A senior minister admits she lost public goodwill by repeatedly using taxpayer-funded chauffeur-driven cars for private trips, after bowing to pressure and quitting cabinet.
NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen resigned on Tuesday after a series of car-related scandals in which she asked a government driver to take her to a boozy lunch at a winery and drop her children off at weekend sport in Sydney.
She admitted to a second trip to the Hunter Valley last year, while she also used a taxpayer-funded car for a visit to the Blue Mountains.
After NSW Premier Chris Minns defended her and suggested tightening rules around ministerial car use was the answer, Ms Haylen quit and conceded she had let the public down.
"I've always prided myself on trusting in people, and in the goodwill of the public I'm lucky to serve … treating people with respect and acting with integrity, and that I am loyal, and always will be," she said.
"It kills me right now that people might think otherwise."
The premier said Ms Haylen had paid a high price for the grey area in the rules governing private and public driver usage.
"While private use of ministerial drivers has been permitted under long-standing rules, community expectations and standards rightly do not match these rules," he said.
"The vehicle use policy in the minister's office handbook will be updated to ban the use of ministerial drivers for exclusively private purposes."
Mr Minns said ministers were often required to work weekends and Ms Haylen was dropping her children off en route.
"(The driver) drove her from Caves Beach to Sydney to go to work, and on the way to work, the child was dropped at sport," he said.
"In other words, the trip wasn't so the kids could go to the sport on the weekends, the trip was so that she'd get to work."
On Monday, Mr Minns defended the decision to use a ministerial driver to ferry Ms Haylen and her frontbench colleague Rose Jackson from her holiday house south of Newcastle to lunch at a Hunter Valley winery on the Australia Day long weekend.
The private journey, which was allowed under ministerial rules, took the driver on a 446km round trip from Sydney that lasted 13 hours.
Ms Haylen has been battling a long-running industrial dispute with railway workers that has repeatedly threatened to shut down the state's train network.
The transport minister promised to pay back the $750 cost of the trip and acknowledged it did not pass the "pub test".
Ms Haylen has previously come under fire for hiring former Labor staffer Josh Murray to lead the transport department and the apparent use of a public servant in her office for political work.
