Haylen says she didn’t want to be a ‘distraction’. Garbage. She quit because she was caught

Jo Haylen has resigned as transport minister after being caught billing taxpayers for a private trip to a vineyard. Her lapse of political and ethical judgments seriously undermined her continuation in a ministerial role, but Premier Chris Minns’s judgment also became ensnared in the scandal, thanks to his failure to deal appropriately with his miscreant minister.

With new allegations surfacing daily, Minns continued to defend the indefensible. On 2GB, breakfast host Ben Fordham asked on Tuesday morning what he would do if Haylen had embarked on another wine-tasting trip using a departmental driver. “I don’t know about the circumstances in which you’re presenting them to me,” Minns said. “I checked whether there were other incidents or examples, as did the media. I take her at her word.”

He should not have. With Minns way out on a limb, the bough broke and Haylen was gone within hours. You could see the whole thing coming a mile away.

Premier Chris Minns has said Transport Minister Jo Haylen’s lapse in judgment was “absent-minded … not malicious”.Credit: Steven Siewert

Haylen called a press conference, arrogantly proclaiming she would take no questions and said the premier accepted her resignation on Tuesday morning. She also confirmed a second winery trip to the Hunter Valley did take place last year but insisted circumstances differed to the initial long lunch as she was working that day.

Her big problem was simple: each passing day exposed a new travel rort.

Haylen had been under pressure to fall on her sword following revelations in the Sunday Telegraph that she dispatched a driver from Sydney to Caves Beach at Lake Macquarie to take herself, Housing Minister Rose Jackson and four others to a vineyard lunch on the Australia Day weekend.

On Sunday, after her jaunt had been exposed, she fronted the media, announced she would pay the $750 cost but, when asked, could not recall previously using her ministerial car in the same circumstances.

Since then, it emerged she had booked drivers to take her from Caves Beach to Sydney, allowing her to drop her children to Saturday sport. News Corp also reported a ministerial driver took her and her family on a 240-kilometre round-trip for a private weekend lunch in the Blue Mountains.

Minns has announced the system will be reformed to stop the continuation of such ministerial travel rorts, but he has lost a lot of skin backing Haylen. She played a key role in shepherding left-faction support to Minns in the 2021 party leadership election.

For two days, Minns refused to stand her down as transport minister, saying the portfolio needed continuity. But the portfolio also needs to be run by somebody who has the political integrity to differentiate between entitlement and rort.

Haylen’s farewell speech was egregiously self-serving and self-pitying. She said she quit as minister because she had become a distraction. What garbage: she left because she was caught out. Plain and simple.

The premier’s kid gloves treatment of Haylen now risks damaging his considerable achievements in building good and decent government. She has walked away into the sunset and left him looking like an absolute goose.

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