Instead,Haylen spent her time dancing around a staffing scandal which has emerged just months after she faced accusations of a jobs-for-the-boys appointment throughthe hiring of Josh Murray as transport’s top bureaucrat. Murray is a former Labor Party member and staffer and was a small-scale donor to Haylen’s campaign.
Over and over on Tuesday,Haylen avoided answering whether she knew that a junior public servant seconded to her office was carrying out political work,which was completely outside his remit. That public servant,Kieren Ash,happens to have deep links to Labor,including running as a candidate in 2015 and managing the ALP’s unsuccessful tilt at the seat of Balmain in March.
Haylen on Tuesday repeatedly insisted that “my experience with the public servant’s work that you refer to was that it was in line with his role”. She did not deviate from that line but also did not categorically deny any prior knowledge about his political work.
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A tranche of emails,released publicly on Friday,show that Ash was compiling lists of Coalition backflips as well as organising a barbeque in Haylen’s electorate to celebrate the Minns government’s first 100 days in power. Clearly political work,which raised red flags for her office,but very belatedly.
Haylen also insisted that she had nothing to do with staffing arrangements in her office. Instead,staffing was solely left to her now departed chief of staff Scott Gartrell,who she had once worked with in Anthony Albanese’s office when he was federal transport minister.
Haylen has asked her department to investigate Ash and Gartrell,who quit his post on Friday,although she was adamant that the timing was coincidental. The long-time Labor staffer,who had been semi-retired,happened to decide on the same day as another scandal was engulfing his minister that it was time to return to his goat farm.