Haylen affair: NSW Labor’s doing what it does best — jobs for mates on the public dime

Isn’t it funny how you can look the world over but the best person for the job can be right there under your nose?

That’s certainly been the experience of NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen who six weeks ago handed the $588,000 a year head of department job to a member of the Labor family — despite a trawl for talent by a professional recruitment firm which cost well over $100,000 of public money.

Doh! Why didn’t you ask my cousin?

Haylen’s pick to run the NSW Transport Department is Josh Murray. Hold that thought as we take a tour around the mud map of internal Labor politics. 

Murray is married to a former Labor staffer called Davina Langton, the daughter of Brian Langton, who was once a transport minister in a NSW Labor government. (How about that for circularity?) 

Davina Langton has been around the Labor traps for years. She was a senior staffer for NSW Labor premier Morris Iemma. She was then reportedly given a six-figure redundancy payout to go and work for Rudd government minister Joel Fitzgibbon. Then it was on to the office of former Labor premier Nathan Rees. Murray had also worked for Iemma when he was premier. 

That’s the Langton link. Next, the Gartrells.

Haylen’s chief of staff is Scott Gartrell. He matters in this story because he intervened in the selection process to ensure that Murray was placed on the shortlist for interview.

Gartrell was once chief of staff to former NSW (Labor) deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt, who was then married to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. She held the state seat of Marrickville, now held by Haylen.

Gartrell worked for Albanese when he was federal infrastructure minister in the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd days. He is a cousin of Tim Gartrell, a former national secretary of the ALP, who is chief of staff to Albanese. 

Scott Gartrell has his own fascinating backstory switching between politics and lobbying which saw him called as a witness to an ICAC inquiry into lobbying, held in the dying days of Labor’s last time in government.

Obviously the Gartrells are a force to be reckoned with.

This brings us all the way back to Haylen and her early days in the ALP machine. Back in 2008 she was on Albanese’s staff in the newly elected Rudd government. Albanese was impressed and predicted big things for Haylen. “Jo Haylen has a brilliant political career ahead of her in my opinion,” he told Parliament. “She is an outstanding strategist and she will, I think, have a great future in the Labor movement.”

It was a big wrap from the leader of the NSW left faction.

The job for Josh

In the best traditions of the NSW ALP, Haylen has elected to stare down calls to step aside. She has scoffed at suggestions that donations made to her campaign by Murray and Langton had anything to do with her decision to appoint Murray to head her department. She says she has observed the ministerial code of conduct. The political donation of $500 from Murray (and $250 from Langton) had fallen under the declaration threshold.

In fact, Haylen told radio station 2GB on Tuesday that she had been “really honest and open”: “So to say that … somehow I would give a very important senior public service job because someone … gave me a $500 donation is completely absurd. That beggars belief.”

Haylen has pointed to Murray’s experience with construction firm Laing O’Rourke as grounds to appoint him. 

The Sydney Morning Herald, which has led the reporting on this story, has revealed that the headhunting firm hired to fill the transport secretary role initially warned that Murray did not have enough experience for the job and had not recommended him for an interview. A three-person recruitment panel later found that Murray would be “very suitable” for the role.

And let’s face it, Murray’s father-in-law was a NSW transport minister. And as a young ALP up-and-comer Murray was on the staff of then-NSW Labor transport minister John Watkins — even if it was close to 20 years ago.

And what of Premier Minns? 

Sitting slightly to the side of this story for the time being is NSW Premier Chris Minns, whose office had been kept in the loop of the Murray appointment. In the traditions of old-time NSW Labor, he too is standing by his minister — despite the evident waste of public money on a recruitment process which ended up finding someone within the Labor family.

Minns is adopting the view that Haylen has no conflict of interest over the political donation. Such a defence makes enormous sense in the universe of the NSW Labor and its tribes of political operators. For jaded observers of the party it just feels like business as usual after a small break of 12 years. We’re baaack! 

And where’s Albanese? The Haylen affair is stocked to the gills with old Albanese mates, from the Gartrells to Haylen herself, with all the action taking place in his inner-west fiefdom. 

But Albanese has spent an entire political career inside one of the most corrupt and at times violent party machines in the world. He has always managed to create a firewall for himself amid the mayhem of the Obeid years and before that the bareknuckle politics of “Karate” Joe Meissner and Tom Domican.

Might be time to wheel out another photo shoot with Toto the wonder dog.