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Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: LOL: Anonymity no protection for tweeting OZschwitz public servants, High Court told Fri Dec 28, 2018 12:43 am | |
| Anonymity gives public servants no protection from sacking for making political comments, the federal government has told the High Court.
Attorney-General Christian Porter has rejected arguments from a former Immigration Department worker, who says the government wrongly gagged her free speech by dismissing her in 2013 over anonymous anti-government tweets.
The federal government's lawyers, in a reply last week to Michaela Banerji's submissions, said the potential for public servants to be traced as the source of political comments and damage their workplace's non-partisan reputation gave reason enough for punishment.
Solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue, and lawyers Craig Lenehan and Julia Watson, said it didn't matter when Australian Public Service staff were outed as the source after making the comments.
"What matters is the prospect of damage to the APS, not the temporal proximity between the conduct and the damage," they said.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/anonymity-no-protection-for-tweeting-public-servants-high-court-told-20181226-p50o8n.html |
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