Australian public servant condemns censorship after blogpost cost him his job
When federal public servant Josh Krook sat down to pen a decidedly uncontroversial blogpost on how Covid-19 benefitted big tech, he didn’t imagine it would cost him his job.
In April, Krook published a post on a fledgling blog called the Oxford Political Review, arguing social isolation was good for big tech companies, because it made people increasingly dependent on online platforms for interaction.
Krook also worked as a policy officer with the industry department, working on tech policy.
His post talked only in generalities. It made no reference to any individual company and did not mention, let alone criticise, the Australian government or government policy.
In no way did Krook identify himself as a government employee or policy officer or seek to conflate his writing with his views as a public servant.
Three months after the post, Krook was invited to a meeting with his superior.
In the meeting, Krook says he was given a choice: remove the blog post or face termination.
“[My boss] said that the problem was that in talking about the big tech companies, we risked damaging the relationship the government has with the big tech companies and that when we go and do public-private partnerships, they could Google my name, find my article and then refuse to work with us,” Krook told the Guardian.
“I was told that all future writing, all future public writing that I do would have to go through my boss or a senior colleague.
“I was also told that for the first article, it would have been fine to write it, had I been positive about the big tech companies.”
Krook did as he was asked, initially at least.
He contacted the editor of the Oxford Political Review and asked that the post be removed.
But the more he reflected, the less he could stomach what he had been asked to do.
He decided to quit government and speak out about the censorship, a decision that will almost certainly cruel any future career he has in the public service.
The case reignites the tension between freedom of speech and the public service code of conduct’s requirement that workers be apolitical.
Such tensions were previously ex
posed in the case of Michaela Banerji, a public servant who was sacked for anonymously tweeting criticism of the government’s immigration policies.
Banerji’s case went to the administrative appeals tribunal, which found her sacking impeded her implied right to free speech. That finding was later overturned in the high court.
But Krook’s story differs significantly. He aired no criticism whatsoever of government or government policy.
“I was very careful not to do that … the idea that you shouldn’t be able to criticise other companies, when you work with the government particularly, it doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
“I don’t think there is a public interest case for that. Basically, I think I can criticise the big tech companies while remaining apolitical.”
Krook says he was also told to amend a second post containing an almost laughably benign reference to the Australian government’s competition with other governments for medical supplies.
He was, at the time, seconded within the industry department to a role in helping the government secure such supplies.
His post’s brief reference to the competition between Australia and other nations for medical supplies could in no way be conceived of as a criticism, but rather a reflection of fact, and a repetition of a statement previously made by the health minister, Greg Hunt, and the former chief medical officer Brendan Murphy.
“I was told that by saying that there’s competition between Australia and other countries, I make the government look chaotic in its response,” he said.
“I didn’t say that, I didn’t say the government was chaotic in its response. But he said that could be implied by what I had written somehow.”
The industry department was approached for comment but says it does not discuss staffing matters.
Krook was on a non-ongoing contract with the department, which was expected to be renewed.
Krook is now jobless at an extremely difficult time, leaving the relative comfort of the public service to enter the job market during an economic crisis.
He remains the law editor of the Oxford Political Review, where he occasionally edits writing, and plans to republish his blog post.
Krook is eyeing a future career in academia, but with that sector facing huge upheaval, his work prospects remain uncertain.
“It’s not the best time to leave a job, it’s not the best time to look for new work,” he said. “But there reaches a certain point where you have to stand by what you believe in, I guess, and in this I just completely disagreed with what they were saying and their decision.”