The Bureau of Meteorology has defended its widely-mocked $96 million website rebuild, pointing out that the cost sounds better if you subtract 32 million and then multiply it by 1.8.

“There are many different units of measurement, but for some reason people seem to be fixated on Australian dollars,” a BOM spokesperson said. “Well, dollars is simply not a measure we use much around here. So when I originally said the cost was 4 million, obviously I was talking on the Beaufort wind scale”.

He said the cost blow-out took everyone by surprise. “When the cost came back to us from the consultants at 96 million, obviously we all assumed that it was in Kelvin, which would have equated to around -177 million in Australian dollars, so we were quite happy to accept that. We only later found out it was in dollars”.

He also reminded Australians that there was only a 40% chance that the $96 million figure was accurate. “It could be higher, it could be lower. But almost certainly higher”

The Bureau has now added a calculator to the homepage so users can toggle between “dollars,” “degrees,” and “whatever unit the Minister wants to use during estimates to make it sound cheaper.”