It reads like the script for an episode of the ABC satire Utopia if it wasn't such a sad reality.
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The revelation that $21 million of taxpayers' money was effectively wasted through the Morrison government's adoption of the federal COVIDSafe app over two years ago should surprise no-one.
But why such a useless contrivance - described at its launch in April 2020 former PM by Scott Morrison as an "early ticket" out of lockdown - was allowed to linger on when it yielded such poor outcomes is an even greater indictment of how the previous Coalition government piled one blunder on another during the pandemic.
"Slip, slop and slap on the app" was the description offered by the Prime Minister in his attempt to promote it at the time.
But what a cash-eating debacle it turned out to be, not unlike the Lara Bingle-fronted "So where the bloody hell are you?" national tourism promotional campaign fiasco approved by Mr Morrison when our former PM was the head of Tourism Australia.
After $10 million was spent on development and hosting, a further $7 million was spent on advertising and marketing, $2.1 million went on upkeep and more than $2 million paid to staff, the app has now been decommissioned. US billionaire Jeff Bezos' Amazon Web Services trousered over $2.8 million for hosting.
Describing the COVIDSafe app as "wasteful and ineffective", the new Health Minister Mark Butler said it detected only two positive COVID-19 cases which were not found by manual contact tracers.
Fewer than 800 users consented to their data being added to the National COVIDSafe Data Store for contact tracing, which was an essential element to the whole concept.
There were no public consultations relating to privacy concerns about the app undertaken prior to its launch, which fed public distrust.
Research into main reasons why people didn't download the app revealed it was primary distrust of the government in handling personal data, the safety of having it running on your phone at all times, and its potential to be used as a tracking device.
In April - before the election - a Senate inquiry found the app of "limited public value". Now, after the election, statistics support that verdict.