The Prime Minister's public service department has backed down after introducing some of the toughest rules seen yet on the online activities of government workers.
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Public servants at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet were shocked last week as their bosses imposed a code of conduct that went further than ever before in governing the personal conduct of its staff.
The department's new rules sought to to gag comments from its employees on current affairs, and instructed on how staff must manage personal Facebook profiles.
The Community and Public Sector Union reacted with fury to the policy's announcement, saying it portrayed a nanny-state attitude and intruded unreasonably into public servants' private lives.
But in a statement published last week, the department, which already encourages its workers to dob on colleagues for their online activities, conceded there were "concerns" about its new policy.
"PM&C revised its social media policy to enable greater engagement with the public and our stakeholders on the policy priorities of our department," the statement read.
"As a department, we're now more active on social media than ever before and we will continue to evolve our social media engagement."
"The Community and Public Sector Union has raised concerns in relation to our policy and we've therefore suspended its introduction.
"In the interests of retaining good relations, we will revert to our former policy until we have dealt with their concerns."
Some of the most contentious aspects of the proposed strict new rules were the instructions on how individual employees should manage their social media accounts and PM&C employees were left in no doubt about the consequences of "failing to comply" with the policy.
"Profiles must use a robust and secure password to protect the account from brute-force hacking attempts," the policy says.
"This password must be at least seven characters long and contain a mixture of punctuation and alpha-numeric characters.
"For your security, ensure that privacy settings on your accounts are set to private and high. Facebook has developed a privacy basic tool to help you keep your account secure.
"Those who fail to comply with this policy may face disciplinary action and, in serious cases, termination of their employment or engagement."
