STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr PASIN (Barker) (13:42): Last week, the Bureau of Meteorology rolled out a redesigned website. That came at an eye-watering cost of $4.1 million. That would be hard enough to swallow in and of itself, but it takes a special kind of incompetence to spend $4.1 million of hard earned taxpayer dollars to take a perfectly functional website that farmers, residents, community members and others were quite happy with and turn it into something that is completely friendless.

I haven't found one person who regularly uses that website who's had a good thing to say about it—not staff at the Bureau of Meteorology and certainly not independent meteorologists. This is the kind of stuff that drives people spare—spending hard earned tax dollars on a vanity project which actually takes us backwards. Those opposite might laugh about it, but those of us in the regions rely on this kind of communication tool to make important decisions around our businesses and, quite frankly, to keep ourselves safe.

The one person who can't avoid responsibility for this, although he's very keen to duck and dodge it, is the minister. The minister's come out and said, 'It's bad; it needs to be fixed.' Of course it does, Minister. You're to blame, and you need to fix it.