Minns back transport minister as inquiry hears of undeclared donations
NSW premier Chris Minns backs Jo Haylen’s refusal to front a parliamentary inquiry, asking is “getting an ethics lecture from Mark Latham” the best use of his transport minister’s time.
NSW
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Under-fire transport boss Josh Murray was right to keep his ties to senior government figures a secret during the recruitment process, because that could have influenced the evaluation panel who interviewed him, Premier Chris Minns says.
The Premier has also maintained that Mr Murray’s appointment was not an example of the government giving a job to a mate.
A parliamentary inquiry on Thursday heard that an independent evaluation panel did not know about Mr Murray’s longstanding relationship with Premier Chris Minns and Transport Minister Jo Haylen.
Defending Ms Haylen’s decision not to front the inquiry, Mr Minns told media: “Honestly, getting an ethics lecture from Mark Latham this morning … is [that] the best use of her time and the time of the NSW government?”
Mr Murray told the inquiry that he has known Mr Minns for 20 years.
The Premier said Mr Murray made the right call to keep that relationship secret when he was being interviewed.
“I bet you a million dollars that if Josh Murray had gone to that selection panel said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m friendly with the Premier and the transport minister’, the Opposition would have been onto him in a heartbeat declaring that he was trying to influence the process,” Mr Minns said.
Mr Minns said the last time he recalled seeing Mr Murray was on election night, when the now-Transport boss attended Labor’s victory party.
However, he then clarified that the pair both attended a funeral of a Labor figure in April.
Mr Minns would not concede his government has given a top job to Mr Murray because he was a “mate”.
“The minister appointed Josh Murray to this position because she believes he’s the right person to do that job,” Mr Minns said.
$1450 IN UNDECLARED DONATIONS
Mr Murray and his family paid almost $1500 in donations to Labor fundraisers which went undeclared during the recruitment process, the inquiry heard.
Mr Murray, under questioning from Mark Latham, said he attended a former premier’s dinner at Parliament earlier this year, with his wife purchasing a ticket for her and himself costing $500 in each.
The donations, which came before Mr Murray was transport secretary, weren’t declared when he applied for the role.
“Even public servants are allowed to take part in democratic processes and engagement with their community, I was not a public servant. As a private citizen, I was a friend of many people in that room,” he said.
Mr Murray and his wife also paid $750 in total at a fundraising dinner for Jo Haylen at Wests Ashfield last year.
His household also chipped in $200 to a Labor trivia night, with Mr Latham saying Mr Murray had now gotten close to $1500 in donations which hadn’t been declared during the recruitment process. The total is $1450.
Greens MP Abigail Boyd asked whether people with longstanding relationships with political parties should be excluded from public service positions.
“Absolutely not. In my experience working in this place, and also out in the global infrastructure sector, I would contest that political staff members are often some of the hardest working and committed people I’ve ever worked with,” he said.
Mr Murray also took a shot at recruiter NGS Global, saying the first list of potential candidates was submitted before he’d ever been contacted.
He said he also had concerns with the recruitment process after the recruiters got his name wrong, and initially short-listed him for a different position to the one he applied for.
He said the recruitment company’s managing partner Dr Marianne Broadbent had called him “Josh Gordon” and stated he was unlikely to be successful for the role because he didn’t have investigative transport – leading him to believe the recruiter had thought he had applied for roles with the ICAC watchdog.
Mr Murray cited a June 29 email from the recruiter to the acting secretary of the Premier’s department, Peter Duncan, “just realised we had not sent these to you – the results of both candidates are strong with no showstoppers with Josh’s scores are very high, and with little variation”.
“When you’re talking to a recruiter, you don’t want them talking about either getting your name wrong, or talking to you about a different process,” he said.
Mr Murray wouldn’t declare who his referees were, after being grilled on whether they included any former staff or members from his former employment with Labor.
