Chris Hipkins isn't ruling out sacking his Transport Minister over a botch-up involving his shares in Auckland Airport.
It's been revealed Michael Wood has $13,000 in Auckland Airport shares, something the Opposition said is a major conflict of interest for the Transport Minister.
Wood didn't publicly declare the shares until last year and even kept them under lock when he stepped up to become Transport Minister.
Asked if he would sack Wood over the revelations, Prime Minister Hipkins told reporters on Tuesday he hadn't "had a chance to sit down with him for a conversation - I'm going to do that before making any judgement on it".
"I'll answer further questions on it this afternoon," Hipkins said.
National has said Wood's position "may be untenable" but the Minister told media he had not offered his resignation.
"What I have acknowledged, in this case, is that I have made an error in terms of not declaring these shares earlier on," Wood said. "I did declare them last year and I did from the beginning of my time, as minister, make [the] Cabinet office fully aware of the shares that I held."
Despite the matter only being made public now, Wood insisted the shares were declared in 2022.
"In the first year that I was a Minister, the error that I made - which I apologise for because I got this wrong - was that I had instructed the person who deals with these things for me to effectively get rid of those shares. I thought that had happened, I was wrong about that so I didn't declare them that year."
Wood said he later realised he still had the shares and that's when he declared them.
"I recognise I made an error in terms of not declaring these in the first register I had as [the] minister, that was a mistake - I do apologise for that. I subsequently put that right."
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