How Wood came a cropper – and his new jobs
Michael Wood says that 2023 has taught him the importance of taking care of the “small” things, but he remains in the thick of the Labour movement, writes Luke Malpass.
Former Labour Minister Michael Wood is a man with many jobs: Union negotiator, sitting on the Labour Policy Council and now as a part-time staffer to former colleague Phil Twyford.
He’s also just started campaigning for Labour in Mt Roskill, the seat that he lost at the last election to National’s Carlos Cheung. Of course he won’t confirm that he will actually run for the seat, saying the members will have to choose.
The man once feted as a future Labour leader – especially in the Auckland Labour Party and the industrial left – before resigning his ministries (before he was sacked) and then losing his seat as Labour got turfed out of Government, is now reflective, and continuing to be busy in left-wing politics.
His work is wide-ranging, beginning with the E tū union, where he is covering aviation, media and water as a “specialist negotiator”.
“For me it is a bit of a return to what I really believe in and love, which is doing what I can to support working people in New Zealand,” he said. “I’m busy in the Labour Party as well. I’ve got a role on the Labour Party Policy Council and it’s a big task ahead of us there as we rebuild our policy offer to try and get us in a winning position for 2026.”
He is also doing a small amount of work as an “MP support advisor” for Twyford, the MP for Te Atatu, which he says involves supporting his outreach to ethnic communities, “to make sure that we’re understanding the issues and that we are supporting and encouraging them to engage in the political process and be connected with their MPs”.
The job also comes with access to various parliamentary resources such as the library and the parliamentary directory. That could be helpful to a man trying to get his political career back on track. But at present he won’t be drawn on whether he will run again. Although work is starting in Mt Roskill this month.
“I’m determined that we need to win the seat back for Labour and we need to work very hard over the next three years. It’s a little bit too early in the cycle to make commitments about exactly who it will be. And you have to respect the process.
“So I’m just putting my shoulder to the wheel to make sure that we’ve got the team in place and that we are doing all the work so that we win it back. And then I’ll make a firm decision about that a little bit closer at the time in terms of whether it’s me or not.”
But it was the manner of his departure from the ministry that will potentially follow him around in any comeback.
A number of Labour insiders and MPs familiar with the matter told The Post that Labour took a 4-point dive in polling off the back of the Wood share scandal, which the party did not regain. Of all misbehaviour and incompetence on 2023, it was the weirdness of the Michael Wood saga that really sunk Labour.
In essence, Wood had not made appropriate declarations about conflict of interests relating to shares that he held in Auckland Airport. It subsequently turned out the Cabinet Office had reminded him a dozen times to do so. As the saga wore on it turned out he actually had more shares that had not been disclosed that also caused conflicts. He resigned as minister on June 21 before he was sacked.
Nearly a year on from his downfall, Wood has reflected on what he says are the small things you have to do in order to concentrate on the big ones.
“I worked my whole adult life to build a career in politics. And to try and serve the community and make changes that I felt would make New Zealand a better place and that had been my whole focus for 20-odd years.
“And then you have a year like I had last year and that goes quite quickly.”
Wood is still vague on exactly why he didn’t declare the shares but says he has learned the lessons from what, borrowing from the Queen, he calls his very own “annus horribilis”.
“I was doing a lot of really, really big stuff in my ministerial roles, changing laws, working 90-hour weeks, trying to really
“For me it is a bit of return to what I really believe in and love, which is doing what I can to support working people in New Zealand.” Michael Wood
achieve some big changes and lost sight of really what seemed like a relatively small area off to the side, and that caused me to come a cropper.
“There’s a great lesson in terms of making sure that you keep tidy and look after what might seem like small things, if you want to get on and deal with the big things.”
He also thinks he did not explain himself as much as he should have at the time.
“We have this phrase in politics and public life that we use a lot in New Zealand, which is ‘explaining is losing’. And I think one of the mistakes I made is sort of an approach which was you know, don’t don’t talk too much about this, don’t kind of explain to people what was going on, just sort of put your head down, say you’re sorry, and move on.”
Doing that, he said, was a mistake. More explanation would have been better.
Wood is back in the thick of Labour politics – in the unions, on the Labour Policy Council – which also happens to be holding policy meetings about taxation, and doing some work for Twyford. None of this is unusual for MPs who get turfed out and want to come back – but they do want to come back.
He also says that he has developed more empathy for MPs who go through what he did.
And he has some views on what Labour needs to do – go back to the drawing board.
“Once every 15 years, every 18 years, you come out of government. It is the one time in the political cycle where you have a little bit more time and space to say okay, let’s go back to the fundamentals. Let’s really examine the values and what we’re all about and what our purpose is in 2024, in New Zealand, as the Labour Party and make sure that the things that we’re focused on are the right things – that they’re true to our values and that they’re relevant to people's lives.
“We had a big loss. And that was incredibly difficult for everyone who cares about the Labour Party, but there’s now a lot of energy and determination and unity about this particular task in the rebuild.”
We haven’t seen the last of Michael Wood.