Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der is de­fend­ing his use of so­cial me­dia as a tool for po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment, which he char­ac­terised as a form of “ac­tivism” that helped se­cure the Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent man­date.

Alexan­der faced scruti­ny af­ter a week­end live broad­cast in which he re­port­ed­ly made dis­parag­ing ac­cu­sa­tions against for­mer politi­cians and fig­ures as­so­ci­at­ed with pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions.

He has since dis­missed the back­lash, con­tend­ing that the con­tro­ver­sial seg­ments were the re­sult of short clips be­ing “edit­ed and shared” out of con­text.