Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Madam Speaker I haven't had a half as long and industrious career as you but in my decade in Parliament I've seen this play out multiple times in our parliamentary history. A Government comes in freezes the MP salary and then later on has to unfreeze it and there's a big boost. There's been tinkering over my decade in Parliament and unfortunately we still have not seen an enduring solution. So while the Green Party is supporting this—because it's preferable to the status quo which has seen unrealistic and I think indefensible pay rises for MPs—the fact is that I still don't think we've got an enduring solution that's going to see something with political and public support. Now the previous speaker—I think in jest—talked about how MPs didn't want to speak long in this debate and draw attention because the public doesn't want to see MPs talk about their pay. I don't think that's true. I think the public don't want to see MPs once again tinker with MP pay when they'd rather see an enduring solution.Now we support this legislation because it's better than the status quo but it is not the ideal solution. For many many years—probably 10 years now—the Green Party have been advocating for a much more robust clear system that was transparent easily understood by the Remuneration Authority by politicians and by the public that was actually based on a clear metric. Now the problem of course is that while this is better than the status quo essentially we're kicking the ball back to the Remuneration Authority who have six criteria on which to base their decisions. Now what I think would be much easier for the public to understand which would be much more politically defensible would be to index our salaries to the nominal weekly median income.What I mean by that is that by linking it to public servants—and the previous speaker Michael Wood mentioned how as public servants had seen pay increases so MPs had under the previous system. But what public sector employees receive is not the same as what your everyday Kiwi your median Kiwi on the street actually receives. What I think is critical is that what we have seen is MPs' pay actually increase faster than public servants' because we're taking a percentage. Now a percentage on $50000 is a lot less in weekly take-home pay than a percentage on $150000 and equally so for higher remunerated positions in the Parliament. What the Green Party has advocated for and what we're going to continue to advocate for is actually making it the nominal increase. So if the median New Zealand worker gets $5 extra in their pay packet a week that's what MPs should get.Now I appreciate this might not be the most popular position in the House but I think it would be the most popular and defensible position amongst the public. Analysis the Parliamentary Library did for us found that had we had the system since 2011 when again we saw another political decision to freeze MPs' pay we would be $11000 less remunerated as a result if we'd used this nominal median income.Now I think it's important to reflect we are in the top 2 percent of income earners so I'm not going to take a quick call to try and not draw attention to it. I think we have to face up to the fact that we are very well remunerated for the work that we do and actually if the public's going to see continuing pay increases it should be indexed and I think if you were going to index it to one thing it's the median worker and how they're doing.Now I think the important point to raise of course is that if the median worker goes backwards I think so should members of Parliament. It's important that we actually reflect if there are tough times out in the economic community that we are sharing the burden and that is not likely to happen using the current criteria. So while it's good that we're changing the system while I'd point out the benefits of moving to a triennial or a three-year system rather than the annual pay rounds that we have seen in the past we think there is a much more robust enduring positive fair transparent clear solution ready and waiting. We've been advocating for a long time and I just fear that in the future we're going to see the same situation play out once again until we have such a clear fair system.But still the Green Party is able to support it because it's better than the status quo and we'd like to acknowledge all those who submitted and played a role in the Education and Workforce Committee. I'd like to acknowledge the committee and the chair and thank Parliament for making a step in the positive direction here today. Kia ora koutou.