National MPs correct interest register, as investigation into Michael Wood launched
Parliament published amended pecuniary interests on Wednesday, with three National MPs having to correct their original declarations which were incorrect. No MPs from other political parties corrected their answers this year.
National deputy leader Nicola Willis left off the fact she had a mortgage on her family home with ANZ. This has since been corrected.
Willis said she spotted the mistake the day the original register was published and corrected the mistake that day. It took until yesterday for Parliament to compile and publish MPs’ other amendments.
Gerry Brownlee incorrectly stated he had just one rental property on the original register – the updated one reflects the fact he has two.
Fellow National MP Sam Uffindell forgot his two superannuation schemes: AustralianSuper and Westpac KiwiSaver.
The number of corrections is up on last year, when only David Seymour corrected his declaration, reflecting two speaking and appearance fees he had been given and later donated.
The appalling pile on and demands for Michael Wood to be stood down are driven by something far more malicious than his supposed corruption.
Michael Wood, whom I am privileged to have met many times over the years, is a scrupulously moral and ethical man of enormous mana and I take him at his total word that this airport share conflict of interest was a mistake.
A stupid mistake, but a mistake never the less.
The reason the right are attempting to denigrate Michael with corruption claims is naked resentment at his achievements to date!
His championing of the Fair Pay Agreements has set the political agenda of the right back 30 years and there is a feral anger towards Wood and his constant championing for beneficiary welfare increases and minimum wage upgrades!
He donated the shares to an Anglican Charity.
This isn’t a righteous campaign against corruption, it’s a character assassinating shanking for ideologically jealous motives.
Fuck going along with that!
Michael Wood is a good man, and I won’t stand by and allow a mob lynch a good man.
@ me bitches!
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12… Not 6, not 8, not 11… 12
Whereas Barbara (she went to war for her family, Herald 2022) Kuriger threatened MPI staff over 50 times .
“The correspondence, obtained by Newsroom under the Official Information Act, shows Kuriger used her Parliament email address in more than 50 emails with MPI, including while she sat on the Primary Production Select Committee and held National’s agriculture portfolio. Many of these emails included National Party letterhead.”
Just because you meet someone and they seem like a good person doesn’t make them a good person. Ted Bundy was charismatic. One has to look at deeds and actions. Once is a mistake, twice is careless…12 times?
This has to be the stupidist post I’ve seen to date.
I found the “donation” to the church an ironic loathsome way the religious pay off their sins. Thought that went out in the 50’s.
And he may be a well meaning nice chap and God knows the “left” (extreme inverted comma’s) are full of these types but his track record as a Minister is poor. He appears to not know what he is doing. He should have been booted out for the epic waste of tens of millions if public money on the bike bridge fiasco. And that’s scratching the Michael Wood surface.
Few think it or have even said he’s corrupt, just obtuse and or plain dumb.
I think you rate Nationals ability to think coherently far too high. I’ve yet to see a strategy, much less clinical thinking. Wood just gave them yet another opportunity to tell the world how in practice, Labour are incompetent. Nothing more complex than that!
Most commentators on this grubby little saga miss the point. It’s nor about Wood’s airport shares, or Key’s Tranz Rail shares, or Luxton’s rental properties. Concentrating on specific cases of so-called conflicts of interest obscures the general question — whose interests do all capitalist politicians actually serve.
In one of his comments on this affair, David Seymour said the people need to be able to “trust the New Zealand Government to be open and transparent about who it serves.” But that’s the last thing a government can do. Ultimately, all our parliamentarians serve the interests of the propertied ruling class. Some, like Key, are fully-fledged members of that class. They all have a stake in ensuring the preservation of the present system. So far from being “open and transparent” about who they serve, they endlessly repeat, as did Paul Goldsmith several times last week, that basic lie of capitalist politics — that they “make decisions in the best interests of all New Zealanders.” If anything, the hypocrisy of this statement is more blatant when it comes out of the mouths of Labour or Green politicians, who while uttering it also claim to represent the interests of “low-income families” or “marginalized groups” (they can never bring themselves to say “working class”) .
The big majority of “New Zealanders” are working people whose interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the propertied rich. If any government really did act in “the best interests of all New Zealanders”, it wouldn’t last very long. If the usual media campaign or lobbying didn’t work, the capitalist rulers would flex their money muscle, by threatening to organize an investment strike or a run on the currency to bring any uncooperative government to heal, as they did in 1999-2000 when the then Labour-Alliance government mooted a mild programme of reforms.
Terry 100%
Scrupulously honest he is not. The man is a dick head.
This is a man who called the protesters ‘a river of filth’. They were all human beings with gripes of different types.
Correct me if I am wrong…but there are likely a few in the NZ Labour Caucus that would like to see the back of Michael Wood too. FPAs, resurrection of NZ owned Coastal Shipping, big pay hike for bus drivers are some of his achievements.
Holy crap–a Labour MP that gets stuff done. So Torys–you can go and sit on a can of baked beans!
You’re wrong.and corrected.
Why are ‘shares’ an issue requiring withdrawal from decisions, when having rentals or trusts don’t require similar withdrawal?
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