BOM CEO quits months after website redesign bungle
Updated ,first published
The Bureau of Meteorology director who led the agency during a $96 million website redesign last year that left users unable to navigate the site in bad weather has resigned.
The firm’s chief client officer and former vice president, Dr. Peter Stone is expected to leave the agency at the beginning of next year, as reported by . Crikey Tuesday. Stone ended his active duties on extended leave at the end of June. He has been working at the agency since July 2017.
Stone’s resignation comes almost seven months after the agency launched a disastrous website update that prevented regular users, including farmers and fishermen, from browsing the site during severe storms in Australia’s southeast.
While Stone issued a mea culpa a week after the new website went live, he stopped short of acknowledging that a mistake had been made, instead saying that “it will take time for some to adjust to the changes.”
Shortly after the website update, Dr. Stuart Minchin took over as chairman of the agency.
At the time, Environment Minister Murray Watt called on the bureau’s senior officials to report to state ministers and explain what they would do to address negative impacts on the public. Resulted in a rapid rollback of the BoM radar to the previous version.
“Our government’s constant expectation is that the BoM, like all federal agencies, spends taxpayers’ money efficiently and appropriately,” Watt said at the time.
The website saga wasn’t the first time Stone was in national news. He was previously involved in a case in which the BoM was found to have breached workplace rules when it illegally dismissed a senior manager through a “sham dismissal”.
Judge Doug Humphreys of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia highlighted Stone’s conduct during the 2024 trial: “Dr. Stone was an unsatisfactory witness in his oral evidence.”
Humphreys continued: “When pressed, he admitted: [a section] His initial statement that there was ‘no decision to be made about hiring or not hiring’ was not true.”
The Bureau of Meteorology and Watt’s office have been contacted for comment.
More to come.
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Nick Newling is the federal politics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect with: X or email.
Mike Foley is the climate and energy correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
