Michael Wood has quit as a Cabinet minister after it emerged he had more shareholding interests in areas that clashed with his portfolios.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed Wood’s resignation today, saying he became aware of the fresh issues yesterday.
Until today, Wood had held portfolios of Transport, Auckland, Immigration, Workplace Relations as well as being the associate Minister for Finance.
The bank shares weren’t disclosed when Cabinet discussed a possible market study into the banking industry. That was despite repeated requests from Hipkins and others for Wood to disclose them.
The Government announced yesterday it has directed the Commerce Commission to investigate the competitiveness of the sector, dominated by four big Australian-owned banks - ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac.
“New Zealanders expect and deserve very high standards from their ministers,” Hipkins said at a news conference this afternoon, adding he was angry at the revelations, saying they were “beyond frustrating”.
“These have been unnecessary distractions.”
Wood was stood down as Transport Minister earlier this month after The New Zealand Herald revealed he still owned shares in Auckland Airport, worth about $13,000. He had been asked 12 times by Cabinet Office officials to sell the shares, but failed to do so until the story broke.
He has owned the shares since he was a teenager in the 1990s, but only began declaring them in the MPs’ register of pecuniary interests, the public list of MPs’ financial interests, in January 2022.
His shares were raised three times with former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office - which was wrongly told he had sold them.
Carmel Sepuloni will become the Minister of Auckland and Minister of Workplace Safety, Andrew Little takes the immigration portfolio, David Parker has been given transport and Kiri Allan will be Associate Finance Minister.
Change needed to process - PM
The Prime Minister said he found out about the additional shares yesterday and had formed the view that the system to manage conflicts for ministers needs to change.
He had asked the Cabinet secretary to provide advice on how such an incident won’t happen again.
The Cabinet Office would move to quarterly reporting of conflicts of interests, sent to the Prime Minister, he said.
There would also be an escalation process if ministers were not acting on the advice on interests, and in-person annual reviews would be held with ministers to discuss potential conflicts.
Each minister would be asked to nominate someone in their office to be aware of possible conflicts to “act as a second pair of eyes”.
Conflict disclosures would become a standing item of Cabinet meetings.
Hipkins said he was also looking into restricting shareholdings that can be held by ministers. This would be a significant change, but he believed it was an appropriate step.
'Very disappointed in him'
The Prime Minister said he didn’t believe Wood had acted with any intent for personal gain, describing him as hardworking - but that he had shown a lack of judgment.
Hipkins said he didn’t know what the shares were worth. The bank shares were in the “tens of thousands” and the other shares were less than that.
Asked if Wood lied to him, Hipkins didn’t answer directly, saying Wood hadn’t appropriately disclosed his shares. He said he met with Wood to talk about the shares and accepted his verbal resignation which was then finalised.
When asked if Wood wilfully misled him, Hipkins replied: “It was still an issue I don’t quite understand”.
On Wood’s explanation of why he didn’t disclose the other shares, Hipkins said Wood told him he'd had the shares for a while.
But Hipkins said that wasn’t adequate: “I don’t accept it was just simply something he didn’t get to. It should have been a priority and it wasn’t... his explanation was they had been the trust for a long time.”
He didn’t understand why it hadn’t taken so long - years - for Wood to manage his shareholdings.
“I believe Michael to be an honest and decent person. I am very, very disappointed ... the amount of time it’s taken to identify any relevant issues is unacceptable."
“He still hasn’t given me a good explanation,” Hipkins said of why Wood hadn’t declared them sooner.
Wood’s future in politics was a question for him,” the Prime Minister said, noting MPs who made mistakes have come back from that.
Asked if Wood could become a Cabinet minister again, Hipkins said that would be considered if the opportunity came up.
