To be a political cleanskin, here’s a tip: Abstain from wineries

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold, and after the Minns government spectacularly lost former transport minister Jo Haylen from cabinet to a chauffeur scandal, NSW Labor has been determined to get even.

The government, as well as the Liberals and Nationals, is now in a race to the bottom as they try to outdo each other over who has the worst record when it comes to the use – or misuse – of taxpayer-funded drivers, cars and even planes. Strap in – it will be a wild ride.

Dugald Saunders and Jo Haylen have both fallen foul of the rules around using public-funded transport.Credit: Fairfax Media

The tit-for-tat started when it emerged that Haylen booked a taxpayer-funded ministerial driver and people mover to ferry her and her husband, as well as Housing Minister Rose Jackson and senior ALP figure Melissa Donnelly, to the Hunter’s wineries for a boozy long lunch for Jackson’s 40th. It was within the (loose) rules for drivers, which allowed for some private use but clearly failed the proverbial pub test.

Haylen’s fate was sealed when she confirmed she had taken an earlier trip with her husband to the wineries, again with a ministerial driver, although that time, she did some work en route.

Knowing little irks voters like pollies’ perks, rogue independent MP Mark Latham last week seized on the bipartisan appetite for entitlement scandals and successfully moved a motion in the upper house demanding that driver and car logbooks be produced to the parliament, covering all ministers, the speaker, the president, former premiers and even ex-governors in the months since Labor took power in March 2023. That had the makings of a spicy exercise. Hundreds, if not thousands, of documents will be produced.

Labor was having none of it. “The world began in 2023,” Premier Chris Minns quipped on Wednesday when asked about the Haylen scandal in budget estimates. If Labor ministers were going to be exposed, so too were their opponents. Leader of the government in the upper house, Penny Sharpe, amended Latham’s demands and extended the dates all the way back to March 2019, when Gladys Berejiklian won the election (and was in a secret relationship with now-corrupt former MP Daryl Maguire). Plenty in the former Coalition government, perhaps even Berejiklian, will be nervous as they await that treasure trove of taxpayer-funded trips to be dumped in the public domain.

And just to go one step further, Sharpe added a line to her amendment to include Rural Fire Service aircraft. This was no fishing exercise from the government. Labor had it on good authority that the Nationals deputy leader Dugald Saunders may have his own perks scandal hidden away, waiting to be unearthed. In his case, it involved a jet owned and operated by the RFS. Saunders hitched a ride on the RFS jet from his Dubbo electorate to the Hunter Valley in 2022 when he was agriculture minister. Despite it being outside the remit of his portfolio and the trip having nothing to do with an emergency, Saunders was offered the lift by RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers.

The RFS picked up the bill for the 33-minute flight, in which Saunders was the only passenger. Flying, rather than driving the three-plus hours, ensured the then-minister made it to the Hunter winery region in time for a Friday afternoon of tastings as well as some meetings. His “lovely wife Karen” joined him for some tastings the next day, according to a social media post on De Iuliis winery. Labor acknowledges that Saunders’ trip – dubbed by one wag as the Riesling Flying Service – was not in the same league as Haylen’s bold use of her entitlements.

But nonetheless, Saunders’ RFS flight highlights just how loose the rules have been around ministerial entitlements. Minns, unsurprisingly, had historical examples ready to cite at budget estimates.

Quoting the Daily Telegraph, Minns said: “[Former arts minister] Don Harwin forced his driver to wait five and a half hours outside a Liberal Party pre-selection on the Central Coast on April 30, 2017. And another minister said to his driver, ‘I’m going to use every ounce of entitlement tonight, so expect a long night.’” No doubt, all these examples and plenty more will emerge when the highly anticipated documents are tabled to parliament in about a fortnight.

On the back of the Haylen fiasco, Minns tightened the rules around ministerial drivers so that solely private use, such as a winery tour with mates, is not permissible any more. That means future salacious stories about ministers and their drivers should dry up, but not before years of tales, engulfing both sides of politics, emerge. It will be unedifying for all. The rule changes came too late, but regardless, my tip for MPs and ministers of all political persuasions? Stay clear of the Hunter’s wineries.

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