There is one vaguely positive feature for Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in forcing Michael Wood’s ministerial resignation over further failures to declare conflicts of interest.
That is that Hipkins was given the opportunity to control the process, to fast-forward Wood’s resignation, and to impose a raft of measures totighten up the management of ministerial conflicts of interest.
It meant that Hipkins could be proactive rather than having to wait for Sir Maarten Wevers’ report on Wood’s declarations of pecuniary interest. Undoubtedly it would have led to the same ministerial resignation, but closer to the election.
As Wood was preparing for the Wevers inquiry, he disclosed the shareholdings to Hipkins yesterday.
Since then, Hipkins has done everything right, hearing out Wood, requiring him to resign, appointing the right people to take over his portfolios (Carmel Sepuloni, Andrew Little and David Parker), and establishing new guardrails for ministers.
He has even suggested more work on requiring ministers to divest all public and private business interests as happens in Australia.
Former minister Michael Wood responding to Opposition questions earlier this month over his Auckland Airport shares. Photo / Mark Mitchell
That said, the slight advantage for Hipkins in controlling the process barely compensates for the damage that Wood has done in his unforgivable sloppiness.
He has trashed his own high reputation, damaged the Hipkins’ Government, the Labour Party and public confidence in the integrity systems supposedly keeping politicians in check.
The slight positive for Wood in all of this is that Hipkins has left the door open for a return to cabinet, assuming Wood has not completely destroyed Labour’s chances of being returned to power on the October 14 election.
Hipkins was generous about Wood in the circumstances, dismissing any notion of venal motivation in his failure to declare shares in Chorus, Spark and the National Australia Bank, the parent bank of the BNZ. He praised his competence as a minister and his decency and honesty.
But Wood participated in cabinet decisions on telecommunications and the banking inquiry.
And whether wittingly or not, he misled the Prime Minister several weeks ago in assuring him there was nothing more after it was revealed the Cabinet Office contacted him 12 times about selling shares held by him directly in Auckland Airport.
Wood’s own statement on his resignation fudges the crux of the issue in this latest development – that a family trust of which he is both a beneficiary and a trustee held the other shares. Wood describes it as “a family trust I am part of.”
If it was a blind trust, he might not have known. But as a trustee, he was responsible for the trust’s assets so he must and/or should have known and should have declared them.
He further fudges when he says believed he was providing the information he needed to provide to the cabinet office but that turned out to be not the correct information.
His pleading of ignorance doesn’t cut it. Any minister is obliged to know what the rules are. The fact that Wood was seen as one of the most competent exacerbates the failures.
The fact that his failures follow breaches of acceptable conduct by former minister Stuart Nash and former Race Relations Commission Meng Foon exacerbates the Government’s failures.
The Wevers report is not due imminently. That is into Wood as an MP, not a minister. He could be referred to the privileges committee, although the fitting penalty has already been exacted in him losing his job.
It is unlikely that Wood, the MP for Mt Roskill, will withdraw from politics altogether. He knows he is the darling of the party base, especially the left, and that he has been considered a future finance minister or even leader.
There is usually a way back for a competent minister, as Judith Collins showed when she was stood down in 2014 from John Key’s cabinet, returned in 2015, and later became leader.
Wood has been an MP for only six and a half years and has time to recover. But after the events of this week, he will be in the recovery position for some time.
Audrey Young covers politics as the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018. She was previously political editor, leading the Herald’s Press Gallery team at Parliament.
