Millions of dollars down the drain for an app that barely works — COVIDSafe is a dud and the government needs to fix it or flick it.

You might think that if a government spent millions of dollars on an app designed to help identify people exposed to the coronavirus they’d make sure it actually worked.

What has emerged is that our COVIDSafe tracing app was launched before it had been properly tested.

Worse still, the people charged with building the app apparently knew it wasn’t compatible with an iPhone, which is the single most popular mobile device.

It also became obvious that it doesn’t much like iPhones talking to Android devices, either.

With at least one state seemingly on the verge of a second wave, borders being closed, the state capital sealed off, and the economy collapsing, it would be nice to have a tracing up that actually works. It could even save lives.

We don’t know what the prime minister was told, but not only did Scott Morrison tell people to download the app, he initially indicated that if we didn’t, we’d face continuing restrictions in our daily lives.

Long after they knew that COVIDSafe is a dud, the government was running television ads that clearly implied we’d be safer if we downloaded it — adding to the cost of this flawed IT project.

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