Michael Wood ‘cast a shadow’ over public’s trust in MPs - inquiry

Former minister Michael Wood. Photo / Dean Purcell

Former Transport Minister Michael Wood has been referred to the Privileges Committee after an inquiry “cast a shadow” over the “trust and confidence that the public are entitled to expect they can have in their elected representatives” because he did not adequately declare his financial interests to Parliament.

The Registrar of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests, Maarten Wevers, investigated Wood’s declarations after the Herald revealed Wood had not declared his shareholdings in Auckland Airport and Contact Energy in several of his returns. Despite having owned the shares since the 1990s, Wood only began declaring them in 2022.

Wood told the inquiry he “took full responsibility for what had happened and that it was important not to cast blame on staff members”.

Wood later resigned as a minister after he failed to declare a significant portfolio of shares.

MPs are required to declare their shareholdings to Parliament as part of the annual pecuniary interests process, and, if they are members of the executive, to the Cabinet Office.

The Wevers report looks into the Parliamentary side of the equation.

Wood admitted to Wevers that not declaring the shares until 2022 “was an error”.

Wood told the inquiry the way he put his returns together each year was to ask his senior private secretary or his executive assistant to bring his previous year’s return, and then he would revise and edit that earlier return.

Last month it was revealed Wood had been asked 12 times by the Cabinet Office to divest his shares, but had not done so.

Asked why, when he was being pursued by the Cabinet Office, he had not also updated the pecuniary interests register, Wood said the two issues were “compartmentalised as different processes”.

“I didn’t think about the Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests. I didn’t consider it,” Wood said.

Wood said he did not consider the register, even when receiving dividends from the shares.

“He ‘didn’t pay much attention to it’,” the report records Wood as saying.

Wevers also criticised Wood for telling media after the story on his shares had broken that he had “followed up and corrected the Register of Pecuniary Interests going back to 2017″.

This was not correct. Wevers said that, at that time, no correction of prior declarations had been made.

“What did he mean by that comment to the media?” Wevers said.

“[Wood] replied he ‘must have misspoken in the heat of the press scrum’. He thought he might have mixed up the Standing Orders and Cabinet Office requirements,” Wevers said.

Wevers recommended the Privileges Committee consider the matter. Speaker Adrian Rurawhe referred the matter to the committee on Tuesday.

It will consider whether Wood did break privilege and, if so, what sanction he should receive.

National’s Simeon Brown said the “transparency around and management of conflicts of interest are important principles of our democracy. The perceived failure to adhere to the rules is, on the face of it, a serious issue and it’s appropriate that the Privileges Committee looks at it”.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.