ABC lawyer quits after Morrison government ‘fascist’ tweet

An ABC lawyer who wrote a tweet criticising the Morrison government has quit the broadcaster following an internal investigation.

ABC managing director David Anderson told senate estimates an ABC lawyer resigned following an investigation into an anti-govenrment tweet. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

An ABC in-house lawyer who criticised Scott Morrison’s government on Twitter has resigned.

ABC boss David Anderson revealed during his grilling at Senate estimates on Wednesday that lawyer Sebastien Maury had quit the public broadcaster.

Mr Anderson was questioned by Liberal Senator for New South Wales, Andrew Bragg, about the progress of his investigation into the disparaging tweets branding the Morrison government “fascist”.

According to The Australian, he also called the Prime Minister an “awful human being” .

“We did an investigation on that, we followed the process. We got to the end of the process and Mr Maury resigned, so he no longer works for the ABC,” Mr Anderson said.

“I will add Mr Maury was certainly remorseful about his activity on social media about that (and) had an otherwise a clean unblemished record with the ABC.”

During his last appearance at Senate estimates, Mr Anderson said he was disappointed to learn of those tweets and said he would look into it.

On hearing from Mr Anderson on Wednesday that Mr Maury had quit, Senator Bragg said: “Well I think that’s important.”

Mr Anderson said since a new code of conduct was issued by the public broadcaster in February, it had performed investigations into people’s behaviour and their personal use of social media.

Earlier in the hearing, Mr Anderson also revealed the ABC had signed letters of intent with Google and Facebook under deals he said would provide a boost for local journalism.

He was unable at this stage to reveal how much the deal was worth.

“When these commercial deals are concluded, they will enable the ABC to make new and significant investments in regional services,” he said.

“These investments will provide a huge boost to the regions at a time when many areas of regional and rural Australia have experienced a withdrawal of media services.”