Urgent Debates — Ministerial Resignation—Hon Michael Wood

Members, I have received letters from David Seymour and Christopher Luxon seeking to debate, under Standing Order 399, the resignation of the Hon Michael Wood as a Minister. The applications were received on Wednesday, 21 June, but I indicated that I would consider them today, in light of giving priority to another urgent debate application yesterday.

This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The resignation of a Minister will not always lead to an urgent debate—Speakers’ ruling 207/5. After weighing up the circumstances and the public interest in ministerial probity, I have decided to grant the application. David Seymour’s application was received first. Therefore, I call on David Seymour or another member on his behalf to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

on behalf of David Seymour: I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

The wheels are falling off this Government. When I look across the House, I feel like I’m watching an episode of Looney Tunes as wheels, one by one, fly off the shambolic car bouncing down the road towards the cliff of 14 October. The car doesn’t have any wheels left. Kiritapu Allan, Meka Whaitiri, Stuart Nash, Meng Foon, and now Michael Wood—at least five wheels have fallen off this year. They’ve even lost the spare tyre.

This is a conversation that I’m sure Chris Hipkins doesn’t want to be having. It’s a mess of a year for Labour. His Ministers just can’t seem to sort out their conflicts of interest. The Cabinet is more conflicted than James Shaw at a steakhouse.

We had Stuart Nash playing Cabinet Manual bingo, trying to break as many different rules as possible. He interfered in active cases with the Commissioner of Police. He tried to interfere with the judiciary. He gave donors his preferential ear, and he broke Cabinet confidentiality and collective responsibility. Now, ACT is usually pretty opposed to collectivism, but when it comes to Cabinet, even we think that it’s pretty important.

But we’re not here to talk about Stuart Nash; we’re here to talk about Michael Wood. Stuart Nash had three strikes and was barely out, but Michael Wood has had 12 strikes and he’s still not out. The whole thing has just beggared belief. Michael Wood, for all of his faults, previously never would have been accused of a lack of diligence, which is why everyone has been so taken aback to see him go down in a tailspin of lazy incompetence. He held on for his dear life to his shares in Auckland Airport, despite being reminded by the Cabinet Office to sell them on 12 separate occasions—12 times over two years—and by the Prime Minister’s office, actually by two separate Prime Ministers.

Michael Wood’s Auckland Airport shares lasted longer than Jacinda Ardern. Was he playing a game of chicken with the Prime Minister? Did he think, “If I can just hang on to these shares until she resigns, then the problem will go away.”? Who knows? There aren’t too many people who can claim to have so tenaciously taken on the Prime Minister’s office and the Cabinet Office for such a length of time.

But of all the possible issues over which to go to war with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and at the altar of which to ultimately sacrifice your career, a few Auckland Airport shares is actually a strange one. To be honest, a part of me felt sorry for Michael Wood when the story first broke. I imagined him buying shares as a teenager, going to the stockbroker with his parents and spending his savings on some Auckland Airport shares because he liked planes. Then later, his aviation enthusiasm journey coming full circle as Minister of Transport, and being too sentimentally attached to those shares to sell them. I mean, he seemed like a diligent man. Reckless incompetence just didn’t seem to work as an explanation.

But after yesterday’s revelation, reckless incompetence is the only explanation. It turns out Michael Wood also had undisclosed shares in Chorus, in Spark, and in the parent company of the Bank of New Zealand. In his various roles, Michael Wood has been involved in decisions directly affecting these companies. As Minister of Immigration, he put telecommunications technicians on the Immigration Green List, the same Green List that medical professionals spent months begging to expand to nurses and in-demand medical specialists, and, just this week, Cabinet announced a Commerce Commission investigation into the banking sector. How ironic that the banking sector inquiry, Labour’s latest attempt at a distraction from its last scandal, has ended up being fuel on the fire for the next one.

Labour was desperate this week to distract Kiwis from the fact that they’ve been racially discriminating when prioritising surgical wait-lists. So they announced their pointless inquiry into the banking sector, and what’s that going to do? The grocery sector market study is already all wrapped up, so is the fuel market study, and what have they done? Fuel importer margins are the same; in fact, they’ve gone up in diesel.

Kiwis are still feeling squeezed at the pump and their groceries still cost an arm and a leg. People are coming up to me, telling me that when they do their weekly top-up shop, it feels like they’re doing their weekly shop—that filling up their little Suzuki Swift is the price they’d expect to pay to fill up a four-wheel drive. You can do all the market studies in the world, but they won’t make up for Labour’s utterly incompetent economic management, and they won’t wind back the inflation that Grant Robertson’s borrow-and-spend approach to problems has created. But they went ahead and announced a banking market study, and all that’s managed to do is add another conflict to Michael Wood’s rap sheet.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to have one undeclared financial conflict of interest may be regarded as a misfortune, to have two looks like carelessness, to have three looks like incompetence, and to have four looks like a head on the ministerial chopping block. ACT supports Michael Wood’s decision to resign his ministerial portfolios. Given the duration, significance, and total inability to manage the conflicts in question, we say stepping down was the right thing to do.

Some people have said, “It’s just a few shares. What’s the problem?” This issue goes to the heart of our democracy. The power held by the Government comes with an enormous degree of trust from the New Zealand public, and it’s of paramount importance that citizens can have trust that those wielding the decision-making power do not have financial vested interests in the outcomes of their decisions. People developing new subdivisions need to be able to trust that the independent hearings commissioner doesn’t have interests in competing subdivisions. Pub owners applying for a liquor licence need to be able to trust that the licensing committee members don’t have investments in a competing pub. Miners applying for permits need to be able to trust that the responsible Minister hasn’t invested in a company that mines. This is the trust that Kiwis need to be able to have in a Government. Michael Wood has broken that trust, and his Government has broken that trust—really, that’s what this debate boils down to.

