Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has a 40-minute meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing overnight, it’s revealed former Transport Minister Michael Wood ignored official advice to not toll the new O Mahurangi Penlink road and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi has canceled the rest of his 2023 tour in the latest headlines.
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Prime Minister Chris Hipkins should have been told by his department about Michael Wood’s apparent inability to sell his Auckland Airport shares, Parliament has heard.
The failure to do so was acknowledged in a written apology from Cabinet Secretary Rachel Hayward to Hipkins’ office earlier this month, prompted by a story in the Herald revealing Wood’s airport shares.
The apology was revealed in an at-times testy appearance by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the governance and administration committee this morning.
Wood had 16 interactions with the Cabinet Office, a unit of the DPMC, over his Auckland Airport shares, including two in March this year, after Hipkins became Prime Minister.
Wood was stood down from his transport portfolio following the Herald’s story about the shares on June 6, and resigned last week further shareholdings that he had failed to properly manage were revealed.
In the committee, Cabinet Office deputy secretary Nicola Purvis said that advice was provided to Wood’s and Jacinda Ardern’s office, but not to Hipkins’ office after he had taken over as Prime Minister.
“The Secretary of Cabinet has acknowledged that we should have advised the current Prime Minister at the time of the portfolio reshuffle,” Purvis told the committee.
She did not reveal the advice to Wood or Ardern, saying it was “inherently confidential so we don’t tend to release it”.
National MP David Bennett asked: “Do you feel you’ve let down the public of New Zealand?”
At this point, Labour MP Steph Lewis tried to stop the line of questioning, but committee chair Ian McKelvie said they were valid questions because “the DPMC is funded to deal with these issues”.
Bennett resumed: “You didn’t inform the current Prime Minister. There was obviously a breakdown in your management of the situation. What are you doing to resolve your internal management? Because you can’t put the leaders of the country in those kinds of predicaments. That’s a fundamental job you’ve got and you didn’t perform it.”
DPMC chief executive Rebecca Kitteridge again noted the letter.
“The Secretary of the Cabinet has written to the Prime Minister to acknowledge that she should have done that. I’m sure that will not be the situation again.”
Bennett asked if there were any consequences within the DPMC “for not doing your job”.
Kitteridge: “The Prime Minister has acknowledged that communication from the Secretary of the Cabinet and I believe the matter is resolved.”
Bennett: “So we’re happy that a letter is good enough.”
Kitteridge said the DPMC was a “learning organisation”, prompting Bennett to say: “Rebecca, you’re one of the most experienced government officials. You know the lines of what has to happen and doesn’t have to happen. Your career’s been built around excellence in that. To then say ‘we’re a learning organisation and we’ve sent a letter off’ doesn’t really cut it.”
Kitteridge replied there had been immediate improvements.
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet chief executive Rebecca Kitteridge. Photo / File
After the meeting, Kitteridge confirmed that the apology letter to Hipkins had been written in relation to Wood being stood down from the transport portfolio.
That was when Hipkins should have been told about the communications with Wood to manage his conflict of interest over the Auckland Airport shares, she said.
Wood first informed the Cabinet Office about his Auckland Airport shares in November 2020, and was told he should consider selling them.
This was the first of 16 interactions between the Cabinet Office and Wood’s office, including in March 2021, when Wood was sent a draft review of ministers’ interests intended for then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying that the shares had been sold.
It remains unclear if Wood or his office ever responded to that email confirming the statement or correcting the record to say the shares had not been sold.
Wood sold his shares two days after the Herald story came out, and resigned last week after it emerged he held thousands of dollars worth of additional shares in a trust, some of which raised further potential conflicts of interest.
The additional shareholdings were held in the JM Fairey Family Trust of which he is both a trustee and a beneficiary.
The trust holds “thousands” of dollars of shares, in particular, stakes in Chorus, Spark and the National Australia Bank. Those shareholdings raised questions around potential conflicts, such as decisions made by Cabinet relating to the market study into banks announced last week, and immigration decisions regarding telecommunications workers.
There is no evidence Wood acted inappropriately in the conflict of interest.
Wood said in a statement: “There has not been a second of my political career where any of my financial interests have influenced my actions or even crossed my mind. In some respects, my de-prioritisation of my personal financial affairs has led to this situation.”
