National leader Christopher Luxon says under-fire Transport Minister Michael Wood's position is "increasingly untenable" after the latter's failure to immediately declare $13,000 worth of Auckland Airport shares.
National's acting Auckland spokesman Paul Goldsmith earlier said he believes Wood's failure to immediately declare the shares was a conflict of interest and breach of his obligations as a minister under the Cabinet Manual.
“[It] presents a clear conflict of interest for a Minister of Transport responsible for Auckland’s transport network and as Minister for Auckland.
“As Transport Minister, Mr Wood continues to be responsible for the Auckland light rail project, which is intended to link central Auckland to the airport. As Minister for Auckland, he frequently sits down to discuss Auckland transport issues with the mayor [Wayne Brown] and possibly its own investment in the airport."
In response, Wood has said it was an error he apologises for and he believed the shares - which he bought as a teenager - were in a trust. He also said he had attempted to divest the shares last year but the process was stalled, and he was aiming to rectify it "immediately".
Until last year Wood was also the minister in charge of aviation.
This morning, Luxon said it was "another Labour personnel issue" and Hipkins should have suspended Wood on Friday.
"He should have spent the last three days finding out exactly what the story is and come today with some more proper answers."
Luxon said was "something seriously going wrong" with Hipkins' management of his "team".
"We have absolute standards and it's mission critical in New Zealand that we can trust our government and our governance. That's what's built our success in our system. As soon as you start to have relative standards... that's a real problem.
"What we've seen, time and time again, is a series of ministers, former ministers, not understanding Cabinet Manuals, codes of conducts, and actually not internalising that and actually taking action on it. Chris Hipkins comes out and says he's going to look into it, every time he's looking into it, but he's not delivering an outcome, he's not getting a change in culture."
Asked if he believed it was a sackable offence, Luxon said the situation was "increasingly untenable".
Luxon also said it was "pretty easy to sell shares".
"It's not rocket science to be able to sell shares, it doesn't take a long time to do that."
Hipkins is expected to give an update on the issue at his post-Cabinet press conference - after he has spoken to Wood - at 4pm today.
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