The Chaser Report - What a BOM of a website

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Charles and Dom are feeling hot and bothered but they have no idea how hot thanks to the Bureau of Meteorology’s new website that cost a reported $96.5 million (*may or may not include new computer.) They review the new BOM website and have a zen solution to fix the weather for everyone.Also visit the old BOM website at https://reg.bom.gov.au/Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, just before we begin the show, I might just check what the weather's doing, because yesterday, I was actually, my flight was delayed quite a lot by really severe supercell storms in southeast Queensland where I've been heading up. Yes. And the plane couldn't take off.

off for a long time and we didn't know what's going on and I think the problem is that actually we're looking at the Bureau of Meteorology website and I just don't think anyone was able to actually find out what the weather was at all and I'm looking at it now and there's a big sign saying warnings and alerts doesn't seem to know much at all of what's going and the text is very big should we just talk about this it's nice and big isn't it it's very big I'm just on the website now let's take some big ads just hold on just hold on I'll just got to read their policy. I'll read their privacy policy while we take some ads

because I've got to click on that first. Discover your weather in massive letters. Here's my current location. Okay. So it looks a little bit, just for people who haven't visited the Bureau of Meteorology's website since they redesigned it. It looks a little bit like, do you remember Tumblr?

Yes. Yeah. It's sort of, it's got that, sparse sort of, I don't know, what was it, 2006 feel for a website where, you know, not too much colour, not too much going on, not too much information, you don't feel overwhelmed. No, it's certainly not what I want. I mean, you don't go, oh my God. Where am I? What do I do?

You know, what? Yeah. Oh, there's so much information here. No. It's more sort of like there's no information here. Like, I've expanded the window from this is bomb.gov. I've expanded the window to take up my entire laptop screen and the only information on it

is where I am and the current temperature and a possible storm. That takes up the entire screen, Charles. The entire screen. Here we go, yeah. Because the thing that was always cool about the website was you'd have that little radar map. In fairness, I have now clicked through and I can see the weather map.

I don't know what. why that wouldn't be on the front page. Like, surely that's the coolest feature. Anyway, point is, Dom, how much would you expect to pay for the redesign of a website? Now, just bear in mind that this is not redesigning any of the sort of data

or analytics or, you know, the big engines or... There's not like a giant AI that's preaching the weather more accurately than before. You're just taking the same information and displaying it in different... way. Yeah, just giving a bit of a josh up, you know, just making it look less like a Bureau of Meteorology website.

I think that was probably great for a little. Well, I've done some web design in my time and it doesn't cost that much to make it. It just says the Bureau of Meteorology in very large letters in case we've forgotten who the, who does the map. I reckon you wouldn't get much change from 100 grand. And I know that sounds like a lot. No. But this website, it's covering the whole of Australia.

and there's quite a lot of information. I reckon 100 grand. Yeah. No, look, Dom, look, I know what you mean. Like, I mean, I frankly thought it was sort of worth about 100 bucks because I reckon if you got Jamal from Fiver.com to do a job on it from Bangladesh. It's at least 100 grand. Come on.

It's the government. It takes time. No, no. And in fairness, in fairness, there are... Someone's kids done some graphics. 2.6 billion views on this website. per year. Well, probably not at the moment.

It's got to be well designed. It actually does have to be all the sort of latest. And it needs to also be accessible, Dom. It's got to, you can't, like, we can be very derisive of redesigns, but one of the most important things is, you know, allowing people who, for example, are blind or, I don't know, can't read extremely small text. Old people, yeah, who like, it's extremely big, yeah. So, and farmers, farmers need to be able to access all the information.

Oh, the warnings of the ship grazing warnings and all that. So you reckon a couple of hundred grand. Well, the thing is, Dom, when this was first done a few months ago and they launched it, there was a controversy because it came out that this website got $4.1 million. No. $4.1 million to redesign, right? How? $4.1 million.

That's bananas. And we should also note that everybody hates it. Just to be really clear. And this is, I'm someone who in my other job actually needs this information in a sort of mission critical, storms are hitting, fires are hitting, whatever kind of way. Like, this stuff's important. But $4 million seems like a lot. It just turns out that radar map that I just went, oh yeah, no, actually that does look quite good.

That's the old one. They've had to revert that. Yeah, they had to go back to the old one. So it launched, the farmers were scathing. They couldn't locate their range. full data. The government intervened. It went back to the old version of the radar map and other tweaks have been made and that sort of paused other parts of the roll out. So that's another million is it? So that, yeah. So four million dollars was what it was supposed to be. So it's now

emerged that it didn't actually cost four million dollars. Oh, thank goodness. Because that seems like a real, that seems like real waste. It's like four million for this. No, yeah. It cost $79.8 million. I'm sorry, what? I haven't seen this story. Are you, are you honestly, this isn't one of those Charles things. It costs more than four, it costs 20 times more than $4 million for this. Yes. And so Murray Watt, who's now the minister, has called an inquiry as you would do.