Citizens place their trust in a Government to uphold the rule of law, to provide core services as efficiently and as effectively as possible, and to create fair policy and regulations. Any perception of a conflict of interest erodes that trust, and this Government is burning through trust at a startling pace.

What is it with this Government and conflicts of interest? Michael Wood is symbolic of a wider problem—a rot within this Government. It seems anywhere a light is shone a conflict is found. We had Kiritapu Allan, the Minister of Justice—she had received over $10,000 in donations from Meng Foon and his wife. But wait, wasn’t Meng Foon allegedly a non-political appointee reporting to the Minister of Justice? Apparently so. But it’s all in a day’s work for Labour’s tight-knit family. Fortunately, they don’t need to worry about that one any more, after Foon was cast asunder for another conflict. Foon was strewn on a June afternoon, or was he? He came out swinging, saying he hadn’t actually resigned. News of Foon’s doom was communed too soon, and the Prime Minister’s office had leaked his resignation. Far out—what a fiasco!

In response to Michael Wood’s resignation, Chris Hipkins has announced more rules and more bureaucracy. That’s this Government in a nutshell. The problem is not with the rules; it was with Michael Wood’s failure to follow them and Stuart Nash’s failure to follow them. Hiring more people to say Ministers should declare their conflicts of interest is not going to solve the problem, just as every other swollen bureaucracy they’ve established hasn’t solved the problems. They just make life harder and more expensive.

Chris Hipkins has lost control of his Cabinet. I’m sure he’s sick of playing Cabinet clean-up, and I don’t blame him—but Kiwis are going to have a chance to clean up the whole Cabinet soon. On 14 October, Labour won’t have a choice but to listen to Kiwis, who are fed up with a Government who has broken their trust. ACT is looking forward to it; I’m not so sure that Labour is. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It is obviously with a heavy heart that I stand to speak in this debate. The resignation of our colleague, Michael Wood, is obviously the right thing for him to. The Prime Minister’s acceptance of it indicated his frustration and anger at the situation. New Zealanders do deserve better than what the saw from Michael Wood, and, therefore, it was appropriate that he resigned.

I do want to say, though, as I begin my contribution, that I sat on the other side of the House one day when a member of the ACT Party walked in here and told New Zealanders that he’d stolen a dead baby’s identity. I sat on that side of the House when we learnt that Rodney Hide, the great perk-buster, had been taking perks to travel overseas. So it does happen in this House, from time to time, that people do things that they regret, people do things that are wrong, but I do think it’s important that we all remember our history in that regard.

When the Prime Minister spoke yesterday about receiving Michael Wood’s resignation, he indicated that he had been alerted to additional shareholdings that Mr Wood held in the JM Fairey Family Trust of which he is both a trustee and a beneficiary. The Prime Minister indicated that these new shareholdings raised significant concerns around whether Michael Wood had identified and managed his potential and real conflicts of interest properly.

Obviously, we had had the earlier incident involving the Auckland Airport shares, but this set of new shareholdings draw into question a number of other decisions in roles that Mr Wood had. Obviously, members will be aware of the earlier discussions of the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office had had with Mr Wood around the management of his shareholdings, and because he had failed repeatedly to identify, disclose, and appropriately manage those conflicts of interest, this is the reason why Mr Wood took it upon himself to resign, and the Prime Minister accepted that resignation.

I say it is with heavy heart for two reasons. The first of those is that Michael Wood has been a good and valued colleague. He has been a competent Minister, a hard-working Minister who has achieved a lot in the portfolios that he works in. As has been stated by members from across the House, he is a person who they have seen as diligent, who they have seen as hard-working, and, from time to time—I know members across the House won’t always say it inside the House, but they have worked with him, particularly in his role as immigration Minister to achieve good outcomes for their constituents, as well as for the country as a whole.

Michael himself released a statement yesterday where he made clear that he understood that his actions meant that he needed to resign and he apologised to the Prime Minister and to the New Zealand public for the fact that he had not managed his conflict of interest effectively and he took responsibility for that in doing so.

So I have a heavy in the sense that he is a colleague that I have valued and someone who I do think genuinely believes in public service and in serving New Zealanders.

The second reason I have a heavy heart is because it is important that, as Ministers, we uphold the Cabinet Manual and the oaths that we take and the undertakings and commitments that we make upon becoming Ministers. We need to engender confidence across the New Zealand public that Ministers—and, indeed, members of Parliament more broadly—are behaving in line with the undertakings that we make. And so whenever a situation like this occurs, it causes distress to all of us, I think, in the House to see this kind of thing happen.

The Prime Minister has responded in terms of how to make some systemic changes in the wake of Mr Wood’s resignation to ensure that we are able to have a tighter disclosure regime for Ministers.

The first of those changes is that Cabinet Office would move to quarterly reporting of conflicts of interest to the Prime Minister. Currently, we do that as part of an annual review or on an ad hoc basis as particular issues arise. Moving to quarterly reporting will create a consistent time frame and a consistent process for which conflicts of interest can be identified and then disclosed and then managed.

Secondly, there will be a new escalation process if a Minister is not fully engaging with the process or following the advice of the Cabinet Office on the management of a conflict of interest. The Cabinet Office will now be able to escalate the matter rapidly and directly to the Prime Minister to avoid a situation where a Minister would repeatedly ignore their guidance.

Thirdly, there will now be in-person annual reviews with each Minister to discuss their conflicts. At the moment, the annual review of Ministers’ interests is conducted by way of letter at the end of the financial year. An in-person meeting will ensure that any issues that arise can be more directly addressed and resolved.

