A Turnbull government staff member has been sacked for accidentally sending around a meme mocking Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott.
This just sent out from @NolaMarinoMP’s office.....and then recalled! @Barnaby_Joyce @TonyAbbottMHR 🤨 @SkyNewsAust
Ryan Hadjimihalakis, an electoral officer for chief government whip Nola Marina, accidentally emailed out the meme to an official mailing list, including a number of journalists, only to realise his mistake and recall it minutes later.
He was sacked hours later.
The meme - originally posted in the Facebook group "ALP Spicy Meme Stash" on Saturday afternoon - features an old picture of the former prime minister and former deputy prime minister on the backbench with the caption "when you get in trouble in class and get sat next to the weird kid no-one likes".
Hadjimihalakis sent the meme during the Nationals party room meeting on Monday when, when Joyce resigned and Michael McCormack was voted in as the new party leader and deputy prime minister of Australia.
Liberal staffers told BuzzFeed News they're outraged by the sacking. They claim it was all an innocent mistake.
"The EO makes one stuff up and is sacked," one Liberal staffer told BuzzFeed News.
"The whips staff have lost how many votes and embarrassed the government and he isn’t sacked?”
This is the latest in a series of blunders from the office of Marino, whose primary responsibility is to maintain party discipline and enforce the government's position.
Under Marino's watch the government has lost a number of procedural votes in the House of Representatives, something that hasn't happened to a majority government in more than 50 years. The whip's office was also left red-faced after minister Kelly O'Dwyer accidentally endorsed a Labor bill that criticised the Turnbull government.
Marino, an MP from Western Australia, was appointed to the $260,000 per year job when Malcolm Turnbull took over the Liberal leadership in September 2015.
BuzzFeed News revealed last year that Marino's office had left Cory Bernardi on the internal Liberal party email list after he quit to establish his own party. The Conservative Australia senator was receiving confidential emails about internal party planning, speaking lists and talking points for more than six months after defecting.
Hadjimihalakis is not the first Liberal staffer to be severely punished for a meme.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's digital media adviser Tommy Tudehope resigned in 2009 - when Turnbull was opposition leader - after posting a Downfall parody to YouTube which compared NSW Liberal MP and powerbroker Alex Hawke to Hitler.
Tudehope was re-hired to Turnbull's office seven years later when he became prime minister.
Labor senator Jenny McAllister raised the incident during Senate estimates on Monday afternoon, also concerned the Liberal staffer may have been unfairly punished.
Finance minister Mathias Cormann said he has seen the meme but was not aware of the circumstances that led to the decision to sack Hadjimihalakis.
McAllister pointed to the incident when home affairs minister Peter Dutton accidentally texted a journalist calling her a "mad witch", and wasn't sacked.
Cormann said he would endeavour to provide more information to the committee about the incident at a later date.
Nationals MP George Christensen also got in trouble over a meme posted on Facebook recently, which in an homage to Dirty Harry featuring him pointing a gun and asking "do you feel lucky, greenie punks?"
After receiving backlash, Christensen amended then later deleted the meme.