To me, Michael Wood is either so stinking rich that he doesn’t know which trust he’s stashed his cash in or he was just plain dishonest.
The latter, in my view, is much more likely when it came to his embarrassing performance over his Auckland Airport shares.
And his explanation on the latest scandal - that he didn’t think he needed to disclose other shares owned by a family trust - doesn’t sound believable to me.
“I’m on to it,” he said on each occasion, it being quite a clear conflict of interest given his role as Transport Minister.
The office of now-Grande Dame Jacinda Ardern was told the same thing – and on one occasion was wrongly informed Wood had already got rid of them when that hadn’t happened.
Why Chris Hipkins didn’t sack him, to begin with, is beyond belief, especially when he said his actions were unacceptable. It seemed then that unacceptable behaviour was acceptable when it comes to sitting at the Cabinet table in this government.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell
But given the 12 reminders, Wood must have known he either need to sell the shares, or update the pecuniary interests register. And the fact he didn’t do either, in my view, is plain dishonest.
And then to the latest development in this sorry scandal. Hipkins says he asked Wood at the time of the airport debacle whether he had anything else to declare. No was the answer, which beggars’ belief.
An inquiry into his stash was to find otherwise and again it beggars’ belief that Wood could have thought his shareholding in Chorus and Spark would have gone unnoticed. As Immigration Minister he put telecommunications technicians on the green list after representations from Chorus for him to do so.
And he’s got shares in the National Bank of Australia, parent company of the Bank of New Zealand but shareholder Wood remained silent at the Cabinet table when they were discussing an inquiry into banking which was announced this week.
Given he’s now resigned from Cabinet (and was effectively sacked given he would have been pushed if he didn’t jump), Wood will be regretting ever selling his airport shares, which he did in order to save his bacon, or so he naively thought.
Well, he’s now out of the frying pan into the fire, burnt to a cinder. Any chance of him making it back into Cabinet in the future is remote, unless of course they win the upcoming election.
A conscientious and hard-working minister he’s been described as by his executioner Hipkins, and goodness only knows the talent pool in the Labour caucus is obviously no deeper than a puddle.
At 62 MPs it has the biggest caucus in recent history and yet all of his portfolios have gone to overloaded, senior ministers, meaning none of them will get the attention they deserve.
And that says everything about this parlous Government.