Fourthly, each Minister will have to nominate a dedicated person in their office to support them with their conflict of interest processes. This means, essentially, there will be another set of eyes in an office around making sure that all conflicts are managed appropriately.

And fifthly, conflict disclosures will now become—and, in fact, already, have become—a standing item at the start of each Cabinet or Cabinet committee meeting. The Institute of Directors recommends this approach, as it means it’s a standing item and, therefore, nobody can argue that they weren’t aware that they needed to declare those interests at the beginning of a meeting.

So that set of initiatives that the Prime Minister is undertaking and putting in place with the Cabinet Office will tighten up the process significantly. But nobody is making any excuses. The rules are clear: the failure of Mr Wood to keep to the rules is the reason why he is no longer a Minister today.

It is worth noting—and the Prime Minister noted this in his comments about Mr Wood’s resignation yesterday—that in Australia, there is a code of conduct for Ministers that requires that they divest themselves of investments and other interests in any public or private company or business. That is, that other than public superannuation funds or publicly listed managed funds or trust arrangements where the Minister has no visibility or control of decision making—a “blind trust”, as it is commonly known. Ministers in Australia are unable to hold shares in any other way other than that. I know that the Prime Minister has said he wants to consider whether that approach would be appropriate. I’ve had some conversations in recent weeks with Australian Ministers who indicate that that very clear line has made it much easier for them. Many of them have had shareholdings in the past but, on becoming a Minister, they know exactly what the rules are, they make the shift to the managed trust or the blind trust or keep things within their superannuation, and there is simply no way one way or the other. That is, obviously, something the Prime Minister is seriously considering, and I think all members in the House might want to think about whether that is a good idea to make sure that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

I want to reiterate the fact that I don’t believe that Michael Wood has acted at any point during this process with the intent of personal gain. That is simply not in the character of the name. What has happened here is there has been an extremely large oversight and poor exercise of judgment in the management of conflicts of interest. As a result of that, Mr Wood has resigned. He will be searching his soul, and he will have a heavy heart too. I want him to know, on behalf of his colleagues, that we love him and that we continue to do support him, acknowledging that he has done the right thing by resigning in this instance.

I also want to acknowledge the leadership of the Prime Minister here, Chris Hipkins. In the four or five months since he has been the Prime Minister, there have been many issues that New Zealand has had to deal with, including the severe weather events, including dealing with the ongoing impacts of the global economic crisis that we’re seeing, making sure that New Zealand rebuilds its way out from that. The Prime Minister has been doing an excellent job of leading the country. He has been internationally out there, ensuring that trade agreements have been finalised, making sure that New Zealand is well-represented, and this weekend he will go to China for a very high-level and high-profile visit. The Prime Minister is doing an excellent job of leading a Cabinet that is completely committed to the work that we have to do to build an ever-stronger, more prosperous country where we include people. We have made great strides on that in the last few years and, indeed, in the time that Mr Hipkins has been in charge of the Government. The Government remains fully focused on that work and we look forward to continuing it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, New Zealanders tuning in to this debate might well wonder why on earth all this fuss about a Minister and his shares at a time when the economy is in recession and where we are having high inflation and people struggling to keep up with the cost of living; when we’ve got a rise in violent crime and a plague of ram raids and real issues around trying to restore law and order; where we’ve got an education system where a large number of kids are not attending school regularly, and when they do, the results of their studies are not keeping up with where they were in the past; and in the health system where we’ve spent billions and billions of dollars and, notwithstanding all the talk and the promises around mental health, we just hear today waiting times for children in mental health have gone from 28 days to more than 70 days in the Wellington region. So there are many, many challenges—serious challenges—for this country that we need to deal with, and yet we are talking about the resignation of a senior Cabinet Minister over failures to do the basics in terms of managing the conflicts of interests.

So we take no joy in this on this side of the House. We don’t get excited or happy about it. What we see is a Government that is losing its coherence. It’s showing itself to be incompetent and not focusing on the real issues of the day at a time when New Zealanders have real challenges.

So what happened—what happened with Michael Wood? It started off with the fact that he became Minister, he became the Minister of Transport, and it turned out he also had a substantial pile of Auckland Airport shares. Now, the Minister of Transport sets regulations that affect the value of those shares. He also is responsible for Auckland’s public transport plans and spending plans, which also have a real influence on the value of Auckland Airport shares. So the obvious thing he should’ve done right at the start was just sell the shares, and that was his first mistake, because he didn’t.

Then, he didn’t actually declare that he owned the shares for more than a year. He feebly came up with the excuse that he thought because they were in a trust he didn’t have to declare them, which was pure nonsense. Eventually, after more than a year, he got round to declaring the shares publicly in his pecuniary interest, but then he didn’t manage that conflict of interest, because he carried on continuing to make conflicted decisions as Minister, such as those related to the North Shore Airport rules and regulations.

So, three mistakes there, and in the meantime he’d been carrying out a conversation with the Cabinet Office, because he had told the Cabinet Office—not the public and the pecuniary interest, but the Cabinet Office—that he had these shares and he was going to sell them. Then, we had the black comedy, I suppose, that slowly emerged of the six times that he had promised to sell the shares and then it turned out it was 12 times that he promised to sell the shares and then it emerges today that there were 16 conversations and he never quite got round to it. Then, we had the indignity of a Minister of the Crown saying, “I was too busy, too busy doing important things as Minister to focus on this trivia, and it never really happened.”

