‘Contempt for taxpayer’: Haylen to pay back cost of personal Hunter Valley tour

Premier Chris Minns has slammed Transport Minister Jo Haylen over her “unacceptable” use of taxpayer-funded travel, after she sent a driver on a 446-kilometre round-trip from Sydney to chauffeur her and a group of friends to a long lunch at a Hunter Valley winery on the Australia Day weekend.

For the trip, which was also attended by Housing and Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson, the driver took a 13-hour trip from Sydney to the minister’s holiday house, before driving them to a separate jaunt at the Brokenwood winery for a three-hour lunch.

On Sunday, Haylen apologised and said the $750 cost of the transportation would be repaid. She accepted the decision to arrange the driver “purely for private purposes” was a “mistake”.

“While that travel was within the rules, it doesn’t meet the pub test and I fully acknowledge that and I own that mistake,” she said at a press conference.

“I stick my hand up and say I’ve made the wrong decision here [and] I apologise for it.”

Asked why she had realised the use of a private driver was a mistake only in hindsight, after details of the trip were made public, Haylen said: “No one’s perfect. People make mistakes.”

While Jackson was on the trip, she was not involved in organising the ministerial driver. Haylen said she alone took full responsibility.

Ministerial driver logs reported in The Sunday Telegraph and independently verified by the Herald show a driver was dispatched in a Kia Carnival van from Sydney at 8am on January 25 for a 13-hour, 446-kilometre journey. The driver did not return to Sydney until 8.50pm.

After picking up the ministers at the holiday house in Caves Beach, south of Newcastle, the driver then took them to the Brokenwood Estate, where the set menu is $105 per person, before wines are paired.

In NSW, government ministers and the opposition leader are granted the use of a ministerial vehicle and driver.

The vehicles can be used for both public and private purposes, and government sources were insisting on Sunday that no policies had been breached by the trip. While the government insists no rules were broken on the trip, opposition leader Mark Speakman demanded their resignation for what he called a clear misuse of public money.

“This shows a contempt for the taxpayer,” he said.

Haylen and Jackson took the trip amid long-running industrial disputes playing out in both of their portfolios. The government has been locked in tense negotiations with the state’s rail unions over a pay deal for several months, while industrial action crippled the rail network in mid-January. At the same time, dozens of public psychiatrists have also quit over a pay dispute that has placed significant strain on the state’s mental health service.

“The mental health system is in crisis. We’ve seen extraordinary disruptions to our public transport system, and yet we’ve got two ministers of the crown off on a jolly at the taxpayers’ expense,” Speakman said.

Rose Jackson and Jo Haylen took a taxpayer-funded private trip - which is allowed but ‘doesn’t pass the pub test’, the Transport Minister said.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

While Haylen said she would not resign over the issue, Minns described her use of the ministerial vehicle as “clearly unacceptable” and said he had ordered the NSW Cabinet Office to review the guidelines for drivers “so this can’t happen again”.

“It’s not on for drivers to be used in this way,” he said.

Haylen said she could not recall previously using her ministerial car in the same circumstances, but she said there were “grey areas” in the use of drivers.

“Our jobs are 24/7 and it may be that the guidelines need to be considered, but in this instance it’s not about the rules, it’s about the public’s expectation, which I failed,” she said.

The driver’s 13-hour shift prompted questions from shadow treasurer Damien Tudehope over whether the trip may have breached work health and safety rules set by the civil service that place caps on how long ministerial drivers can work for.

“Generally in respect of long shifts by a driver you would have a program in place where the driver would be replaced [when they] had reached a certain time period,” he said.

However, in a statement a spokesperson from the Department of Premier and Cabinet said the driver’s shift had not exceeded 12 hours because of the inclusion of “mandatory breaks”.

“The Premier’s Department follows strict safety protocols for driver wellbeing, which were adhered to in this instance,” the spokesperson said.

Rail Tram and Bus Union secretary Toby Warnes said while he would “never begrudge” the minister a day out with friends, “a chauffeur-driven car for a 446-kilometre trip to a winery is a luxury most of the state’s rail workers could only dream of”.

However, he said, “we’re more worried about finding a fix to the current rail dispute than in delving into the transport minister’s weekend activities”.

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