Well, you would do if it wasn't done by later. If you suddenly the minister and you discover that. So it's $79.8 million. But then, but just to be clear, that's not the full amount. obviously, like you don't just get a website that works for $78 million. There's $79.8 million that went to the private consultancy to build the website, right? But then they got it back from the consultancy, presumably, and they had to spend another $12.6 million testing whether the website worked.

Charles. Right. So the whole point was, I mean, if you pay $79.8 million, you don't expect to buy a website that works. That's for the beta version. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by this. And Charles, just to be clear, I'm looking at the key thing that I usually need for my other job, which is the four-day forecast, right, where it says what the weather is going to be.

So I can read it out and say, this is the weather today, tomorrow, and the next day. They took the temperatures out of that. information, Charles. So it says, you know, isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms across the state today, tomorrow is saying it doesn't have the temperature. So if I'm wanting to tell you the weather's going to be tomorrow, no, the four-day forecast. I can't see. It does not give the temperature for $100 million.

How do you get to the four-day? I can only see seven days or the very useful past weather information. I'm sure lots of people use that. You go to the right-hand hamburger display. Click on weather and climate. You click on forecast and observations. Oh, my God, this is so shit. And you go down.

Oh, my God, this is shit. I'm going to Queensland, so I am. So we're going to forecast. Do you mean the light blue, the dark blue or the white? This is white. This is all white. And you have to push little arrows to make it unfold. So, okay, let me just tell you.

Where is it? Okay, this is the information that I could previously get in one click. I'm going to go from the start of the website and tell you how it works. All right. Pureo, Neistrology. Where's the four day? I just want to see the four day. So I'm telling you.

how I get there. Right hand top menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weather and climate. Push arrow. That's two clicks. Yeah, yeah. Forecast and observations, three clicks. Yeah. Scroll down. States and territories. Queensland. Where, where, where states and territories?

Scroll down. Okay, yeah. So I've got it to expand all. And it gives me today, tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. Oh my God, that I don't have the fucking temperature. Why the fuck would you? It says tomorrow, 25 November, isolated scattered showers. It doesn't give me the temperature range. That is the worst.

Who are these people? Well, okay, so I've been looking at this all day, right? Just sort of shaking my head, basically. You had one job. I've been trying to work out how possibly you could make a website cost 60. So the total bill is $96.5 million. and counting, presumably. So this was accompanied by a whole redoing of the sort of Bureau of Meteorology's values

and purpose statements and mission statements, the vision statements. Yeah. Because I think that's something that should focus on. No, no, no, no, no. The vision statement was hilarious. I'll try and find it. The bombs values are safety, integrity, customer focus, passion and tenacity, responsibility, and humility. I would say that it is very tenacious.

to have built a $96 million website. But I've got to tell you the vision statement. The vision statement is to enable a safe, prosperous, secure and healthy Australia. That's their vision. Charles, right now I can solve this problem in this instant. Type the following words into the browser. Are you ready? Okay, yep, yep.

R-E-G-D-D-D-B-O-M. B-O-M dot gov. Yep. Dot A-U. Put that in. Here we go. Let's see what you go. Oh, it's the old website.

Yep. Oh my God. Yep. And it's 96 million dollars cheaper. Look at this and it's got a whole lot of information. Yeah. It's worth noting that actually the top two thirds of the screen has no information on it at all. So you could certainly improve it.

It's just got a map of Australia that doesn't really show me anything useful. But below that, it's actually got all the forecast numbers. With the temperature range. The one thing you want to know, what's the temperature now, what's it going to be tomorrow, the range. And then also like becoming windy, sunny. Yeah. You know, the wind speed. And it tells you the rain since 9 a.m.

Like, this is... It's not a good website. This is what I want. Yeah. How much do you reckon it would cost to get this website back up and running? I think it would cost you negative $96 million. But Charles, can I remind you of one other little fiasco? with this organisation, which is that in, I think it was October 2020, I've looked this up.

They insisted that they no longer be called the bomb because they didn't like it. They wanted to be called the Bureau or the Bureau of Metriology. Apparently that cost them $220,000 to send out that email. Yep. And might that not have given them a heads up, the massive backlash to that, might that not have given them a slight heads up that actually people don't much like the Bureau of Metiology or bomb, as we all call it, because it's an acronym, wasting money. Yes.