So we have the image of an ineffectual Prime Minister Chris Hipkins standing in front of his Cabinet colleagues, laying down the law, saying, “You’ve got to get these conflicts sorted and you’ve got to obey the Cabinet Manual.” He sat them down; they all sat around at the table after Stuart Nash’s imbroglio, after Kiri Allan’s imbroglio—he sat them down and said, “We’ve got to get this right.” Michael Wood was sitting there with his fingers in his ears, not listening. So that made the Prime Minister look ineffectual.

I am bound to say this whole episode reflects very badly on the previous Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who ran the shop and was responsible for the Cabinet Office and for more than a year and a half allowed a situation where one of her senior Ministers had a conflict and wasn’t managing it and was refusing to do what he said he was going to do time and time again. That reflects very poorly on her management of her Cabinet over an extended period of time.

Then we got the new Prime Minister, who came in focusing on bread and butter, eating sausage rolls, and being Mr Nice Guy, and he has failed to manage this as well. So what we see is a culture in this Cabinet and in this Government of entitlement. I don’t often agree with what the commentator Matthew Hooton says, but I think he actually got it right on this one, which to say that it appears that Michael Wood had come to the conclusion that all these rules in the Cabinet Manual around conflicts were only written to deal with the filthy Tories and that right upstanding socialist members of the Labour Party would never actually—it’s not appropriate for them to have to worry about such things; they’re only for the filthy Tories. And he carried on confident in his moral great worth and that he didn’t have to deal with this sort of nonsense. That was, I suppose, implicit in his reply at the start when he said, “Oh, well, I was too busy as a Minister doing 70-hour weeks, and I didn’t get around to it.” So as well as a culture of entitlement, it also reflects a culture of slackness when it comes to managing these conflicts.

Why are conflicts of interest important to be managed? Because, ultimately, Governments spend billions and billions of dollars, and they also pass regulations, such as our Minister of Transport, that have a real impact on the value of other assets. So it is very important, obviously, in a country with such high standards that it is clear that Ministers or their families wouldn’t benefit from that spending directly or from the decisions that are made, and that’s why it’s important.

So the Cabinet Manual says that “Ministers are responsible for ensuring that no conflict exists or appears to exist between their personal interests and their public duty. Ministers must conduct themselves at all times in the knowledge that their role is a public one; appearances and propriety can be as important as actual conflicts of interest.” That is why, in the undergrowth, we’ve had the implication that Michael Wood, while he never intended to make any money out of this and wasn’t focused on his personal gains—and that’s probably the case, but that’s not the point. The point of managing conflicts of interest properly is so that society as a whole can have confidence that the ministry and the Minister and Cabinet as a whole are managing these things effectively, and the failure to do so is a real problem. So we’ve got the standing-down of the Minister, the distraction that has created, and it reflects a culture of entitlement and slackness in Cabinet.

The other point I wanted to raise was in relation to the Minister who has just spoken, the Minister of Finance, still referring to Michael Wood as competent, as hard-working, and as someone who achieved a lot and was diligent. I don’t like to be unkind but I think that that can be challenged. When we think about it, in the transport space, I think all New Zealanders are conscious of the fact that the roads are in terrible shape. There are potholes everywhere. They haven’t really started and finished an effective major new roading project since they started. They’ve open a few roads that National started—brilliant roads in Cambridge, and one going north of Auckland and one coming out of Wellington. Yes, they’ve opened those but none of them was started by them. In fact, all the extensions were stopped by the Labour Government. We are also conscious of the fact that this is a Minister who managed to spend $55 million on a cycleway over Auckland Harbour Bridge that went nowhere and was a complete waste of time, and did nothing.

We’re also conscious of the fact that this is the Minister that’s responsible for the slow tram down Dominion Road, and they’ve probably spent $200 million on consultants. I don’t know the exact figure but it’s a huge sum, and they achieved no progress whatsoever. This is a Minister that has really not achieved a great deal at all on the transport side. On the industrial relations side, I was talking to him—in fact, I had probably the last engagement with him as Minister at 11 o’clock yesterday. We had the Estimates, and I was asking him why, despite all the promises, the Government had done nothing to deal with the complications of the Holidays Act, which was putting huge problems into both the private and public sector. Nobody can work it out, but he hasn’t done anything about that. He’s spent all his time and attention on an ideological union-friendly fair pay agreements regime, which will be repealed forthwith.

So I just think Michael Wood does need to go away and reflect upon his actions. It is absolutely right and proper that he has resigned and that the Prime Minister has accepted that. I do encourage the ministry as a whole to reflect on this and on the importance of managing conflicts of interest properly.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As others have said, it’s with a heavy heart that I stand to speak in this debate. It is a sad day when any Minister or member of this House has to step down, in particular in the types of circumstances that we see arising round this debate. But this is, in fact, a debate about democracy. The issues that at the core of this debate, to us as the Green Party, are not about an individual Minister but about strengthening public confidence in our democracy, both in the way that we are seen and in fact operate in Government and as members of this House of Representatives.

New Zealand has a proud history of democracy. We often applaud ourselves rightly for being the country that first gave women the vote. We often applaud our very, very high rankings on corruption scales in terms of being free from corruption, and perception is a big part of the way that democracy operates. We know that every time there is a so-called scandal in this House we all lose voters. The public don’t want to see this in any political party. So it is a sad day for us, and it’s a day of reflection.

But what I would hope is that we do that in terms of the changes to come in a holistic view. So we look at trust in our electoral system, in our lobbying rules, in our electoral funding rules as well as the Cabinet Manual. We do support the Prime Minister’s approach in its strength for looking at system change, for looking at more transparency—a further consequence and accountability in the way that Ministers who fall short of their reporting responsibilities are dealt with.

I have heard the Opposition say, “Well, this was a case of the rules being already in place and being broken by a Minister.” But again, having those rules in place is, at its highest point, about keeping our Governments from conflicts of interest, in fact, but also the appearance that we are accountable, that our possible conflicts of interest are transparently dealt with so that we don’t get to this place.

