Employer couldn't name who received the alleged leak - and that gap proved fatal
A ministerial driver accused of leaking confidential information that contributed to a NSW transport minister's resignation has kept his job after the Industrial Relations Commission found the case against him was built on suspicion, not proof.
The driver had worked in the NSW public sector since May 2022 and began duties as a ministerial driver in July that year. His role included transporting the then Minister for Transport, Jo Haylen, and he was subject to strict confidentiality obligations covering ministers' movements, activities and transport arrangements.
The trouble started with a road trip.
On January 25, 2025, the driver collected Haylen, fellow minister Rose Jackson and four other passengers from Caves Beach, NSW. He drove the group to the Hunter Valley, waited, then returned them to Caves Beach before heading back to Sydney.
A week later, The Daily Telegraph published an article about the trip. A second article followed the next day, this one about Haylen's use of ministerial transport to travel to an event at Little Hartley in June 2024. The coverage generated substantial public and political attention, and on February 4, 2025, Haylen resigned as Minister for Transport.
That sequence of events set the investigation in motion.
An inquiry that initially focused on an unrelated matter - an apparent unauthorised disclosure about another minister's attendance at a State of Origin event - expanded to encompass the Haylen transport stories. By January 2026, the driver had received a letter setting out 12 allegations of misconduct. They covered unauthorised disclosure of official information, communications with journalists, failures to comply with media contact reporting requirements, and failures to preserve departmental records on his work phone.
An external investigator found eight of the 12 allegations substantiated. The employer accepted those findings and moved to terminate the driver's employment, notifying him in June 2026 that his job would end - while giving him the option to resign or make further submissions.
The driver denied the allegations and filed to prevent the threatened dismissal.
The case was heard over four days in September 2026, and the Commission handed down its decision on September 22.
The employer's central problem was straightforward: its entire case rested on circumstantial evidence. There was no direct evidence that the driver disclosed confidential information to any journalist. No recipient was ever identified. The employer's reasoning came down to an inference - the driver had the information, the information appeared in the media, so he must have been the source.
The Commission was not persuaded.
Knowledge of the Hunter Valley trip was not confined to the driver. According to his evidence, a relief driver had used the phrase "wine tour" and criticised the minister's use of the vehicle before the articles were published. An email from the relief driver recorded that the journalist behind one of the stories had told him the "initial leak" came from "a National Party staffer overhearing a conversation." A separate Sydney Morning Herald report described information and photographs of driver logs circulating beyond the driver concerned and reaching political opponents.
None of that pinpointed who actually leaked the information. But it showed the trail could not be traced exclusively to the applicant.
The Commission also weighed a phone call between the driver and a Daily Telegraph journalist on January 31, 2025. It lasted about three minutes and 15 seconds - longer than the driver described. But, the Commission noted, a call of that length was just as consistent with "a journalist continuing to seek comment from an unwilling interviewee" as with a leak.
Then there was the text message. After Haylen resigned, the driver sent her a message along the lines of "please forgive me if I ever hurt you." The Commission accepted his explanation that this reflected a cultural and religious expression of respect. It was not, the Commission found, an admission - though it "sits somewhat uneasily" with his position that he bore no responsibility for information reaching the media.
Of the 12 allegations, the Commission found only two partially made out - and only to the extent that the driver failed to fully report media contact as directed. The Commission was not satisfied those failures were deliberate or part of any cover-up. Every other allegation - deliberate disclosure, deliberate concealment, dishonesty, deliberate record deletion - was rejected.
The gap between what the employer alleged and what the evidence could actually support proved decisive.
The Commission found the threatened dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable on all three grounds. Harsh, because the driver was 60, had no prior disciplinary history, and the proven misconduct was far less serious than what the employer relied on. Unjust, because the factual basis for the dismissal decision was materially different from the findings the Commission actually made. Unreasonable, because the evidence simply did not support the most serious allegations.
The Commission ordered that the employer must not dismiss the driver.
The decision left open the possibility that lesser disciplinary options remain available under the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (NSW), but made clear the Commission's role was limited to blocking or permitting the dismissal - not choosing a substitute.
For HR teams building misconduct cases, the decision is a sharp reminder that inference is not proof. An employer that stakes a termination on circumstantial threads it cannot tie together will struggle when those threads are tested - no matter how serious the underlying conduct appears.
The allegations in this matter were tested before the NSW Industrial Relations Commission over a four-day hearing. The Commission found the principal disclosure allegations were not established and ordered that the threatened dismissal not proceed.
