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You could have heard a pin drop at Question Time yesterday.

How many times had Michael Wood been asked by the Cabinet Office to sell his Auckland Airport shares?

We had thought six times was bad but it turned out to be 12.

In a day of questions that saw the Government as decimated as any day I have seen watching these things, Paul Goldsmith of National asked Wood whether it was dishonesty or incompetence.

Wood, who looked ghost-like, didn\'t really answer. He didn\\u2019t have to.

ACT, in a series of questions designed to embarrass, gave examples of whether or not people entering various processes involving Governments and Government departments could be assured that the people they were dealing with didn\\u2019t have a conflict of interest. Especially if the Prime Minister couldn\\u2019t trust his own minister to not have a conflict of interest.

Grant Robertson, as Labour\'s point man on rules around questions, tried valiantly to stop it, but couldn\'t.

He also failed yesterday to get the speaker to rule against Mark Mitchell asking Ginny Andersen if we feel safe from crime, the way she has been claiming.

What matters in Question Time is twofold.

First, it occasionally elicits stuff the Government don\\u2019t want you to know, with yesterday being one of those days.

Secondly, when it does do that, it provides the Opposition i.e National and ACT, with momentum.

It\'s not always made public because the press gallery is such a shadow of its former self and the lack of experience means a lot of this stuff never gets recognised, far less covered.

But it has been many a year, and I have seen a lot of years, since I have seen a Government as badly on the mat as this one was yesterday.

Chris Hipkins has inherited the Wood scenario, providing proof, yet again, that his predecessor was barely interested in any detail at all, far less the sticky bits.

You want to look at a picture of what a dead man walking looks like? You had your choice. Look at Hipkins at about 2:10pm yesterday. If Wood looked justifiably sick, Hipkins was punch drunk, barely conscious and desperate for the bell to end the round.

I would have thought it goes without saying, but Wood can\'t survive this. Because this now goes to Hipkins\' leadership.

It\'s one thing for Ardern to be useless and hands off, but this is now on him.

12 times.

Five-year-olds don\'t get asked 12 times to do something. No one ever, for anything, has been asked 12 times.

Records in incompetence, or skulduggery, are being set here.

Even though Hipkins has literally no one in his empty cupboard of ministerial talent left, he can\'t ignore this any longer.

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