‘NO INTERFERENCE’: GARTRELL
Jo Haylen’s chief of staff Scott Gartrell insisted “there was no interference” from himself or his Minister in the recruitment process, despite recommending multiple candidates be interviewed for the role and personally texting the ad to Mr Murray.
Mr Gartrell recalled seeing Mr Murray at a fundraiser for Ms Haylen last year, but said his donation on the night didn’t warrant declaring when he was later hired after the event.
Mr Murray and his wife’s combined $750 donation to Ms Haylen’s campaign on that night last year was only revealed in documents tabled to parliament in August this year.
“When my deputy raised it with me, having spoken to Josh after he’d been selected, we discussed it (and) decided that it wasn’t a material issue. But it was something we wanted the Minister to be aware of,” he said, explaining why the figure wasn’t declared, but was included on briefing notes for Ms Haylen.
“It was an insignificant amount … in my mind, that’s the view that I took at the time.”
He defended texting members of the interview panel directing them to interview Mr Murray and another candidate.
“He was a great candidate. We wanted other great candidates as well,” Mr Gartrell said, insisting “there was no interference”, despite his involvement.
Mr Gartrell was “a bit underwhelmed” by the initial candidates and didn’t think the recruiters had “responded properly to the brief” of finding a transport secretary.
MP Damien Tudehope said another involvement in the recruitment process by Mr Gartrell included a June 7 email request to see a final shortlist of candidates.
Mr Gartrell said he phoned Mr Murray after sending him the job advertisement and left a message asking if he’d applied for the job, to which Mr Murray texted back saying “thanks for checking in”.
Shadow Transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said the inquiry had shown “what you need to get a job as a senior public servant in your state is to be a Labor mate and go to trivia nights and donate to dinners,” she said.
‘UNAWARE’ MURRAY THE ONLY CANDIDATE
Chris Lamb, the Deputy Commissioner of the Public Service Commission, said he wasn’t aware Mr Murray had only received an interview for the transport secretary role after intervention from Jo Haylen’s chief of staff.
Mr Lamb agreed with MP Damien Tudehope that “once it became a merit-based process, there should be no interference by the minister’s office”.
Mr Lamb said a number of panel members discussed potential conflicts of interest over knowing applicants to the role, but no formal conflicts were logged.
“There was no discussion about anybody pushing Mr Murray’s candidacy in that meeting,” he said. He was also unaware that Mr Murray and his family had donated almost $1500 to Labor at various functions in the past 12 months.
KNEW LABOR PAST WOULD ‘CAPTURE HEADLINES’
Earlier, Mr Murray said he had a “semi-professional” relationship with the Minister dating back seven years, while he had known Mr Gartrell since at least 2008.
Mr Murray said he knew his past roles as a Labor staffer to Morris Iemma would be brought up when he was picked as transport secretary.
“I always knew that my time as a government staff member or time that I’m proud of, would still capture the headlines,” he said.
“So the idea that I’ve secretly traded a highly rewarding international infrastructure leadership role, leading teams globally and successfully for 15 years, taking a pay cut in some kind of conspiracy – that just doesn’t stack up and I reject all of that.”
Mr Murray said he first met Ms Haylen seven years ago at a mutual friend’s wedding.
“We had a semi-professional relationship where we would see each other around business related activities,” he said.
He also said he’d met with her after she was sworn in as transport minister after Labor won the March election.
He also provided more details on the 2022 Wests Ashfield fundraiser where he donated $500 to her campaign, by purchasing two $250 tickets.
He had also attended a trivia night and a NSW Parliament dinner for other members since then as a guest.
He resigned his Labor Party membership in June this year.
Mr Murray said he has known Premier Chris Minns for 20 years, with the pair both working in NSW Parliament before their current roles.
Ms Haylen’s office invited Mr Murray to a meeting in parliament in April 4 — before he was transport secretary — with Mr Murray saying he gave broad feedback on NSW’s transport system.
“We didn’t discuss the secretary position, we discussed the organisation of transport in New South Wales, we discussed my past experience as being a transport Chief of Staff. And we talked about the structures that existed at that time,” he said.