To have an opaque system, I think, has not served us well, and there is vast research now that the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders support reform around transparency of the rules for all politicians, starting with political donation regimes—whether it’s lowering the threshold for secret donations; whether it’s actually capping political donations, which I think most New Zealanders would be shocked to find has not happened; setting out rules around lobbyists; whether that’s having a register; or to go further, as other like-minded nations have done, and have a code of ethics for Ministers, members of this House, and also lobbying organisations and individuals to follow, that those rules be made transparent; and to implement rules that show that members of Government, because of course it is most important that the highest-level decision-makers are kept impartial, are in fact impartial and transparent.

So, in particular, I would say that the Prime Minister’s note that he will be seeking advice on implementing a regime similar to that in Australia is welcome. To have clearer rules—and again, public trust in the fact that no Minister with responsibility or visibility in an area of work will be allowed to hold any financial interests in that sector—is a clear signal that we, as a House, and this Government, in particular, at this moment of somewhat darkness, is showing a commitment to changing the rules so that there is a perception of propriety. That there is a notice given to the fact that the public deserve to know that where someone is making a decision, that that person is making that decision based on the welfare of New Zealanders as a whole rather than any other stakes.

Which is why I say the political donations regime must sit alongside this type of reform, because what we are saying is that democracy benefits from trust in the independence of decision makers. That means parliamentarians, as the legislature; as well as Cabinet, as the executive. So they do need to sit together. We’ve had so much research telling us this, including the outcome of the inquiry that came out just this month that that laid out for us just exactly what rules were falling short of that in terms of donations regime; in terms of lobbying. And, now, we have this.

I implore every member of this House to come together, finally, to have some consensus around the fact that rules do need to be updated; that our democracy will only thrive if we do all come together and say, “Actually, we won’t wait for the next crisis.” I do want to remind members from every party that every party will have some form of challenge when it comes to this. Last term, when I raised political donation reform, it was only prioritised when, finally, three different parliamentary political parties got into trouble for donations. It was ranging from the allegation that there’d been overseas political donations received and chopped up to be kept under the limit, to the setting up of the New Zealand First Foundation. These are allegations, of course, and some have been dealt with. This Minister of Justice has finally changed some of the transparency rules along the lines of the Green Party’s policy, and also the previous Prime Minister closed that foundation loophole.

But why does it have to be crisis after crisis that leads us to this reform? It would be awesome if we took party politics out of electoral reform, looked at the evidence in front of us that the experts from the Electoral Commission, the Supreme Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal have repeatedly told us about the ways that we need to strengthen democracy in our nation, because the stakes are high.

I say again: when public trust is lost, we all lose. There is ample evidence that when people lose trust in politicians, they don’t pick and choose between our parties. We disengage them. Ultimately, that means that this House is responsive and responsible to fewer sectors and our society, that our decisions are weakened because of that, and democracy as a whole fails. We are responsible for upholding democracy. We are its representatives at the highest level in this nation; in this nation that has a proud history of democracy.

So we support the Government’s response, but we also ask that we, as a House of Representatives, finally today come together and take an impartial—can I use that word?—approach to electoral reform as a whole to commit to strengthening democracy. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I join with many members in this House who have said that that this is never a topic that this House enjoys debating. I don’t think there isn’t a party in here that hasn’t had to grapple with the loss of a colleague who has been forced to resign from one position or other because we as a Chamber—we as a House—do take these matters with the utmost seriousness; it is something, as parliamentarians, that we do view very seriously. I think the tenor of the debate has been one that shows just how seriously that we do, as a collective Parliament, view these matters.

I think one of the things that nobody in this House is going to disagree on is that New Zealanders rightly expect and deserve very high standards from their Ministers and from their parliamentarians in terms of trust, in terms of transparency, and in terms of people following the rules. What we have seen yesterday with the with the resignation of my colleague Michael Wood is that he accepted that he had fallen short of those expectations, and certainly fallen short in his behaviours of the expectations that our Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, has laid out very clearly to us as Ministers as what he expects, and has paid the ultimate price for that. It’s never a nice thing to have to grapple with, though.

As previous speakers have said in this debate, our transparency and our willingness and openness to declare what potential conflicts our parliamentarians and our Ministers may have, given things they own and interests they have lies, at the very heart of building the trust and the New Zealand system. So not only do Ministers need to disclose anything that may be of conflict of interest in their decision making when they come to make decisions in actively manage any of those conflicts as they arise—declare them and manage them.

We do that through a process with the Cabinet Office, and that is laid out in the Cabinet Manual and laid bare. New Zealand has had a Cabinet Manual, as it is now known, but had previous names earlier, since 1979, and this is very clearly laid out in terms of that authoritative guide to central government decision-making for Ministers and indeed for the broader public service about how things operate. It’s endorsed at the first Cabinet meeting of an administration in terms of how it is going to provide for the orderly recommencement of the Government and the expectations around how it is that things are going to operate from there, and it is an important document at the heart of any Government that is formed in this country, and has been for a number of decades now.

But we as parliamentarians also take our responsibilities to declare any interests that we may have seriously, as well—it’s not just Ministers. We need to declare those through the pecuniary interest process so that everybody can see what it is that a particular member, what interests they have and what could possibly be an influence on them.

One of the things that has come through very strongly in this debate, as I don’t think there are members in this House who believe that Michael Wood’s failure to meet those expectations in terms of the management of his conflicts of interest—and not just the expectations, but to actively put in place all the rail guards he needed to do—was for personal gain. I don’t think there’s anyone in this House who believes that to be the case. But I think what everybody in this House is an agreement on is that we, rightly, have these protections because it is so fundamental to the trust that New Zealanders need to be able to put in their Parliament and in their Government, and that is something that we hold dearly to.

