Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): 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."