Barry Soper: Michael Wood's behaviour went from unacceptable to plain dishonest

Sacked Labour Cabinet Minister Michael Wood is either so stinking rich that he doesn't know which trust he's stashed his cash in, or he's just plain dishonest.

The latter's much more likely when it came to his embarrassing performance over his Auckland Airport shares.   

On no fewer than a dozen times, he was asked by the powerful Cabinet office whether he had dispensed with his shareholding.

"I'm on to it," he said on each occasion, even when he was asked by the now Grande Dame Jacinda Ardern whether he had got rid of them, because as Transport Minister they would have been a conflict of interest.

Why Chris Hipkins didn't sack him then is beyond belief, especially when he said his actions were unacceptable. It seemed then that unacceptable behaviour was acceptable when it comes to sitting at the Cabinet table in this Government.

His behaviour went from unacceptable to just plain dishonest. Hipkins says he asked Wood at the time of the airport debacle whether he had anything else to declare. No was the answer, which beggars belief.

An inquiry into his stash was to find otherwise and again it beggars belief that Wood could have thought his shareholding in Chorus and Spark would have gone unnoticed. As Immigration Minister he put telecommunications technicians on the green list after representations from Chorus for him to do so.

And he's got shares in the National Bank of Australia, parent company of the Bank of New Zealand but shareholder Wood remained silent at the Cabinet table when they were discussing an inquiry into banking, which was announced this week.

Given he's now resigned from Cabinet, in the real world sacked, which Hipkins couldn't get his mouth around, Wood will be regretting ever selling his airport shares, which he did in order to save his bacon, or so he naively thought.

Well, he's now out of the fry pan and into the fire, burnt to a cinder. Any chance of him making it back into Cabinet in the future is remote, unless of course, they win the upcoming election.

A 'conscientious and hard-working minister' he's been described as by his executioner Hipkins, and goodness only knows the talent pool in the Labour caucus is obviously no deeper than a puddle.

At 62 MPs, it has the biggest caucus in recent history and yet all of his portfolios have gone to overloaded, senior ministers, meaning none of them will get the attention they deserve.

And that says everything about this parlous Government.

Barry Soper is a New Zealand political journalist, and has been featured regularly on radio and television since the 1970s. Currently, Soper's main role is political editor at Newstalk ZB, a radio network in New Zealand.