Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about the fiasco which is the Bureau of Meteorology website. We had a perfectly good website that worked absolutely marvellously—in fact it got 2.6 billion hits a year—and, for the price of $4.1 million, we've turned it into a complete fiasco. It is amazing that, when you put out a poll of 4,000 people, the results are that 88 per cent think it's a complete debacle. But it has some supporters out there. Three per cent of people believe it's alright. This is one of those issues that resonates everywhere. We are getting people calling us and saying, 'What on earth have they done to a website that worked perfectly well?'

It's a very strange time to change the Bureau of Meteorology website, because we've arrived at the time of the storms. Yesterday we had a massive storm that went through South-East Queensland and, of course, the website was found wanting. So I call on this government as a catalyst and as a clear understanding of competency to move from this politically correct rubbish and go back to the one that worked—the one that farmers could use, the one that shop owners could use and the one that could tell you about this marvellous thing that you want to get from a website. You want to find out about—and I know this is surprising—the weather.