A DFAT employee was ordered to undergo formal counselling after telling a group of junior public servants they would be sacked in a cruel April Fools joke.
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But Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade boss Peter Varghese told a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday the misconduct was not a sackable offence and the executive level 1 officer still had a job with the department.
"I can say that it was a joke in very poor taste and I think it was unfortunate," he told Labor senator Anne McEwan.
The joke was played at the Australian Passport Office in Canberra on the morning of April 1, when officials arrived at their desks to be confronted with an announcement on TV screens that their office would be disbanded and moved to Melbourne.
The message told more than 30 low-ranking staff at the office, many of whom were on temporary contracts, they would need to submit expressions of interest if they wanted to keep their jobs by moving interstate.
Bosses at the Canberra Regional Eligibility Centre left the message on the display for five hours despite the growing distress among the centre's workers.
When the material was finally removed from the screen, confusion still reigned: workers asked what would happen to their jobs and managers said it should have been obvious to everyone that the message had been a joke.
Mr Varghese said he had personally asked for the middle-management official to be formally counselled, and then he issued an apology in person to staff in the passport office a week later.
"The person responsible accepts that it was something that should not have happened and has apologised to all staff," Mr Varghese said.
"I think the staff - I hope the staff - have accepted the apology and the spirit in which it was extended because it did acknowledge the insensitivity of his actions."
Senator McEwan said she understood someone told employees they should have understood it was just an April Fools joke.
Mr Varghese said: "I don't know if anyone said that but if anyone said that it would have been not only an inappropriate thing to say but quite counter to the culture of the department that we want to engender."
Attorney-General George Brandis, who was present at the Senate estimates hearing, said he also did not think the misguided joke was a sackable offence.
"We actually think that jokes are a good thing and that good humour is a good thing. Whether or not this particular effort at humour was inappropriate is a different conversation," Senator Brandis said.
"I wouldn't like you to think there is view in the government that jokes and humour are a bad thing.
"I don't think it's extremely funny, the man is obviously not Benny Hill."
Senator McEwan then asked Mr Varghese whether he was aware of similar misconduct in the department.
"It wouldn't be the first case of misguided humour in the department but whether there was something equivalent I don't know, nothing comes to mind," Mr Varghese said.
The senator then drew Mr Varghese's attention to reports a DFAT officer had pretended to fire a machine gun from a first-floor balcony at AusAID employees below in late 2013.
"I see you are drawing once again on your knowledge of The Canberra Times," he told the senator.
Mr Varghese accepted the April Fools joke had been intended to be funny but admitted it had been anything but to junior staff at the time.
"I assume that when he initiated this joke he though it was funny and a joke - it just turned out to be a poor judgement and a very insensitive sort of thing to do," he said.
with Noel Towell
