Turei Metiria: Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionTurei Metiria: Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14079. Text is subject to correction.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I was able to participate in the Government Administration Committee which considered the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill and I want to thank the select committee and Ruth Dyson for her chairing of that committee. The committee took a very practical approach to the issues which have—over a number of years—been very very hotly debated within committees in various forms and in the public. The public has a real interest in transparency—in their confidence that MPs will not be the deciders of the perks that we might have and in there being real transparency in the process for how it is decided and some real independence. So it was good to be part of that discussion.It is also true that we worked very hard. The Greens put up some real arguments about the changes to the bill that we did not agree to. We did not agree with the submission from the Clerk of the House which was to change the bill so that the decision making for travel services for members of Parliament would be retained by the Speaker of the House. We do not agree with that position. We put that position to the select committee. We spent some weeks discussing whether that was the right or wrong thing to do.What I was really pleased about as a member of the committee in those discussions is that—regardless of the fact that I lost the debate on that particular issue—there has no doubt been a shift in the way that MPs’ allowances and those that might affect their families have been decided. They are being decided more independently as a result of this legislation. That is a good thing. It is good to support progress when we do make progress because Lord knows—anybody who has been watching this debate over the last 5 6 or 10 years now—there can be a lot of heat and very very little light when it comes to the issue of MPs’ expenses and allowances.I would also just say that the Green Party has put forward Supplementary Order Paper 369 on this legislation. I think all members understand that select committees are not the arbiters of the final form of legislation—in fact Parliament is. Parliament agreed at the first reading that this bill ought to include the provision for the Remuneration Authority to decide on the travel services for MPs. We are quite prepared and we think it is our responsibility to put that proposition back to Parliament as a whole even though the Government Administration Committee decided in the end for understandable reasons to take it out. So we have a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table—Hon Trevor Mallard: Unanimously.METIRIA TUREI: —and that is what we are going to do. Absolutely.Hon Tau Henare: Does that answer Mr Mallard’s question?METIRIA TUREI: Yes it does answer Mr Mallard’s question. So the Greens have been champions for transparency for well over 10 years now. It was started by Rod Donald our lovely co-leader. The call for transparency and reform in MPs’ pay and allowances—our campaign on these issues has led to real change. I think that has been really significant. We now have MPs’ travel and accommodation disclosed publicly every quarter. That followed the Greens’ campaign in 2009 where we made our owncommitment to that disclosure. I do want to just recognise Speaker Lockwood Smith who took the model that the Green Party was using and had proposed and applied that across the board to all MPs. So now we do have that disclosure.At the time of that debate about whether it should apply to everybody there was enormous resistance from MPs. There was a great deal of fear that if this information was disclosed MPs would suffer month after month attacks—public attacks and attacks in the media—about the money that was being spent. What we have seen over time is that it is of interest to some people and some people may comment but the fact of having transparency has given the public some confidence at least that we are prepared to tell them what it is that we are doing. So all of the heat that was initially in that debate and all of the fear that MPs expressed over that disclosure were ultimately shown to be untrue.Part of the difficulty we have around the decision that the select committee made to keep the decisions around travel allowances with the Speaker is that the argument for that too was an argument around fear and mistrust—that the Remuneration Authority would not understand the travel requirements of MPs and might make changes to those allowances that would not give MPs the ability to be able to come to Parliament to do their work here or to be able to travel to other places to do their work there. There was a great sense I think of mistrust in that debate. That mistrust is just not justified. I think that in all of the work we have done to try to reform our allowances and remuneration systems it has been proven time and time again that the public want to know but they also understand that we do an important job and need the resources to do it. The Remuneration Authority does take these issues seriously and will not make unnecessary reform. There is no justification for that fear or mistrust. That is one other reason why we are bringing back to Parliament the ability to decide to move the travel allowances to the Remuneration Authority rather than keeping it with the Speaker.We are also very pleased with the bill to the extent that it is a step towards putting in practice I guess a motion that I had put to the Parliamentary Service Commission some time before. I put a motion to the Parliamentary Service Commission that we advise the Speaker to establish an independent body to review MPs’ expenses and allowances including travel allowances with a view to the separation of what is personal and what is genuinely parliamentary and that a further independent body be established or identified whose role would be to set MPs allowances and expenses including travel.So to the extent that this bill was actually part of that debate and that there was an open opportunity for the public to have a say about independence and the separation between personal and parliamentary we were able to hear very directly the views of the Clerk of the House who keeps her views to herself most of the time. She too had an open opportunity to express what she thought about these changes. We went some way towards genuinely having an open debate about it. We were very pleased to see that that process happened because at the Parliamentary Service Commission of course my motion to have those two things happen was declined by the MPs who were there. So we are seeing slow but continual change. That is why we will support the bill.I would note that the Law Commission also supports our position of having the travel allowances moved out of the decision making of the Speaker to the Remuneration Authority and that it expressed some disappointment that the bill that has come back does not do that. Again I think what we are seeing here is an evolutionary process of change. We are trying as best as possible to take as many people as many MPs actually as we can—the whole parliamentary system—with us on the debate to genuine transformation and independence. That will take some time and is taking quite a bit of time. It has been 4 years since the 2009 debate on transparency. So it is good to see progress albeit that it is slow.We too are very pleased to see that the bill recognises the need to have independent funding for those who have impairments to make sure that an MP who has an impairment is in no way prejudiced in their ability to engage in their duties simply because of that impairment. As Ruth Dyson quite rightly said this is about making sure all New Zealanders—and there are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders with all sorts of different kinds of impairments that may lead them to feel that they have no role or place in Parliament that they have no role in the decision making at this highest level. Every step we take to make it clear to our community that they deserve to be genuinely represented—to be represented by members of their own community in this place—and to have their own voices heard in this place is critically important. So we are very pleased to see that we could make a change in this bill that expressly provided for MPs with impairments.We are seeing that in other parts of the reform around Parliamentary Service too as more and more MPs and as the system itself become more aware of the need to be open to accessibility issues. Again this is an evolutionary process. We are seeing this change happen slowly but we are very pleased that it is happening. Thank you.