Why perks arrogance should be the end of the line for Transport minister Jo Haylen

The transport minister’s failure to come clean about using her taxpayer-funded driver for the weekend kids sports run makes a mockery of ministerial entitlements and a fool out of the Premier.

Transport Minister Jo Haylen has taken a trip too far.

By not coming clean about her how she repeatedly used her taxpayer-funded driver to travel between Sydney and Caves Beach, Haylen has now made a mockery of ministerial entitlements and a fool out of the Premier.

On Sunday, Haylen was asked directly if she had ever, before her January 25 brain fade, used a ministerial driver to take her to a private event when she had been out of Sydney.

“Not that I can recall,” she said.

She failed to mention that she had repeatedly used her driver to take her from Sydney to Caves Beach so she could do the Saturday sports run.

She also failed to recall a weekend lunch with her family in Little Hartley west of the Blue Mountains at a property believed to be owned by her then chief of staff.

Jo Haylen failed to mention using a driver to make the trip form Caves Beach to Sydney for the sports run. Picture: NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Premier Chris Minns rightly read Haylen the riot act following The Sunday Telegraph revealing the use of a car for the boozy winery lunch. But on Monday, he said that it was a one-off, and would not happen again.

“She fully acknowledges this was a shocker, a major mistake, and I believe her when she says she’s not going to do it again,” Minns said.

Further, he described it as a “singular lapse” that was “absent minded”.

In reality, it was not a singular lapse, but a repeated brain fade.

All of Haylen’s trips were within the rules, but they would never fly in the court of public opinion.

As one source familiar with Haylen’s travel told me, she is known for “taking the piss” with her car and driver.

Chris Minns supports Haylen, but her colleagues are seething. Picture: Thomas Lisson

Privately, Haylen’s colleagues are seething that her actions betray a sense of entitlement and arrogance.

Ministers abusing the trappings of office is something that usually only besets a government that is on the wane.

There is a reason for that: when voters start to think Ministers are milking the perks beyond what is acceptable, they punish the government accordingly.

Haylen has created repeated scandals for the Minns government.

Minns cannot keep coming to her rescue.