Bad joke, but DFAT April Fool's pranker avoids the sack

An April Fool's Day joke that had some foreign affairs department staff fearing their jobs would be lost was hardly a "sacking offence", a Senate committee has been told.

Passport office workers in Canberra were confronted by a message on television screens advising the department was being moved to Melbourne and they would have to reapply for their positions.

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The staff member responsible for the joke apologised a week later and had been "formally counselled", department secretary Peter Varghese told an estimates hearing in Canberra.

"I don't think it's a sacking offence," Mr Varghese said, but acknowledged it was in "very poor taste" and shouldn't have happened.

Attorney-General George Brandis agreed, but didn't think the joke was particularly funny.

"The man is obviously not Benny Hill," he told the hearing, reminding opposition senators that jokes were a good thing.

"I wouldn't like you to think that there is a view in the government that jokes and humour are a bad thing," he told Labor's Anne McEwen.

Mr Varghese couldn't recall a similar incident happening before, but said it wasn't the first case of "misguided humour" in the department.