The new Public Service social media guidelines are a joke

"Laughable, unworkable and backward" was a description for the new guidelines for public servants using social media, issued recently by the Australian Public Service Commission.

Media commentator and famous 'Grog's Gamut' blogger Greg Jericho described the guidelines as "doesn't fit with how reality works."

Jericho is spot on. Each department of the APS operates as a separate entity. To try to mandate that public servants can't sound off about the government in general is a joke, unenforceable, in fact barely even able to be monitored.

The common sense 'rules' are simple. You just bite your tongue about anything to do with the department and minister(s) you work for. And that's all that will happen. You simply can't gag more than 100,000 people in a political town like Canberra.

And under the new APSC guidelines, am I now in breach just posting this...?