By Audrey Young
political reporter
Murray McCully faced the sack as Tourism Minister had he not quit voluntarily.
The Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley, yesterday told Tourism Board chairman Peter Allport that the whole cabinet supported the board and then said so publicly, laying the groundwork for pushing Mr McCully out if necessary.
The board meets today and had planned to debate whether its relationship with Mr McCully was damaged beyond repair.
Three directors were for Mr McCully and three against, and if the board had remained split Mrs Shipley would almost certainly have extracted the minister's resignation, had it not been offered beforehand.
National MPs had hoped the Auditor-General's report last week on "unlawful severance payments of $340,000 to the former board chairman Bryan Mogridge and his deputy, Michael Wall, would have ended the corrosive relationship between the board and the minister.
But it was not until Monday night that Mr McCully telephoned Mrs Shipley to say he believed he would be better out of the tourism portfolio.
That was confirmed yesterday by another phone call at 11 am.
Mrs Shipley announced his resignation at 1 pm, almost a week after the Auditor-General's report laid bare Mr McCully's dysfunctional relationship with the board.
Mr McCully said he had offered to resign from the cabinet altogether, but Mrs Shipley persuaded him to stay as Minister for Sport, Fitness and Leisure as well as the minister in charge of the America's Cup, the millennium events and ACC reform.
When the report was released last week, Mr Allport said pressure from Mr McCully and his advisers had virtually paralysed the board at a critical time for New Zealand.
But Mr McCully said yesterday that his relationship with the board was not a factor in his resignation, nor was the board's criticism of him last week.
"The statement from the board, frankly, I would have regarded as pushing me the other way. The last thing I would have been prepared to do was walk from the job simply because a crown agency that was supposed to report to me had some directors who were diffident about that.
"That's a highly good reason for sticking around.
Rather, he said, pressure from political opponents and the media was affecting his performance as a minister. "They were going to maintain the pressure and I had to be realistic about what that would do to the overall performance, he said.
Mrs Shipley reiterated her view that there was nothing in the Auditor-General's report to warrant Mr McCully's resignation.
The International Trade Minister, Lockwood Smith, has been given the tourism portfolio.