Premier’s Twitter feed blocked after “blatantly party political tweets” to staff
South Australia’s state Premier Jay Weatherill's twitter feed has been blocked from his own department's website following complaints that public servants are being "bombarded with party political propaganda" from it.
The Premier tweets as @JayWeatherill
Jim Hallion, the chief Executive of the Department of Premier and Cabinet has also blocked twitter messages from all other ministers and the State Government's media unit.
Rob Lucas, opposition front bencher had complained to Hallion, claiming “outrageous misuse of your Department's intranet site for party political purposes.''
"Many public servants in your Department have expressed dismay to me at the blatant politicisation of the taxpayer-funded Department intranet,'' he said.
“"Mr Weatherill's Twitter feed also includes blatantly party political tweets which attack the Liberal Party and Liberal MPs.
"We've been getting complaints from whistleblowers for weeks about being bombarded with party political propaganda - it was an abuse of the independent public service. I would expect this edict to be extended to all Government departments to ensure public servants can work without having partisan political messages appearing on their computers."