Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When it comes to storms in the electorate of La Trobe, especially the Dandenong Ranges, we get big storms. Back in 2021, areas in the Dandenong Ranges, including La Trobe—such as Cockatoo, Gembrook and Emerald—lost power for many days. Everyone in the hills, if not right around Australia, relies on the Bureau of Meteorology's website to make sure they get up-to-date information when storms are coming. Recently, when I went on the website, like so many Australians, it was actually very hard to follow. I landed on a map of Australia rather than locally, and, when I looked at when the storm was coming, in actual fact, it had been changed from a bad storm of red to a different colour of blue.

Then we found out that the bureau had actually upgraded their website with the full go-ahead of the Albanese government. It was supposed to be $4.1 million. When it comes to anyone building a website, $4 million is a lot of money. Yet, remarkably, under the Labor government, it blew out to $96 million. How can a website cost $96 million? It is an absolute disgrace, and the website didn't even work the way we expected it to. It was absolutely hopeless.

Shame on the Labor government for wasting $96 million of taxpayers' money on a website that doesn't even work.