Chris Minns says if more trips by transport minister came to light ‘it would weigh very heavily on me’ as premier announces ‘we are changing the rules’
The embattled New South Wales transport minister could be in hot water if further revelations emerge about her use of a ministerial car for private purposes, the premier has suggested.
It emerged on the weekend that Jo Haylen had asked her chauffeur to take her and some friends to a winery lunch on the Australia Day weekend. It involved a 13-hour 446km round-trip for the driver, from Sydney to Haylen’s holiday house at Caves Beach and then a Hunter Valley winery and back.
It was reported on Monday that Haylen had also used a taxpayer-funded driver to ferry herself and her children from Caves Beach – about 100km north of Sydney – to the city for weekend sporting events.
Ministerial cars and drivers can be used for private purposes under the current rules in NSW. But Haylen admitted on the weekend the Hunter Valley winery lunch failed the “pub test”.
The premier, Chris Minns, on Tuesday was asked about potential further revelations. News Corp Australia reported the transport minister allegedly used a ministerial car to take her family west of the Blue Mountains for a lunch. Haylen was contacted for comment.
Minns said “based on the information I have at the moment, I expect that the rules must be changed and, more importantly, the behaviour must change” – but he wouldn’t sack Haylen.
“[But] if there’s other information and it comes to light and it’s presented to me … I have to take that into consideration, and it would weigh very heavily on me,” the premier told 2GB radio.
The premier said the revelations so far were “very damaging” and a “big black mark for the government”.
“I can’t defend the indefensible – particularly for the Australia Day [weekend] event. You have got to treat taxpayer money as if it’s your own.”
He said Labor should have changed the rules regarding the use of ministerial drivers as soon as his government was elected in early 2023 but he had hoped “good judgment would prevail”.
“I am saying today … we are changing the rules in NSW to ensure that it’s used for official business purposes. If it’s private use, it’s only for incidental or minor parts of a minister’s job.”
Minns said ministers were often tasked with weekend work and Haylen had said she was dropping her children at sporting events en route to work in Sydney.
“[The driver] drove her from Caves Beach to Sydney to go to work and, on the way to work, the child was dropped at sport,” he said on Tuesday, adding ministers sometimes worked up to 70 hours a week.
“In other words, the trip wasn’t so the kids could go to the sport on the weekends, the trip was so that she’d get to work.”
Minns said he asked Haylen about the Blue Mountains trip and “Jo insisted that was work-related, that was her chief-of-staff’s house, and she was working on the weekend”.
The Labor leader said he expected Haylen and fellow frontbencher Rose Jackson – who was in the car from Caves Beach to the Hunter Valley winery and back – to learn from the error of judgment.
“I’m not going to sack the ministers,” the premier told reporters on Monday. “Both of them are in big portfolios … we need continuity in those jobs.”
Haylen has been battling a long-running industrial dispute with railway workers that has repeatedly threatened to shut down the state’s train network, while Jackson, as mental health minister, is dealing with a staffing crisis as public psychiatrists resign en masse.
Haylen has previously come under fire for hiring former Labor staffer Josh Murray to lead the transport department and the apparent use of a public servant in her office for political work.
Late on Monday, she was removed from the lineup of a key planning summit set to be held in Sydney on Tuesday.
The transport minister has promised to pay back the $750 cost of the trip to Brokenwood Wines in Pokolbin on 25 January and apologised.