SaltyNZ:

 

Handle9: 

 

It wasn’t really but it looked bad. The taxpayer ended up paying the same amount

It’s why this stuff gets silly.

 

 

 

That's why it was wrong - unfortunately we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. When the National Party does it, they mostly get away with it, it's expected from them. Only the most egregious behaviour gets enough attention to embarrass them, and even then it's got to be a pretty high bar before you get the boot. Witness: bedlegs Uffindell and Do You Know Who I Am Kuriger still around, not even a smack from the leader.

 

It's also AOK for Luxon to campaign on tax breaks for landlords when he owns 7 houses mortgage free, 4 of which are rentals. Like, how is this not being hammered relentlessly every day? There could not be a more clear and actual conflict of interest. Even the Americans expect their presidents to put their assets into a blind trust to remove any conflict of interest, and they're a cess pit of lawful open corruption.

 

When a Green Party MP slips up or even appears to slip up as in this case, it's potentially the end of a career for someone who was obviously morally degenerate and the scum of society, mitigating factors be damned. See Metiria Turei or Golriz Gharhaman (note, I don't mean Gharhaman should face no consequences, merely that lots of people including some here went completely OTT on how she must always have been bad etc. rather than allowing for the incredible stress she faced even more so than most MPs).

 

It extends to a lesser extent to Labour as well. Wood failed to properly declare $13K in airport shares he originally bought as a teenager and was involved in regulatory discussions about a completely different airport. Ultimately this cost him his job (FWIW I believe his story that he could not quickly find the details of how to sell shares he bought 30 years ago). 

 

So ultimately we need to be a lot more careful to not do something that looks even a little bit off. Even if, as you point out, it makes no actual difference.

 

Managed conflicts of interest are inevitable and acceptable. One of the things that differentiates New Zealand from the US is the expectation that MPs are allowed to have a personal life and personal interests. Providing they are correctly disclosed and managed there's no real issue there.

If we were to require no conflicts of interest there would be very few actual MPs. Being an environment minister is a conflict of interest if you are also a member of an envirnmental party as is being a labour minister and being in a political party that accepts donations from unions.

Wood didn't resign over a conflict of interest. He resigned beacuse he repeatedly didn't declare the conflict in a timely manner, didn't manage the conflict as advised 12 times by the office of the cabinet and then lied to the Prime Minister when asked if there were any further potential conflicts. Losing his cabinet positions is exactly the same penalty that Kuriger recieved for her unmanaged conflict of interest. The only difference is the voters of Mt Roskill had clearly had enough of him at the most recent election.

Turiei resigned because she failed to declare her criminal behaviour as an adult. If she'd campaigned on it prior to being elected it would likely have been a non-story. It blew up because of the way she managed it.

Gharhaman engaged in what is alleged to be theft while an MP and then went to ground for a week once it hit the public domain. If she had managed it better she wouldn't have faced the same level of approbrium.

Uffindel is a lot more complex as it happened as a minor. He did also disclose that during candidate selection so there wasn't a question of him being dishonest about what happened or lying about it. It was investigated by a QC, and it would be incredibly damaging to the party if it was found later that he engaged in that sort of thing when he was an adult. Given that seems to have failed to uncover repeated incidents it seemed an appropriate response.