Barry Soper’s column yesterday wondered whether Michael Wood was “stinking rich or dishonest”. There is a good chance that he is the second: dishonest. After all he is a politician and they are almost always dishonest. But he sure as hell isn’t stinking rich, because he’s sacrificed his career over a Big Mac, chips and a Coke.
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.
On no fewer than a dozen times Wood was asked by the powerful Cabinet Office whether he had dispensed with his Auckland Airport shareholding.
“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.
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.
NZ Herald
Chris Hipkins was rendered speechless by the events that unfolded, but I think that there is another more believable option that Soper has failed to take into account.
Michael Wood has spent a life time as the understudy and lickspittle of Phil Goff. He learned an outrageously enlarged sense of entitlement in the process and an unwavering belief that rules are for other people to follow.
I think Stephen Franks sums it up best by describing Wood as “A union-trained greedy prick misled by experience that generally rules are for little people (the filth) not the clever insiders”.
Of course there is an even more simplified explanation: that Michael Wood was the purest example of the Peter Principle in action. Wikipedia describes the Peter Principle:
The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to “a level of respective incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
Wikipedia
Which rather suggests that the former menswear inside-seam expert was neither qualified nor bright enough for the roles he eventually held and was, in fact, a dolt – a stupid person and so far out of his depth that he would eventually be caught out by idiocy.
Labour – Affirmative Action for the Incompetent. Labour – Equality for All, even dead-set-useless people deserve top jobs.
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