Mr Murray first met Mr Gartrell in 2007 or 2008, when Mr Murray worked for Mr Iemma and Mr Gartrell was working for Government Relations Australia.
Mr Murray said he didn’t disclose his previous membership of Labor during the transport secretary interview process, saying his former role as Morris Iemma’s chief of staff was “writ clear” on his CV.
He said Mr Gartrell had shared the link to the job with him, explaining it as: “I’m sure he thought I … may either be interested or I may share (it with others who would be)”.
Mr Murray confirmed he had checked in with Mr Gartrell following concerns that NGS Global, who was running the $125,000 taxpayer-funded recruitment process, “wasn’t being handled professionally”.
NO APOLOGY
Ms Haylen has refused to apologise to voters for wasting $125,000 on a recruitment process for the state’s transport boss.
Ms Haylen has also refused to say who else her office invited to apply for the role ultimately given to former Labor staffer Josh Murray.
She defend her decision not to appear before a parliamentary inquiry, declaring she is “not answerable to the Upper House.
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I stand by the fact that we put advertisements for this very important job in the newspaper, on LinkedIn, (and) on government websites,” she said.
Ms Haylen did not say what she would have done differently if she had her time again but said the recruiter contracted to head hunt for the role was “lacklustre”.
Ms Haylen agreed that she knew Mr Murray before he was appointed but denied he was anything more than a “professional acquaintance”.
MINISTER’S LUCKY CHOSEN FEW
The Daily Telegraph revealed ahead of the hearing that only three people were invited by Ms Haylen’s office to apply to run her department, despite her claims that “many” people had received invitations
Other than Mr Murray, Ms Haylen’s chief of staff Scott Gartrell only sent the job advertisement to two other people via text message.
Ms Haylen told 2GB earlier this week her office “texted a publicly available advertisement to many qualified people for the job”.
Previously, she said Mr Gartrell “did not tell the independent panel who to interview”.
That is despite Mr Gartrell saying “Josh Murray should be interviewed” for the $588,250 job.
A spokesman for Ms Haylen would not say who else Mr Gartrell texted with a link to the job advertisement, citing privacy concerns.
Former Labor Minister Verity Firth, who was on the panel considering candidates for the Transport job, will appear at the hearing after initially declining.
Dianne Leeson, a key public servant involved in the assessment process, and Public Service Commissioner Kathrina Lo are both overseas on leave.
Committee chair and Greens MP Abigail Boyd said further hearings will be held down the track.
Ms Boyd also said the upper house will look to force Ms Haylen to face questions via a parliamentary order.
Labor has previously savaged Coalition MPs for not attending inquiries.
Last year, senior Labor MP Penny Sharpe slammed then-Premier Dominic Perrottet for not fronting up to a parliamentary inquiry investigating allegations former deputy premier John Barilaro was promised a $500,000-a-year New York trade role.
“Clearly we would want to see him and we’d expect that he would want to provide information to the public,” Ms Sharpe said in August last year.
“He’s got to come clean.”
And then-shadow treasurer Daniel Mookhey also slammed former Penrith MP Stuart Ayres for going on an overseas trade trip during the Barilaro inquiry.
“I’m astounded that he thought it was a good idea to join the Premier (overseas),” Mr Mookhey said last year.
“He (Dominic Perrottet) doesn’t need Stuart Ayres there next to him cutting the ribbon.”
Opposition leader Mark Speakman yesterday said Labor were being hypocrites.
“Jo Haylen is running scared. Jo Haylen is in hiding. She won’t answer questions in Parliament. She won’t appear before the general media and she won’t front up to a Legislative Council inquiry,” Mr Speakman said.
Deputy Premier Prue Car yesterday claimed a $500 donation from Mr Murray to Ms Haylen’s election campaign last year had been “blown a little bit out of proportion”.
“We‘re not talking about thousands of dollars’ worth of donations,” she said.
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