17-07-2025
Health minister defends taxpayer-funded trip to Thredbo Ski Resort
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park has been grilled after he spent hundreds of taxpayer dollars on a 456km car journey to the Snowy Mountains to visit his son.
Park travelled from Sydney to Jindabyne on Thursday, 29 August 2024.
The trip coincided with the lead-up to the Interschools Snowsports Championships at Perisher Ski Resort from September 3 to 8, where his son was competing.
Ministerial diaries show that Park held only two official meetings between August 29 and September 2, one with a caravan business representative and another with the CEO of the mental health charity ManWalk.
And it's not the first time Park has used a government car to visit the ski fields.
Travel logs show similar trips to Thredbo in both November and December 2024, with the private driver completing round trips of nearly 1,000km each time, delivering Park to the Snowy Mountains and returning to Sydney without any passengers.
When questioned about the taxpayer-funded trips, Park defended the travel.
'The trips allowed me to reunite with family while undertaking work on a handful of other occasions,' he said in a statement.
Park maintained that everything he had done was within the rules.
'These trips were in accordance with the rules at the time, and I've always followed the relevant guidelines,' he told The Guardian.
'We inherited guidelines for ministerial driver use that had too many grey areas. But we accept those guidelines needed to be tightened, and the Premier has since changed those guidelines.'
The government updated the rules in February 2025, after former Transport Minister Jo Haylen resigned over her own misuse of ministerial drivers.
Haylen had directed a taxpayer-funded driver to chauffeur her to a lunch at Brokenwood Wines and deliver her children to weekend sport around Sydney.
One trip, a private long weekend getaway to the Hunter Valley with Housing Minister Rose Jackson, their husbands, and two friends, cost taxpayers $750.
The group dined at the high-end restaurant The Wood, while the driver waited outside for three hours. In total, the driver worked a 13-hour shift and drove 450km.
All of Park's ski trips occurred before the new rules were introduced.
Under the revised guidelines, drivers can only be used for official business.
'Any use of a driver for private purposes must be incidental to the discharge of the minister's official duties,' the new rules state.
'Incidental use' is defined as minor, work-related errands or quick stops, such as dropping off or picking up a child from school en route to official duties.