Why I’ve been somewhat heartened by the debate and some of the discussion that we have heard over the last 24 hours, which hasn’t been a pleasant time—but I’ve been somewhat heartened to hear some of the agreement that seems to be building. The Prime Minister has sketched out some of the things that he’s going to put in place in terms of moving to quarterly reporting with the Cabinet Office on the conflicts and not just the annual update as it is now, putting in place a different escalation process if a Minister is not fully engaging with the active management of their conflict, having that dedicated person in your office who can be the second pair of eyes and ears that says “Hold on, you probably need to pull back from being involved in this decision because of X”—I think that is an important safeguard that can be put in place—and also those full disclosures before a standing item at the start of a Cabinet meeting or a Cabinet committee meeting, and this is just good governance practice. This is something that you see at a range of governance environments with it as put in place.

But I think also the Prime Minister is beginning that conversation about regimes such as exists in Australia—such as the restriction regime on shareholding for Ministers and the way in which that can be managed—and it’s been heartening to hear other parties wanting to engage in a really mature way with their conversation and question whether that is a system that we also need in New Zealand so that there’s no ifs, buts, or maybes, but you know that when you become a Minister, there is an action that needs to be taken. It’s in black and white that you need to put that those assets into a different form in terms of it being a blind trust or an equivalent so that you’re not actively involved in the management of those assets.

I think that that is a debate and a discussion that would strengthen us, as a Parliament, if we can have that discussion in a really constructive way because we can see how it operates in Australia, because at the heart of this lies the question of trust, and it’s something the all of us as elected representatives need to take seriously. The public need to know that we understand and know the rules and that we will follow them.

What we are standing here debating today is a debate that’s been sparked by someone who has paid the ultimate price for not following those rules and not following the expectations that were clearly set out by our Prime Minister. But I think we also do need to, in the context of having this mature discussion, acknowledge the hard work that that Minister his put in, but also accept that there is a consequence when the rules are not followed. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This is a really serious topic and a really serious debate. It is actually quite flabbergasting to members on this side of the House who have watched the events of the last month or so since the news about Michael Wood’s shares have become public, because I think, like many members of the public, and I suspect—without being too political—like backbench members of the Government, I think we’ve all just been sitting back and saying, “How did this happen? How did it get to this point?” It is bewildering.

Now look, people have their own views about Michael Wood. Certainly I’m critical of various elements of his discharge of the transport portfolio, but he, I think we’d all agree, is a conscientious guy, and almost pious in his deliberations sometimes. He was about the last person one would have thought would find himself in this situation. But it is, as the previous speaker, the Minister for Infrastructure, said, a really serious matter.

I think there are three things that have struck us on this side of the House. The first is that there’s clearly been a breach of the Cabinet Manual, and, as the Minister who just sat down said, we’ve had that Cabinet Manual for a long time now. The provisions are well understood, and the provisions around the conflicts of interest are well understood. You have to declare them. It’s not that you can’t, as a Minister, have a conflict, it’s just that you have to declare them, and then there has to be a plan put in place around how that is managed. Now, I’ve never served as a Cabinet Minister, but I’ve worked in Cabinet Ministers’ offices, and that’s ordinarily taken really seriously. Many Ministers have conflicts around some things, and it’s just about how those are managed. In this case with Michael Wood, it was not managed, and, in fact, it couldn’t have been managed because there was no proper declaration, and that’s the real point.

What we’ve learnt over the last couple of weeks is that the Minister was told 12 times by the Cabinet Office to divest himself of shares in Auckland International Airport and Contact Energy. Those exhortations fell on deaf ears, and as we now learnt yesterday, there were 16 interactions between the Cabinet Office and his office. It’s just baffling, to be honest. To be honest, I think there are legitimate questions to be asked about the conduct of the Cabinet Office here, because it’s not at all clear to us or the public exactly what happened between the office and Minister Wood’s office, and exactly how much information Prime Ministers—plural—learnt: former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and current Prime Minister Chris Hipkins. Now, again, without being too political about it, in past regimes or past Governments, if a senior Minister or a relatively senior Minister had, essentially, ignored or actually misled, potentially, the Cabinet Office—in the last National Government, that would have been escalated very quickly to the Prime Minister and action would have been taken. It’s not clear that that’s actually taken place in this instance. So there’s a breach of the Cabinet Manual.

The second point—and it’s kind of been glossed over a little bit—is the breach of the Standing Orders, or possible breach of the Standing Orders, which is the pecuniary interests register. Now, the registrar, Sir Maarten Wevers, is conducting an investigation into that, but without prejudging that inquiry, as that would be inappropriate, at first glance it doesn’t look good, because all MPs in this Parliament—this is separate from the Cabinet Office issue—have to declare their interests.

You know, it’s become widely known, but I own 500 shares in Parrotdog Brewery, which I participated in as a sign of good faith in their crowd-funding investments a few years ago, and I’ve held on to.

💬 Simon Watts: How’s that going?

Oh, it’s going well. It’s a great product, Mr Watts. I was going to encourage you to buy some, but that would also be inappropriate, but it’s going well. But most members—well, in fact, all members are required to declare their interests, and it’s always interesting when the register comes out to see who’s got free clothes and—

💬 Chris Penk: Warriors tickets.

—Warriors tickets, in the case of Chris Penk, and various forms of liqueur from Taiwan and China and all sorts of other places. So it’s always very interesting to have a look at. Actually, we sometimes find it a little bit comical, and the media sort of immediately focus on the kind of minutiae of it all—you know, who owns minor shares in craft breweries and things like that. But it’s really important, and, in fact, Parliament has recently recognised it’s so important: we’ve put in place a register for local government as well, because it’s the same principle, which is that people should know what your interests are. Those interests have not been declared, so that’s the second thing.

