NSW Premier Chris Minns backs Transport Minister Jo Haylen over kids' sports chauffeuring scandal

The NSW premier is standing by his embattled minister, who claimed she was going to work when she used a taxpayer-funded driver to drop her children off at weekend sporting events.

Chris Minns has defended Transport Minister Jo Haylen after a series of car-related scandals in which she tasked a driver to take her to a boozy winery lunch and drop her children off at weekend sport in Sydney.

Mr Minns said the revelations were a “black mark” on the government and “poor judgment” by the minister, but he would not sack her, opting instead for changing the regulations on government drivers.

“Based on the information I have at the moment, I expect that the rules must be changed, and more importantly, the behaviour must change,” he told Sydney radio 2GB on Tuesday.

“If there’s other information and it comes to light and it’s presented to me ... I have to take that into consideration, and it would weigh very heavily on me.”

Mr Minns said ministers are often tasked with weekend work 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 also defended the decision to use a ministerial driver to ferry Ms Haylen and Labor 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 current ministerial rules, took the driver on a 446km round trip from Sydney that lasted for 13 hours.

Mr Minns said he expected both ministers to learn from the error of judgment, but they would retain their roles.

“I’m not going to sack the ministers,” he told reporters on Monday as he faced a barrage of questions over the trip.

“Both of them are in big portfolios ... we need continuity in those jobs.”

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, while Ms Jackson, as mental health minister, is dealing with a staffing crisis as public psychiatrists resign en masse.

The transport minister has 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.

Late on Monday, she was removed from the line-up of a key planning summit set to be held in Sydney on Tuesday.