Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Bureau of Meteorology has just spent $4.1 million creating a new website that delivers net zero benefits in weather information. Social media, particularly rural and regional pages like Farm Twitter, has been burning up with comments like 'epic fail', 'the worst website redesign for many years' and 'improvements that result in less transparency and usability'. There are others who helpfully provide a link back to the old version, particularly for radar observations. My staff have taken calls and had visits from constituents who could not comprehend how the Bureau of Meteorology could get it so wrong.

An elderly constituent from Esperance complained that the font and colour scheme were badly designed for those with poor vision. She said she's struggling to read it even with a magnifying glass, and the ability to enlarge text seems to have disappeared. She was also unhappy that the new map coverage did not give her the ability to predict inclement weather. I believe this helpful lady shares this information with her fellow seniors so they can plan to leave their homes on their mobility scooters to shop and to meet up. She now has no confidence as to how long the clear weather will last or when the bad weather will hit.

A farmer from Ravensthorpe who flies a plane also said he wanted the colour gradient from the old website to return. He's actually colourblind, an affliction that affects eight per cent of men. He felt that the previous radar map provided easy-to-comprehend wind speed and direction, temperature and rain information, with a colour gradient that made sense to the colourblind. With grain harvest well and truly underway in WA, farmers want and need accurate forecasts to plan and manage the delivery and storage of grain.

The $4.1 million cost of the new website is outrageous if it has not improved the functionality and reliability for users. After spending $866 million across seven years on the Robust project, you would think that the bureau could get the public-facing website right. People want to check the radar and see relevant information at a glance, not click through layers of content or try to interpret what the colours mean. Words and symbols on a map matter and provide meaning. The Albanese government and the Bureau of Meteorology have failed to deliver what is a critical tool for regional businesses and individuals. These people rely on accurate weather reporting that makes sense and is user friendly. More resources should be directed to daily forecasting and fewer to climate modelling and homogenisation of past data. This is the weather forecast that the good people of O'Connor rely on to make everyday decisions, not climate change modelling for COP31.