The third thing is a slightly more esoteric point, which is—and it pains me to say it a little bit—there has, I think, been a degree of contempt for Parliament and the Cabinet Office through this process, and a degree of arrogance that I think people find bewildering. To return to where I started, people are sitting back and saying, “Where does this guy get off thinking that he can just kind of ignore the rules? Do they not apply to Michael Wood?” What is confusing and baffling is that we’re yet to get, really, an adequate explanation. Even in his sort of resignation statement, we saw this kind of backhanded way of essentially excusing himself by saying, “Oh well, I’ve been so focused on my work, I haven’t been able to kind of take care of life administration.”, like that’s an excuse. It doesn’t make any sense, actually.

So that’s the sort of third thing that he is charged with and, I think, guilty of. It is the breach of the Cabinet Manual and the breach of the Standing Orders, but, most importantly, it’s a sort of basic contempt for the rules that apply to all of us in this Parliament.

Why is this important? Because I strongly suspect that there’d be a few members of the public—in fact, quite a few in the last few days and weeks—who have been saying, “You know, law and order is a real issue, and the cost of living. I’m trying to pay the mortgage, and you guys down in Wellington are focusing on whether or not some guy I don’t really know has sold some shares in a company I didn’t even know was listed on the stock exchange.” Well, fair enough, and there’s a degree to which that is true. The reason it matters is that probity in public life is important. We have the regime for a reason, and it’s to guard against Ministers and all of us in the Parliament making decisions in a way that would potentially enrich ourselves.

I’m not, I hasten to add, accusing Michael Wood of that. But the rules are there for a reason, to guard against that. That’s why they’re there, and that’s why they’ve been upheld by successive administrations and jurisdictions.

So the rules are really important. They are part and parcel of our commitment to anti-corruption. We’re all very proud in this Parliament of the ranking in the Transparency International annual indexes, and we proclaim that we’re clean and transparent and that New Zealand is a country governed by the rule of law, and where people here and people in the ministry are not guided by personal enrichment or helping their family members. They’re the guided by the public interest and by what’s right, which is improving New Zealand—and that’s as it should be. I’m not, as I say again, accusing Michael Wood of that, but the rules to guard against that are there, and he, unfortunately, has breached those rules.

So the rules are really important, and the Prime Minister’s done the right thing by removing him from the ministry, because when there are rules that are there for a reason and they’re really important rules and there’s a breach of them, there have to be consequences—there have to be. The right thing has happened here.

Just finally in closing, there is a suggestion that the rules need changing, and, yep, I think there’s some sensible things that the Prime Minister has advocated: things like at the start of Cabinet meetings, just having a quick around-the-room around conflict declaration—actually, that’s no different to what would happen at any board meeting in New Zealand. That’s sensible and that’s fine. But the real issue here is not that the rules need changing; the issue is the rules have been broken.

Actually, the system works pretty well when declarations are made, and it’s not hard to comply. Yep, life’s complicated. Yep, people have got family things, and lots of people in this House have got more complicated financial arrangements than me and some others. But it’s not actually that hard, and it should be the first thing you do as a Minister and as a member of Parliament, in the same way that the Speaker always encourages us to get our pecuniary interests register in on time.

So do the rules need changing? Maybe, but—most importantly—the rules need to be complied with. That’s what hasn’t happened here, and so we welcome the resignation of Michael Wood. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I don’t want to take up too much more of the House’s time on this matter, and it is a most unfortunate matter not just for members on this side of the House and former Cabinet colleagues of the Hon Michael Wood but actually for this House as well, as, indeed, the loss of a member in these circumstances often entails.

I agree with the member who’s resumed his seat, Chris Bishop, in one important step, and that is that probity in public life matters. It is a matter of public trust and confidence in our public institution. And, as I think Golriz Ghahraman also said, a fundamental principle that underpins our democracy is that those in public office and those in public life conduct themselves to a set of standards that maintain public confidence, people know that those exercising power and making decisions in the public interest do so un-conflicted and unaffected by personal interests.

That’s why this is very unfortunate. When I think about the Hon Michael Wood, who I also consider a friend—I’ve known him a long time—he is someone who is ordinarily incredibly diligent, incredibly conscientious, and has acquitted himself as a Minister in that way as well and has done some great things. He has pushed along the transport portfolio, the immigration portfolio, and made some great gains at a time when we most needed it too. But he has transgressed the rules.

The reason we have rules is that, in the conduct of human affairs, there are standards we expect to be kept, we send a clear signal about the standards we expect, and when we transgress them, when we breach them, when we step outside them, there is therefore the grounds to net out a consequence. Michael Wood has met a consequence. He has lost his role as a Cabinet Minister.

It sounds trite sometimes, but being in the role of being a Cabinet Minister is an extraordinary privilege and it is an extraordinary honour, but it carries responsibility and it carries requirements. Being in the role of a Cabinet Minister is an example-setting role that we have in society and in our community. When you don’t meet the standards, then there’s only one course of action, and that is loss of office, and that is what has happened in this case.

The members opposite have quite rightly drawn attention to the transgressions of the rules, of course, and the House should consider that, and that is what we are focusing on in this discussion and in this debate. But the reality is: that transgression having been identified has been met with a consequence. A person has lost their job. That’s what should happen and that is what has happened. It is unfortunate. There have been two or three others as well. But that is the Prime Minister upholding the rules and upholding the standards of public office that he demands and that New Zealanders expect. That is the right outcome and the right course of action in this case.

