There is an uproar about Michael Wood not declaring a paltry shareholding in Auckland Airport. There are claims of a conflict of interest, but really it is a big fuss over a pathetic level of investment that could only constitute a conflict of interest to the most feeble-minded.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has fielded further questions about his decision to stand Michael Wood down from the transport portfolio over failing to properly disclose shares owned in Auckland Airport.
Hipkins spoke to journalists at a post-Cabinet press conference from 4pm. He was joined by Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, who announced that all vaping devices sold in New Zealand from August this year will need to have removeable or replaceable batteries.
The Herald today revealed Wood owned about 1530 shares in the airport, worth about $13,000 at the current share price. He is in the process of selling the shares.
Wood has owned the shares since he was a teenager, but only began declaring them in the MPs’ register of pecuniary interests – the public list of MPs’ financial interests – in January 2022.
The opposition has argued there is a conflict of interest, given he owned the shares in an airport while he was the minister responsible for the aviation sector.
Hipkins said the Cabinet office interview process was a thorough one, going through new ministers’ assets and potential conflicts of interest. He said there would always be conflicts in a small country but it was about how well they were managed.
NZ Herald
Michael Wood is hoping an abject and cringe-worthy apology will see him right and normally it would, except this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten those inconvenient shares.
His feeble excuse may apply to a rookie MP who isn’t very knowledgeable about Standing Orders. But Wood has served both as the Government Chief Whip and Deputy Leader of the House. Both roles require you to have expert knowledge of Standing Orders. In fact, the only people I would expect to have a greater knowledge of Standing Orders would be the Speaker and the Clerk of the House.
Little Napoleon may be in a spot of bother over a pathetically small investment. He is probably more upset at his socialist credentials being ruined by a teenage investment in Auckland Airport, no doubt the result of a hot tip from a share broker as Wood was measuring his inside leg at Hugh Wright’s.
But the real scandal is not what Michael Woods has done or the perceived conflict of interest, no, the real scandal is what this jumped-up little union oik has failed to achieve as Minister of Transport.
He’s failed to build a light rail system to the airport through his own electorate despite both him and Jacinda Ardern promising it would be built three years ago. Imagine, a National Party Minister of Transport who insisted on continuing with a $30B white elephant through his electorate to the airport when the shares were hidden from the public.
He’s failed to get a second harbour crossing started across the Waitemata.
He’s failed to keep our roading infrastructure up to spec, resulting in roads that are more potholes than road surface.
He’s overseen Waka Kotahi being more concerned with bilingual road signs than fixing the roads in the first place.
Then there is the failed Te Huia ‘rapid’ train between Hamilton and Auckland, that originally terminated at Papakura, if it even gets there, but now meanders down to The Strand in Parnell slower than a wet week under a Labour government. ‘Rapid rail’ it ain’t.
That is the real scandal. I can’t believe all the furore over Michael Wood and his airport shares. Nobody is in an uproar that he has delivered us nothing in his portfolios, ever.
Just because he resembles Basil Brush doesn’t make his abject failure as a minister funny. It just makes it sad.
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