Future leadership prospect no longer

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The Government has jettisoned a capable and hard-working minister with a major blindspot for conflicts of interest, after it emerged that Michael Wood had more undeclared shareholding interests in areas that clashed with his portfolios.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins called an urgent media briefing yesterday to announce he had accepted Wood’s resignation after learning that his family trust also held shares in Chorus, Spark and National Australia Bank — as well as the Auckland Airport shares he had failed to sell until recently, despite being told to 12 times by the Cabinet Office since November 2020.

Hipkins said he was frustrated and angry at the revelations, describing them as “unnecessary distractions”.

Wood had got a major promotion when Hipkins took over as Prime Minister in late January, moving from 15th to 7th in the Cabinet rankings and gaining the new role of Minister for Auckland as well as Associate Minister of Finance. Wood was already Minister of Transport, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety.

Hailing from the trade-union left of Labour, Wood, 43, had risen through the party and was seen as a future leader. After Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation, and Finance Minister Grant Robertson ruled himself out, Wood and Kiri Allan were seen by many commentators as the next most likely to take over the leadership after Hipkins. In the end Hipkins, already effectively annointed to the role and the prime ministership by Ardern, was the sole nominee.

Wood joined the Labour Party while doing a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Auckland and later joined the union movement, working as an organiser and a senior negotiator for the financial sector union.

He entered Parliament in 2016 as the Mt Roskill electorate MP after winning the by-election held following Phil Goff’s election to the Auckland mayoralty. Previously Wood had stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Pakuranga during the 2002 and 2005 elections, was on the Labour Party list in 2008, stood in a Botany by-election in 2011 and was Labour’s Epsom candidate in 2014.

In an op-ed earlier this month political operative and commentator Matthew Hooten said Wood’s support for the troubled Auckland light rail project, now seen as costing up to $30 billion, was the only reason it had survived Hipkins’ policy bonfire — arguing it was “dead” after Wood was stood down as Transport Minister over his failure to declare then failure to sell his airport shares.

“. . . the new Transport Minister can now propose a rational congestion-busting programme for Auckland, based on bus lanes, regular rail, cycleways and roads,” wrote Hooten.