Might that not have been a heads up? The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So the rumour online, Dom, and I don't know whether this is true, which is that this actual consultancy that redid the website was born under a contract that Malcolm Turnbull oversaw. So that's the rumor online. I don't know, I have not verified that. I won't have misinformation, okay, on this podcast. The ABC has reported that the Bureau of Meteorology's new chief executive

revealed that the website design was approved by the Turnbull government. The point, oh, so it was scoped back, it was scoped back in 2017 and funded and approved by a cabinet. It was always going to cost $80 million, and then there was a 15% cost by it. So cabinet signed off on $95 million for the... How? How did they do this? Okay, that did buy it, says here.

They did buy the whole computer system. It's not just the website that they got for that. And that's part of what the $95 million figure is. Yeah, it says here there was a cyber attack in 2015, and so they had to redo the entire thing. So be that as it may, did no one test it before they put it up online? Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. So does this mean that this include the $95 million includes a super computer?

Well, it says here, yes, it says, Dr. Minchin, the $896.5 million. It's also the supercomputer that does the modelling. It's the thousands of pieces of equipment in the field, all the sensors and so on, the systems that forecast the weather and put it through to the website. So that still seems like a lot. I don't think I have a problem with that. If you're buying specialist meteorology equipment, that's not a website redesign. So is this whole story a nothing, Burger?

I'm quoting ABC's Jane Norman, who looked into this yesterday. But Charles, the point is, for $100 million, the website, just spitballing this, should actually have the weather on it in a way that you can actually use. Yeah. Is that what a values-driven organisation does? Can you really boil something as important as the weather down to a mere number? Isn't that belittling? I think maybe that's, it's reductivist. Yeah, it's exactly.

That's true. What about the weather's feelings? What about the emotion? What about the way people feel about the weather? That's what you need. What about your vision for the weather? What about the purpose that sits behind the weather? You've got to ask the weather, what is it's why?

I guess the point is, in this era of extreme self-absorption, what is my weather? I don't, maybe I don't need sensors out there in supercomputers. maybe the weather is whatever I feel it is if I, this is what happens with my daughter right? It is objectively hot the car is hot and but she says I'm cold What we don't want is woke weather do we

We don't want woke weather That's the problem with the old website The weather had gone woke And that's why the bomb is so broke That are the 96 million dollars I've spent upgrading the website I think the thing we need to do Charles is just remember that

Like we need to have some stoicism here. It doesn't matter what the weather is. The weather will be what it will be. Just bring layers and a pocket umbrella and you won't even need the website. Have some resilience. Maybe we've been thinking about the weather all wrong. We've been saying that it's the problem, but the problem lies within us.

Yeah. So my outlook is sunny. Is the weather wet? Is the rain wet or a wee wet? Oh my gosh. That's so true. What if we, Charles, try from this day forward? to just be the weather wherever we are,

to be a ray of sunshine in dark dark, maybe this podcast can be a weather of sorts. Maybe, because then, Charles, if this podcast had the weather, we could charge taxpayers $100 million for it. Let's not belittle what you've just said, Dom. I think you said something really profound. I think maybe the weather website,

we should replace the weather website with a mirror. So we look at ourselves. Yes. So we examine ourselves and not. the weather. Because Charles, weather, it's a homophone, isn't it, to another word, weather. You know, whether we're happy, whether we're being true to ourselves. That's the real weather. And maybe the Bureau of Meteorology should be forecasting that. Can I just tell you, Dom, you have misreported the idea that the $96 million is not just for the website redesign. I'm looking at this

Avers here article now and it's saying that it was part of a large, larger end-to-end rebuild of the technology underpinning the website. Charles, you're going back to the numbers and the data, and that's the mistake. That's the trap. Okay? Yes. There are no numbers. Certainly, when Cabinet approved this, what even were numbers.

Yeah, they weren't looking at numbers. They were looking at themselves. And they were thinking, I wonder whether I can get a job as a private consultant after I leave politics. And in the end, isn't that what really matters? I think so. And talking of ends, can we end this podcast? But not before we promise that I think you and I should do a bit of touring around government agencies. Just helping them to free themselves from numbers and data and facts.

And just to exist, right? Yes. There is a website. Stop complaining. You might not be able to read any useful information on it. But that's maybe. Maybe that's your problem. But it's just like the new Twitter.

It's the same thing. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. Will we be back tomorrow? I don't think so. What even is tomorrow? Last time it was a bureau website, I couldn't figure it out. Certainly, I don't know the temperature. I can't certainly.

Certainly don't know what I'm going to be wearing tomorrow.