If all this talk about a marriage equality plebiscite had you thinking free speech is alive and well in this country, think again! As we speak, the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) is copping heat for releasing tough social media guidelines for public servants, which suggest government employees could be disciplined or even fired for merely liking an anti-government post on social media (… kinda like the one you’re reading now).

While the APSC are saying the newly-published guidelines just clarify existing policy, the listed examples of social media activities that could get public servants in hot water at work are truly, truly cooked. They include things as small as liking anti-government posts, failing to delete other people’s “nasty” anti-government comments on your posts, and sharing government-critical articles accompanied with an angry emoji (because “it may not be enough to select the ‘angry face’ icon” to indicate that you disagree).

What next? Disciplinary action for frowning at work? #auspol #ausunions https://t.co/FTPATLBgOV

— Leanne Shingles (@LeanneShingles) August 6, 2017

The guidelines are also not at all limited to critical comments about the department you work in. Work at Centrelink and want to criticise the Prime Minister’s immigration policy? That’s a no go.

“Criticising your Minister, or the Prime Minister, is just as risky as criticising your agency,” the guidelines say. “Equally, criticising your shadow Minister, the leader of the Opposition, or the relevant spokesperson from minor parties, is also likely to raise concerns about your impartiality and to undermine the integrity and reputation of your agency.”

And if you’re just privately messaging a friend? Think again, buddy. As the new guidelines state, “there’s nothing to stop your friend from forwarding your email directly to your employer and reporting your behaviour”. Except, y’know, friendship, but I guess we can’t expect the government to understand that.

Basically, if you work for any government body, the message is clear: the government is great!!!1!!

Hey John LLoyd is this acceptable under the new social media regime?#IthinkthisGovtisgreat pic.twitter.com/OnWukaBPC9

— CPSU (@CPSUnion) August 7, 2017

Dude, That Doesn’t Seem Ok?

People — and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) in particular — are pretty unhappy with the new guidelines, for what should be obvious reasons (spoilers: freedom of speech). While the APSC insist the guidelines are nothing new, the union disagrees.

The Government isn't just using robots to replace public servants, they're turning remaining staff into robots w/ no freedom of expression. https://t.co/QBpSSY0ra7

— Nick Rippon (@nickrippon) August 6, 2017

“This new policy is over-reach by the APSC and clearly does not strike the right balance between giving our community faith in the Commonwealth public service and allowing people who work in public services to undertake normal, everyday activity in a democracy,” said CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood.

“The notion that the mum of a gay son who happens to work in Centrelink can’t like a Facebook post on marriage equality without endangering her job is patently absurd. It is one thing to say that public servants working on a particular government policy shouldn’t be publicly criticising that policy, quite another to say they have no right to engage on social media on anything that could be a community issue.”

A representative of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) told Junkee that while the union was aware of public servants being fired or disciplined over social media commentary in past, those cases tended to involve much more substantial and inflammatory acts of criticism than those included in the new guidelines.

Exactly How Legit Is This?

While today’s policy is framed as guidelines, the very point of the APSC is to issue guidelines for public service agencies. So while this isn’t a new law or anything per se, it seems calculated to send a message to other departments to take a much tougher stance. And given the number of organisations that are technically part of the public service, the potential reach of this policy is huge.

There have, of course, always been guidelines regarding what public servants can say on social media. The difference here is that these guidelines appear to make it very, very difficult for anyone employed by the government to exercise their democratic right to express opinions on that government.

While the guidelines do allow for “nuanced” commentary and debate, the fact that they’re so trigger happy about acts as small as liking a post is probably enough to dissuade people from saying anything at all.

The APSC are saying the guidelines are nothing new, and are just a clarification of existing, poorly-understood rules. They say that “consultation indicated that the policy settings did not need to change, but that current obligations were not well understood by employees.”

How employees were able to provide consultation on the appropriateness of policies they did not understand is unclear. What is clear from the furious reaction today, though, is that these guidelines are perceived as severely limiting public sector employees’ ability to exercise freedom of speech, and whether that’s new or not, it’s certainly worth questioning.

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Sam Langford is a Junkee Staff Writer. She tweets from @_slangers.