Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced Jan Tinetti, Ayesha Verrall, Willie Jackson and Kiri Allan are being shifted up the Labour rankings, with Nanaia Mahuta and Andrew Little dropping down.

Hipkins said he also recognised "fairly early on in the piece" the need for an Auckland minister.

"My engagements with the business community last week indicated that actually some clarity and focus and coordination of our efforts in Auckland would actually be quite useful, so I'd already started thinking about that and of course, the floods occurred right at the time when the reshuffle was right at the front of my mind.

"Auckland is a major economic powerhouse for New Zealand and as I said ... everyone across New Zealand needs Auckland to thrive if we're going to thrive as a country."

He rated Michael Wood to handle that responsibility alongside his other big portfolios including Immigration and Transport.

"He's a proud Aucklander, he's as associate minister of Finance he's going to be right in a lot of those big economic discussions which of course Auckland is a big consideration in."

"In my conversations with Michael, he indicated he wanted to keep the portfolios that he has ... I wanted him to play a bigger role in the economic team and clearly with Auckland he's the logical person to lead that."