OPINION: How hard is it to sell shares? Not that hard. Certainly not two years, six months, and 19 days + counting hard.
Certainly not too-hard-basket hard, even for shares whose paper certificate is in some filing cabinet at a shares register somewhere.
Yet that's how hard it's been for Michael Wood who was sacked as Transport Minister on Tuesday for failing to sell his $13,000ish worth of shares in Auckland Airport.
He bought them in 1998 when he was a youngster, and since becoming Transport Minister he's been told 12 times by the Cabinet Office to sell them to prevent a conflict of interest.
Twelve.
Yet Wood didn't. Despite a dozen reminders from officials – the first way back on March 19, 2020.
Wood has since been hounded by the Cabinet Office to absolve his conflict of interest by simply selling his shares. But he didn't.
Why the heck not?
He's tried to explain it away as life admin that he never got around to – but his story doesn't stack up.
He says he instructed his sharebroker to sell the shares in February last year (one year, two months, and 13 days since first being told to do so) but they couldn't be sold because more information was needed from the share register, likely the share ownership certificate from 1998.
An email was sent but it went to an incorrect email. That halted the whole process and it ended up on a to-do list in May 2022.
That's where it stayed, languishing on his to-do list despite officials following it up a further three times before it became public.
I've spoken to sharebrokers about how long it could take for shares purchased in 1998 to be sold. The answer? Two months tops to sort all the certificate sourcing and paperwork.
Why was Wood treating this with such carelessness? Surely he would have known how much of risk it posed to his career? Shares in the country's biggest airport while partly in charge of aviation?
He's an astute politician and one of the Government's best performers. He's a great communicator, he's a good strategiser, and he's very good when a microphone and camera are shoved in his face.
So what the heck happened? Why has he stuffed this up so much?
It's either intentional negligence or gross incompetence.
He's known as Mr Fix It. But this week he became Mr I Fluffed It.
Lloyd Burr is a Newshub political reporter.
