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- NSW
- State Parliament
‘Stinks of hypocrisy’: Liberals condemn Labor over staffer appointment
By Max Maddison and Michael McGowan
The Coalition has upped the pressure on NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen over the appointment of former Labor staffer Josh Murray to a key bureaucratic role, saying it would call an inquiry into the matter unless the government explains itself better.
It also emerged that a highly regarded senior bureaucrat quit the public service after she unsuccessfully applied to become secretary of transport for NSW – a job Haylen gave to Murray, a chief of staff to former premier Morris Iemma.
A meeting between NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen and her new top bureaucrat has raised questions about his hiring.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
After two years as chief executive of the Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE), Benedicte Colin said she left her position in July – but insisted her departure had nothing to do with the appointment of Murray.
“In July 2023, I resigned from my role as CEO for TAHE. It is time for new leadership to take the incredible people in this organisation forward on the next steps of its journey,” Collins told the Herald. “My reasons for leaving TAHE are unrelated to the recruitment process or the appointment of the new Secretary.”
Haylen on Thursday revealed that Murray had been added to a list of shortlisted candidates by her office because she believed he was the “right person for the job”.
NSW’s new Secretary of Transport Josh Murray.Credit: LinkedIn
Murray was announced as the new head of Transport for NSW on July 13 after a “market testing and recruitment process”. But ministerial diary disclosures showed Haylen had met with Murray just eight days after Labor claimed government – and a week before the previous secretary was sacked.
Opposition transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said the Coalition would push for an inquiry into the recruitment process if documents handed to the parliament next week did not produce answers.
“This appointment was clearly not above board, and the opposition intends to call for an inquiry, should the documents not produce the answers the people of NSW deserve,” she said.
After Labor was elected on a platform of “transparency and accountability” on the back of the appointment of former deputy John Barilaro as the state’s trade envoy to New York, Ward said the selection of Murray “stinks of hypocrisy”.
“She [Haylen] was on the record saying that overlooking a qualified woman was outrageous. There needs to be transparency and a proper process, and she’s done the exact opposite. The hypocrisy is breathtaking in this five-minute-old government,” Ward said.
Ward said the opposition would consider “all means available”, including a parliamentary inquiry, once an upper house order for papers returned documents to the parliament on Wednesday.
“I’ll be speaking to other colleagues in this place about trying to get to the bottom of this once we have the documents next week,” she said.
The Greens and One Nation indicated they would be open to supporting an inquiry once they were privy to the information from the call for papers.
Haylen told radio station 2GB on Thursday, the recruitment panel – made up of federal infrastructure department head Jim Betts, Department of Premier Secretary Peter Duncan, and NSW Public Service Commissioner Kathrina Lo – had put forward two candidates for the secretary role.
One of those was Murray, but Haylen declined to say whether the panel had recommended an individual candidate for the job.
“I met with both of those candidates and I decided that Josh Murray was the right person for the job,” she said.
“So this was a proper process, but most importantly here in the end, I am within my rights to express who I prefer. I did that, and I believe we’ve got the right person for the job,” she said.
Over the back half of last year, Labor attacked the Coalition’s appointment of Barilaro to the $500,000-a-year trade role, with a parliamentary inquiry ultimately finding the “flawed process” showed “all the trademarks of a ‘job for the boys’ position”.
Ward refused to say whether she believed Barilaro’s appointment was inappropriate, but pointed to the findings of the government-commissioned review, which cleared then trade minister Stuart Ayres of any wrongdoing.
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