An inappropriate retweet from South Australia's parliamentary Speaker has prompted calls for him to resign or be sacked.
Speaker Michael Atkinson has apologised after he tagged Liberal MP Michelle Lensink and Greens MP Tammy Franks in a reply to a lewd tweet from a sex industry body.
Ms Lensink says Mr Atkinson crossed a line and his behaviour towards female colleagues was unacceptable.
"If this was a candidate and that had been discovered on one of their social media accounts, I'm sure they would have been sacked straight away," Ms Lensink told reporters on Monday.
The issue arose when Mr Atkinson took offence to a tweet from the Sex Industry Network earlier this month which featured an image of Christmas decorations inspired by female genitalia.
Mr Atkinson said SIN routinely mocked Christmas and Christians but, in his retweet, he questioned if it had a similar tweet for other religions.
He said Ms Franks and Ms Lensink did not react to his retweet for a week but Ms Franks raised the issue on Sunday night when he engaged her in a "twitter argument" on an unrelated matter.
He said the retweet should also be viewed within the context of clashing opinions he and Ms Franks held in regard to sex workers and the place of Christianity in society.
Nevertheless, he offered an apology.
"Tammy Franks says she is offended, accordingly, I accept the genuineness of her offence and withdraw the tweet and apologise for it," Mr Atkinson said in a statement.
Premier Jay Weatherill also acknowledged the Speaker's apology and said he hoped Mr Atkinson would curb his use of social media.
"I understand he has said he will be engaged in Twitter less often, focusing perhaps more on his gardening prowess than engaging in running battles with other members of parliament and I think for that we are all relieved," the premier said.
"Id love it if he basically put his phone away and stopped tweeting. That would be a wonderful thing."
Ms Franks said the issue highlighted the broader "toxic culture" within parliament and accused Labor of also spreading rumours of an affair between herself and Opposition Leader Steven Marshall.
"In question time there have been sexual slurs against me time and time again, some of them quite obtuse but one of them reasonably specific," Ms Franks told ABC radio.
Mr Marshall also denied the rumour and said it was part of a broader smear campaign by the government.
"There is a different innuendo every week by this government," he told ABC radio.
