Associate Social Housing Minister Alfred Ngaro has apologised to an audience of housing organisations for threatening to cut funding to community groups that criticised the Government.
"I want to address the elephant in the room, which is probably me," Ngaro said to about 150 people attending the Community Housing Aotearoa in Wellington this morning.
"In leadership you get to learn the fact that when you do something wrong you've got to put it right."
Comments he made at a National Party conference last month were "wrong, poorly judged and poorly made", he said. "I shouldn't have made them."
Ngaro was reprimanded by Prime Minister Bill English for appearing to threaten to cut funding to Labour candidate Willie Jackson's organisation, which runs a charter school and provides other social services.