Coalition frontbencher James Paterson has blasted the Secretaries Board for seeking to ban video footage from parliamentary hearings being edited and shared on social media as "an affront to democracy, an assault on transparency and an unprecedented restriction on free speech".
Senator Paterson, whose YouTube account is a masterclass in the use of Senate estimates clips to criticise political opponents and demand answers from the bureaucracy, told The Canberra Times it would be unacceptable to restrict the sharing of such recordings.
