JUST two months ago, Reba Meagher launched a campaign to beat binge drinking but last week the Health Minister seemed to forget her message and, by her own admission, had a drink too many at a Sydney bar.

After several drinks, the minister left a city bar, The Ivy, in a taxi with her boyfriend, the former Channel Nine reporter Adam Walters, forgetting to tell her parliamentary driver he could go home.

The driver waited for her all night in the basement of Governor Macquarie Tower but Ms Meagher's staff maintain it was not her alcohol consumption but a breakdown in communication that forced her driver to sleep in his car.