After being criticised for making a former Labor staffer the head of her department, the transport minister Jo Haylen is now embroiled in another staffing scandal. A bureaucrat who worked in her office is being investigated after it was revealed he may have carried-out political work in a role that's meant to be apolitical. The minister says she won't resign even if the public servant is found to have breached his obligations.
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TVTranscript
00:00 After the successful testing of a Sydney Metro train, the Transport Minister faced a trial
00:07 of her own.
00:09 Are there any further questions about Metro? Otherwise I'll let Peter go.
00:13 Jo Halen's announcement quickly derailed as she was questioned about the inner workings
00:18 of her office.
00:19 Those emails are of concern. They were of concern to me and may have breached that public
00:26 servant's obligations.
00:29 That public servant is Kieran Ash, a Labor campaigner and one-time candidate.
00:34 The Transport for NSW bureaucrat was seconded to the Minister's office as a departmental
00:38 liaison officer following a request from her Chief of Staff.
00:42 The role is supposed to be politically neutral, but emails tabled in Parliament on Friday
00:47 show that Mr Ash was involved in compiling a list of Coalition backflips and organising
00:52 a barbecue to celebrate Labor's state election win.
00:55 I have referred those emails to the department, his employer, for investigation.
01:00 It is not believable to say that she didn't know what was going on in her office.
01:05 Ms Halen says the emails were first brought to her attention on Friday, the day her Chief
01:10 of Staff, Scott Gartrell, resigned.
01:11 He was due to finish up by the end of the year. He obviously thought it was the right
01:15 time to go.
01:16 But the Minister says she won't quit, even if Mr Ash is found to have breached the rules.
01:21 If Chris Minns wants a shred of credibility, she needs to go.
01:24 But I wanted to. I wanted to continue to do the job as Transport Minister in NSW.
01:29 Ms Halen says her team requested specific public servants to work as departmental liaison
01:34 officers as she was, in her words, "impatient" to set up her office.
01:39 The Minister says her office will no longer hand-pick such bureaucrats.
01:43 Selecting those particular individuals may have contributed to a blurring of the lines.
01:49 It comes after Ms Halen was criticised for making former Labor staffer Josh Murray the
01:54 department's secretary, despite a recruiters' concerns he lacked experience.
01:58 The appointment remains the subject of an Upper House inquiry.
02:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]