It will be a distraction to some, but I can reassure the House that it is not a distraction to the rest of Cabinet. We as a Cabinet are getting on with addressing the challenging issues that New Zealanders have: the issues of cost of living, making sure that income support is there; the issues of our health system, adding to the additional 1,300 mental health front-line roles that we now have and didn’t have three years ago, continuing the record investment in upgrading our health facilities; continuing our record of adding more teachers, increasing their pay, adding more classrooms; adding more public houses because those are the things that matter to people. Those are the things that change people’s lives for the better. The rest of this Government is getting on with that work.

Let us stop and reflect and lament about the conduct of this particular Minister and the unfortunate breach of standards that he himself was responsible for but let us also reflect that the right outcome has been achieved and that standards of public office have been properly upheld with a consequence that he has now suffered. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise more in sorrow than in anger, and I reflect on the framing of that discussion by our colleague the Hon Andrew Little, who has just resumed his seat. He spoke of lament, which I think that all who care about this institution of Parliament and democracy must also feel.

I think some helpful discussions have been had about why these kinds of issue matter and, therefore, why the resignation of the Hon Michael Wood as a Minister also matters. I think that it’s right to describe the issues as being significant in themselves, and if we’re thinking about what they signify, we should consider such distinctions as perceived versus actual conflict of interest, the importance of office and institutions more so than the individual, and so forth. But I don’t agree with Mr Little’s characterisation of this as something that is merely significant in itself but which has had no effect on the work of the Government or on the world outside this place, because, actually, it’s been perfectly apparent that the distraction that this has caused the Government is very real, and it would be strange if that were not the case.

If it were the case that Mr Wood’s work programme was not significant, then his resignation would be insignificant, and if this was not a distraction to the Government, then that would indicate that the work that he was doing wasn’t significant. Well, I think it should always be the case that the work of the Minister of Transport, the Minister for Auckland issues, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, and so forth, is significant. Surely it must be, even—as we would say on this side of the House—that aspects of the performance of that role we wouldn’t, of course, commend, even as we might acknowledge in other respects that there have been good-faith attempts to improve the lot of New Zealanders, according to the idea of that Minister and that Minister’s Cabinet colleagues of what constitutes improvement for the lives of New Zealanders.

There has been an element of distraction. If I can give an example from my own electorate, and actually it’s a positive one to the extent that it reflects on the willingness of Mr Wood to engage with the people of the Muriwai community. So in his capacity as Minister for Auckland issues, Michael Wood came to that community. He’s been there a couple of times, and I’ve attended on both occasions, along with other parliamentary colleagues, including, certainly, Vanushi Walters. It was as recently as last week that we were all gathered in that place and hearing the very serious and real concerns of a community that has been torn apart by the movement of the ground, and flooding issues following Cyclone Gabrielle, and to lose the continuity, to no longer have that particular Minister in that role, and to lose the benefit of those personal relationships and connection with the community that have been gained, is actually a highly significant matter.

So I lament the distraction and the disruption that has been caused thereby, along with the inevitable impact that changing of Cabinet roles will have, which is to say that Cabinet colleagues will take on other of his work. No doubt that there’ll be an opportunity cost there in terms of things that they should be turning their minds to, to benefit New Zealanders. Again, I say that regardless of whether we would agree with all the decisions being made, it’s an important thing for decisions to be able to be made for progress, and for the view of the Government to be made, and then New Zealand people can judge that on its merits at all times, including in the face of a looming general election.

I want to talk about also, in my remaining time, the importance of perception being almost as equal to reality. So of course we talk about conflicts of interest being perceived or actual, and that’s a fair distinction in the way that my colleague and friend Chris Bishop has explained that as far as he’s concerned—and it’s a view that I share—there’s no suggestion that Mr Wood had acted in a way designed to improve his financial prospects. Indeed, Mr Wood has said that he’s been ignorant of his own affairs precisely because he has a disregard for those. Well, that’s fine as far as it goes, but, of course, if the institution of Parliament and, indeed, Cabinet and our democratic mechanisms of accountability are important, then in the same way that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done, so too it’s important that perceived conflicts of interest are considered no less serious than actual. Of course, for that reason and the others that I’ve said and others have said, it’s appropriate that he resign. It’s appropriate that that resignation be accepted. So, more in sorrow than in anger, we reflect on the disruption and the distraction that that has caused.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have followed some of this debate from my office and there’s really not much more to be said. So I’ll just emphasise a small number of points and leave it at that.

I think it is true that members on all sides of this House and the New Zealand public expect high standards from Ministers of the Crown and we uphold them in New Zealand, and that’s one of the reasons why New Zealand ranks highest in the world in the anti-corruption—or, you know, lowest levels of corruption index for the world. We maintain that ranking by, when we find examples of behaviour that doesn’t meet those high standards, people pay a high price for them and that has occurred here. So whilst we don’t believe that Michael Wood acted in any of his decisions in a way that was intended to profit himself or his family personally, and, indeed, these shareholdings are at a level where it’s hard to think that one would be influenced in that way—and I’m grateful that other members in the House in the Opposition have acknowledged that point. I think it’s important to Michael Wood that we don’t overstate what has happened here to the extent of inferring that he did act with personal gain but he did not act appropriately in respect of his conflicts of interest.

Final thing I would say is that I’ve taken over the transport portfolio, and I’ve already had quite a large number of meetings with senior people involved in the quite complex structures that we have around transport, and, without fail, all of them have noted to me that they take no pleasure in this because they have found him a competent and hard-working Minister, as the Prime Minister has said.

But, that said, that doesn’t excuse the events that brought this to a head and led to proffering his resignation in the light that his position had become untenable. And with those remarks I will take my seat.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.