Less than 48 hours later, revelations of summoning a taxpayer-funded chauffeur for a 13-hour round trip to take her and five others to a Hunter Valley winery put the wheels in motion for Ms Haylen’s resignation on Tuesday – entirely her own fault.
Although apologising for and conceding the use of a ministerial driver for that Australia Day weekend winery lunch “didn’t pass the pub test”, the slow drip of other similar travel usage became too much of a distraction for the government.
Haylen admitted as such.
The past three days have been a damaging own goal for the state Labor government – Premier Chris Minns called it a self-inflicted “black eye” – at a time when its standing among swaths of voters couldn’t be higher, particularly when juxtaposed with an ailing federal government, especially in responding to anti-Semitism.
Haylen, one of Minns’s staunchest allies and strongest performers, apologised for that initial 450km round-trip chauffeur, but defended herself as similar journeys began to emerge.
Whether taking a chauffeur from her central coast holiday home to Sydney for her children’s sport games – Haylen said she was working and returning to the city – or for a Blue Mountains picnic were within the rules became irrelevant.
Nothing cuts through more than a perception – fair or not – of elected leaders splurging taxpayers’ cash, especially not for a jaunt to a winery for a boozy lunch.
The Premier conceded the guidelines were “grey”: there had been no ban on personal travel, Haylen had broken no rules.
But her continuing as a minister became too much of a drain on the government’s political capital.
Haylen had survived previous scares. But unlike allegations she pushed for a friend to successfully get Transport NSW’s top job or that a departmental staffer was doing political work in her office, misuse of voters’ money cuts through.
A week is long time in politics, so is three days of damaging headlines. For the transport minister and Minns, it had to be stopped in its tracks.
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At the annual “pollies v press” cricket game at the Sydney Cricket Ground last Friday, the now-former NSW transport minister Jo Haylen was run out for a duck – through no fault of her own.