King Annette: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): The Labour Party will support and vote through all stages of the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill. We will do that because like most members in this House we never asked for a big pay increase we never wanted a big pay increase and we do believe there ought to be restrictions on remuneration. Having said that there are a few matters that need to be discussed.The first I would say to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is that I have just received a copy of the papers that go with the bill. I have just received the departmental disclosure statement from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. I had no chance to read it before I stood to speak—in fact I had 2 minutes—because it was so late in being provided. So then I went through what is in that report and I looked at the questions that were asked of the Government and at the responses from the ministry. Here are some of them. “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill?”—answer: “NO”. “Has further impact analysis become available for any aspects of the policy to be given effect by this Bill?”—answer: “NO”. “For the policy to be given effect by this Bill is there analysis available on: (a) the size of the potential costs and benefits?”—answer: “NO”. “(b) the potential for any group of persons to suffer a substantial unavoidable loss of income or wealth?”—“NO”. “Has there been advice provided by the Attorney-General on whether any provisions in this Bill might limit the rights and freedoms etc.?”—“NO”. “Has there been any external consultation on the policy to be given effect in this Bill or in the drafting of this Bill?” The answer is “NO”.I go on through. “Does this Bill affect …” etc. etc. Can I say to the Minister that this bill affects everybody in this House and it would have been really good if this sort of information had been made available last week or the week before when this bill was proposed. This must have been available to the Government. Let us get things right. We were meant to debate this last week. We were told we were having urgency last week and then at the last minute the whole thing was pulled. I now note that this is version 7.3 of the Supplementary Order Paper to fix the formula. We have also noted Minister that it is pretty sloppily worded. So there has been a hasty decision to bring this in and we do not believe Minister that you have necessarily done the work on it. Certainly the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has pointed out that there are lots of things in this bill that have not been looked at which is the normal practice in any legislation.What we now know is that the sole criterion for setting remuneration under this bill will be the quarterly employment survey for the public sector average ordinary-time weekly earnings for fulltime-equivalent employees using the average for the year to June compared with the average of the previous year to June. Using this measure means the remuneration of members of Parliament will increase in line with the average public sector salary. So what I want to ask the Minister is whether this is different from what was proposed last week and how exactly it is different from what was proposed last week. I will get on to that in a moment.I want to first of all point out that this bill has been a long time in its gestation. In 2010 just before Christmas John Key urged restraint over the setting of MPs’ salaries. That was 5 years ago. In November 2011 John Key said he was disappointed with part of the MPs’ salary increase. That was 4 years ago. In October 2013 John Key said MPs’ salary increases should be small or zero. That was 2 years ago. Come forward to 26 February 2015 when John Key said in Parliament that he may change the law on how MPs’ rates are set in the future. Today we are about to do that but for practically every year for 5 years the Prime Minister was going to do something about the pay rises that MPs receive. The Prime Minister talked about doing it for days when a decision came out from the Remuneration Authority and then he retreated back to the ninth floor to do nothing. Finally he has decided to do something about it. He had the power to do something about it. He had the numbers to do something about it. He had the ability to consult with members of the House to do something about it but it is only now that we have a bill before us rushed into this House to be passed under urgency so that members of Parliament do not receive the increase that was provided through the Remuneration Authority.As I said none of us asked for the pay rise. I have yet to meet one of my colleagues who would want this sort of pay increase. We feel that we should not be getting pay increases that are greater than other New Zealanders’. We all know what happens when members of Parliament are seen to get more than other people; there is a backlash from the public. So we believe that there ought to be a proper way of setting the salaries. Of course that is why we ended up with the Remuneration Authority. There is a history of political meddling in the way salaries and conditions are set. A very good example arose over the last few days over former members. When you look at the history of that it goes right back to the 1970s when MPs were trying not to take bigger increases and it was put into travel.So we have had political meddling going on in MPs’ salary setting for a long time. We do need to have a way that sets it fairly and in line with other New Zealanders. What we want to know from the Minister when he gets into the chair a little later on is whether he has got the formula right. I am not sure because last week when we were meant to be debating this bill I just happened to read David Farrar’s blog. Unlike the Government he had done some work on the methodology that the Government was using to set MPs’ salaries. What did he find? He found in fact that if MPs used the formula put up by the Government last week we would have got a bigger pay increase than what was actually provided. Under the new legislation that was put up last week the average would have been 3.1 percent; under the current law it would have been 1.7 percent. So what we want to know Minister is whether you have got it right now. We do not want to come back into this House to fix up a mistake. So the Minister is saying yes he has got it right—a guarantee from the Minister that this formula will do the job; this formula will be fair. In fact I have to say Minister we would argue that until the Government addresses the very high salaries paid to chief executive officers of Government departments we are not actually addressing some of the problem in New Zealand. So we would like to see how that is going to be addressed in the future.We will support this bill. We want to see our salaries reined in. We also want to see the salaries of chief executive officers in the public sector reined in because they have got way out of kilter with the rest of those who work in New Zealand. So we will closely examine Minister when you are in the chair in the Committee stage exactly how it will work because what we do not want to do is to waste the time of this Parliament fixing up a mistake made in a formula because the work was not done before the Prime Minister rushed out to say he was going to do something. It has to be right. This is not good enough. At the end of the day every member in this House takes the odium from the public when our salaries and conditions are raised in the public media. So Minister I want the assurance later on that you have got this right and perhaps you can explain in detail how the formula works because it is incredibly complex to be able to understand.