Heather du Plessis-Allan: What’s the point of sacking Michael Wood?

OPINION:

If Michael Wood doesn’t get the sack it’s in part because there’s no point any more.

He definitely deserves the sack. Any minister busted misleading the PM’s office, the Registrar of Pecuniary Interests, the Cabinet Office (multiple times) and a media outlet has done more than enough to warrant getting the sack.

It’s unclear whether he meant to mislead each of them into thinking he’d sold his shares when he hadn’t. He might himself have thought his broker had sold them when he told the PM’s office they were sold. And when he told the Cabinet Office. And the media outlet. And when he failed to update the Register of Pecuniary Interests. And when he ignored the Cabinet Office when it asked him 12 times to get on with it.

But it actually doesn’t matter any more whether he meant the deception or not. There’s a point at which your sins are so many that your motives are irrelevant.

$16,000 worth of shares is not a big amount but that doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal.

It’s not trivial for a Minister of Transport to own shares in Auckland Airport while making decisions on a potential rival and while not declaring the shares or declaring the conflict of interest. If it was trivial, the PM’s office and the Cabinet Office wouldn’t have spent energy chasing him for 2.5 years to get rid of the conflict of interest, and the Registrar of Pecuniary Interests wouldn’t be investigating him now.

So, you ask, if it’s a big deal, why isn’t the Prime Minister sacking him?

Because there’s no point any more.

PMs don’t sack errant ministers because they want to, or even necessarily think the minister deserves it. They sack errant ministers to retain public faith in the Government. It says that kind of behaviour isn’t tolerated and the minister in question is an isolated example.

But no one believes Wood is an isolated example in this Government. Not when Stuart Nash had to quit after falling foul of the Cabinet Manual in leaking Cabinet details to donors. Not when Kiri Allan fell foul for also failing to declare a conflict. Not when Jan Tinetti this week became the first MP in 15 years to be dragged before the Privileges Committee.

Sacking Wood would not convince the public he’s an isolated example of sloppiness. There is no public faith to retain. Voters have seen the ill discipline and, worse, have seen that Labour Party officials at best knew about it and at worst tolerated it for years in the cases of Nash and Wood. It would take years to convince voters otherwise.

Chris Hipkins does not have years. He has four months. So if he doesn’t sack Wood he’s made the right political calculation. Because his next best s***** option is to hold on to one of the few able ministers he’s got.

Wood is competent. Not all voters will like what he does, given his priorities are bicycles not potholes. And not all his colleagues like him given his high opinion of himself. But he’s widely said to be hardworking, capable and effective. If you don’t agree, at least accept that he’s senior, even though he’s only been a minister for two-and-a-half years. And seniority is a commodity Labour does not have a lot of. Not now that Nash, Meka Whaitiri and Jacinda Ardern have left the building.

Wood is also aligned with the unions and said to be good at bringing in donations. Labour needs both because they’re basically the same thing and Labour is a marathon’s distance behind National and Act in filling the coffers.

The fact that Michael Wood has survived thus far is not an indication that he didn’t deserve a sacking. He did. But politics works like this. Sometimes the innocent get sacrificed and the guilty get saved. Luckily for Michael Wood, his rule-breaking came after so much other Labour Party rule-breaking voters probably aren’t surprised. Or able to be convinced otherwise.