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Mr Sharp said the agency’s deputy secretary Megan Bourke O’Neil believed that she had told the minister’s chief of staff during a phone conversation about 10.43pm that the rail network would be shut down the next day.
However,Mr Elliott said his chief of staff was adamant that she had not been told during the conversation with Ms Bourke O’Neil that the network would be closed.
Mr Sharp also said in a text to the Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Michael Coutts-Trotter about 11.50pm on February 20 that the network would not operate the next day.
Asked about the different version of events between him and his transport agency,Mr Elliott said there was “absolutely no reference to a shutdown” in a text message between his chief of staff and Ms Bourke O’Neil late on the night of February 20. “I was told it was going to be a significant disruption,” Mr Elliott said.
Mr Elliott has repeatedly rejected any suggestion that the conversation between his chief of staff and Ms Bourke O’Neil related to anything other than Fair Work Commission matters and significant disruption of the train network.
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However,Opposition treasury spokesman Daniel Mookhey said it was clear from the evidence that Mr Elliott had multiple warnings in the week before the shutdown. “If the Minister didn’t know that the network was going to shut down,he was either being willfully blind or grossly negligent,” he said.
Despite taking over as Transport Minister shortly before Christmas,Mr Elliott had not met the Transport for NSW secretary face to face until last week when the pair were called to a meeting with Premier Dominic Perrottet and Mr Coutts-Trotter after the shutdown.
And in a sign of their strained relationship,Mr Sharp told the hearing that he had twice asked to meet the Transport Minister in the weeks leading up to the rail network shutdown but the minister’s office did not respond to the requests.
He said he also unsuccessfully requested a meeting with the Transport Minister to discuss negative media coverage about his performance as the state’s transport chief,despite Mr Elliott never having raised it as an issue with him.
Mr Sharp said that despite having asked for Mr Elliott’s mobile phone number in December,it was provided to him only in recent weeks.
“We were advised that it would be provided at a point when it was required,” Mr Sharp said,adding that he had been provided with the mobile numbers of the other ministers that work with Transport for NSW within “one or two days” of them beginning.
However,his comments were immediately contradicted by a note presented to the hearing by Mr Elliott’s office,saying the Minister had received a text from the Transport for NSW secretary on January 24.
Government sources have also said that within days of Mr Elliott being sworn in,his contact details were shared with the secretary’s acting chief of staff.
The chief executive of the state’s Transport Asset Holding Entity,which has beenembroiled in scandal for months,also confirmed she had not met with Mr Elliott until this week.
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