The political radar has been switched off for some in Labour and it's Chris Hipkins’ political capital taking the hit, writes political editor Jo Moir
Comment: Even if the Prime Minister had wanted to act quickly to deal with his Transport Minister’s conflicts of interest, he couldn’t because he was kept in the dark.
It was four days before anyone sent the political headache up the chain to Chris Hipkins, and as for Transport Minister Michael Wood, he's known for years he had a conflict of interest that needed dealing with, yet never attempted to resolve it.
READ MORE: * Hipkins loses sight of no-distractions policy * Nash's poor judgement only half the story
Michael Wood’s office was asked to respond to questions from the NZ Herald on Thursday morning about his $13,000 worth of shares in Auckland Airport, which have only been declared on the MPs’ register of pecuniary interests since January 2022.
The shares are a conflict for his role as Transport Minister and while he raised the issue with the Cabinet Office, he also assured the office six times since November 2020 that he was in the process of selling them, but never has.
As for his declaration on the pecuniary interests register, there’s no record of them pre-January 2022 despite Wood being an MP since 2016 and having owned the shares since he was a teenager.
The Prime Minister says there are two issues that need fixing before he will consider reinstating Wood in his beloved transport job – selling the shares, and fixing the pecuniary interests record.
The latter is already in motion with Wood contacting the registrar on Tuesday morning, and the former is a work in progress, which Wood says he hopes to have sorted as quickly as possible.
Put this alongside Education Minister Jan Tinetti facing the Privileges Committee this week for failing to promptly correct the record in the House about her office’s involvement in delaying truancy figures, and former minister Stuart Nash’s office withholding information from an official information release about his transgressions with political donors, Hipkins is starting to look like he’s losing grip on his executive.
In the case of Nash, that was another clear example of a minister stuffing up and the Prime Minister’s Office knowing about it, but not thinking it was important enough to bump up the chain to the boss (in that instance it was former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern).
By March, when Nash’s leaking of confidential Cabinet information to political donors came to light, it was Hipkins left to clean it up.
Those staff who didn’t see the big red flashing light with Nash are still working in the Prime Minister’s Office, and Hipkins made it clear their actions weren’t good enough and he expected them to raise such matters in the future.
In the case of Tinetti, she told the House she had nothing to do with the release of the Ministry of Education’s statistics because she thought she didn’t, until her office told her they’d had a hand in delaying them.
On Friday Wood’s office sounded the alarm bell with Hipkins’ office about media enquiries, yet it was Monday night before Hipkins was finally informed (ahead of his morning media round and the publication of the NZ Herald story on Tuesday morning).
Late Tuesday morning Hipkins had a “broad discussion” with Woods and stood him down.
On paper it looks swift from the Prime Minister, but this issue was first raised five days ago, and as soon as the questions were asked, Wood knew he hadn’t sold his shares yet and that the issue was going to be a problem for him and his leader.
Wood should have got on the phone to Hipkins on Thursday when the cat was about to escape the bag, and then immediately contacted the registrar to get the ball rolling on fixing his undisclosed pecuniary interests.
It is unlikely Wood is trying to sneak one past the goalie – given his salary of $296,000 you’d hardly put your career on the line for a measly $13,000 in shares.
Wood will almost certainly get the portfolio back once he’s fixed the two issues, but Hipkins has identified a much bigger problem in the process.
He still has staff and ministers who think time isn’t of the essence when there’s been a political stuff-up, and Hipkins should be deeply concerned by that four months out from an election when every little error can be quickly turned into a scandal.
