Turei Metiria: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2304. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I just want to follow on from my colleague James Shaw and also to acknowledge the contribution from Grant Robertson who particularly focused on both inequality and that being the driver of increased pay and the driver of the concern about it but also his I think very clear description of the fact that this change means that the Government is in control of MPs’ pay. That is exactly the opposite of what many years of work have led to. It is exactly the opposite of the last Remuneration Authority bill that we dealt with in the Government Administration Committee a couple of years ago which was designed to give it more authority over MPs’ pay and allowances. So we are going backwards very quickly here.I do note that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety did not answer my question in his last contribution as to whether the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill would constrain MPs’ pay increases. I can assume only that is because either he does not know because they have not done the modelling or he knows that it is essentially the status quo.Hon Michael Woodhouse: I will address that in my speech.METIRIA TUREI: Well you had the opportunity Minister to address it earlier.Hon Michael Woodhouse: I didn’t have the time. Sadly I didn’t have the time.METIRIA TUREI: You did have the time. It would be good to do so quite soon because otherwise there is no assumption we can make except that the reason why the Government has chosen the quarterly employment survey as the criterion for the Remuneration Authority is that it makes no change and that that was politically palatable to National Party MPs. But actually they do not want to find any means of constraining MPs’ pay. I would like to think that that is not the case but until we see evidence to the contrary that really is the only assumption we can make.There was a very good discussion earlier about inequality and the fact that part of the reason why MPs’ pay is such an issue is that there are massive increases for people who are being paid high wages and basically wages are static and going backwards for many on lower incomes. That is certainly true. The Green Party has been very clear about policy on that as well. Our Supplementary Order Paper 57 which we are putting forward today to link MPs’ pay to nominal increases in the median wage is the one that we put forward last year so it has been on the table and available for the Government to take up for 12 months now. We have also very clearly set out issues around chief executive officer pay—for example the requirement for companies to disclose chief executive officer salaries more clearly define them and provide rationale for those pay increases; to have staff members on the committees that set those chief executive officer pay increases; to require New Zealand’s large companies to report on the pay ratio between their highest-paid and lowest-paid staffers; and to include pay ratios in Government procurement and for Government agencies.Pay ratio is a major issue here. It is the increasing gap between those on the lowest rates and those at the top. We see more information coming out today from the Council of Trade Unions describing how those in the top 1 percent have increased their income by around $100000 between March 2011 and March 2013 meaning that the increase is now 9.7 times more than that for the average worker. This is what is being seen daily by ordinary New Zealanders who are doing their best to get ahead. We have a country of two halves. The bottom half are static or going backwards fighting every day to have a good job and to do their best but still are not getting anywhere. We have the other half who are slowly moving forward and then at the very top there is the 1.25 percent who are moving ahead in leaps and bounds. For as long as MPs attach their salary to those top levels we will continue to be part of the problem.We can solve it. We can be part of the solution by attaching our salary increases to the nominal increases in the median wage which means that we link ourselves to the bulk of the New Zealand population and we have fair pay increases based on a criterion that is not determined by Government but determined by our overall approach to our economic and social policy. That is where the Green Party would like to see this Parliament go. We think it is the fairest thing to do. Thank you.