to him that I want him to get on top of the issues around the website, not just continue making changes to make it more usable, but get on top of how we got to this situation in the first place."
Dr. Minchin says the massive sum covers the extensive rebuilding and testing of the secure, data intensive systems supporting the website.
The cost breakdown includes $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and $12.6 million for the site's launch and security testing.
Mr Watt says that he is happy that the Bureau took the redesign process seriously, but is deeply concerned with how the Bureau is positioning the costing of the website.
He says he is waiting to hear back from Mr Minchin before calling the website a "sheer waste of money."
"What the BOM had said to me was that there were other elements of the website design that did increase the costs. I don't think that I was aware of that total cost of $96 million. I certainly knew that it was more than four, and my recollection is that there were media reports at the time that said that the $4 million related to just the website design, but there was a lot of back-of-house activity that had costed more. But I understand that people are very concerned about that amount of money, and that's why I've asked the new CEO to get on top of what occurred."
Nationals Leader David Littleproud says there is a cultural problem within the Bureau that needs to be addressed.
"They have a business model of fail and ask the taxpayer for more money. We've seen that over the last couple of years. They told everybody, every farmer, that there was going to be a catastrophic El Nino event. Farmers went off, sold all their livestock, lightened. It flooded The market. Dropped, the price. Lo and behold, it continued to rain, and they couldn't afford to get back into the market. I've seen cyclones in North Queensland where they forgot to warn people that after the cyclone might be a rain depression. And we've seen floods where people haven't been prepared."
Mr Littleproud is concerned the cost of the website will create a lack of trust in the Bureau of Meteorology.
"Someone's having a lend of the Australian taxpayer. The BoM's been complicit in allowing this to happen, and there needs to be a consequence. You will not change culture in the Bureau of Meteorology unless there is a consequence and the minister has been silent on this."
Appearing on Channel Seven, Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek was asked how she could justify the government's decision to spend the GDP of a small island nation on one website.
She says that under the previous CEO, the website was vulnerable to attacks, creating an unsafe situation for Australians.
Ms Plibersek acknowledges, however, that the final cost presents a serious problem.
"The project started in 2019 under a previous CEO. The reason that the whole of the back end of the computer system has had to be rebuilt is because we had, or the previous government had information that it was very vulnerable to attack. Now, you can imagine a cyber attack that takes out all of our weather information as a storm's approaching. Like that is a very serious risk to Australian safety and the previous government began to act on it. The fact that it has gone over budget and has been that the functionality of it is not good is something that the new CEO has to get to the bottom of. He's been there for a week."
