Shaw James: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2287. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Green): I would also like to start by extending my condolences to the people of Vanuatu. What is happening over there is a great tragedy and I wish them all the best for their recovery. I commend all the efforts of all New Zealanders who have extended their support via the Red Cross and other agencies.The people of New Zealand need to know that the Government is introducing a bill that looks as if it is supposed to contain runaway increases in the pay for members of Parliament but as far as we can tell will not actually do so. Not only that the Government is abusing the parliamentary process of urgency to rush through the legislation before anyone notices how flawed and ineffectual it is. It is a bit like the Government’s approach to climate change. It can claim that it is doing something about climate change because it has got an emissions trading scheme even though emissions continue to rise. The emissions trading scheme is a smokescreen that has no effect other than to enable the Government to pretend that it is doing something.Much like last week’s proposal the latest version of the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill uses a poor linking mechanism. It sounds reasonable in the sense of linking MPs’ pay to public sector pay but we do not believe that it will have any real effect. As a result it seems as though the bill will likely continue the run of large and unmerited pay rises for MPs. So instead of meaningful reform the Government is deploying a smokescreen. It wants to be seen to be doing something the week before a knife-edge by-election in Northland without actually doing anything about the issue. In the process it has actually adopted an approach that precludes meaningful scrutiny. It is not allowing public input. It is not looking for expert analysis. It is jamming through superficial changes under urgency and hoping that nobody will notice. The Greens will not support such contempt for proper parliamentary procedure nor will we support such ineffective changes. We have consistently over many years called for real constraints on MPs’ pay but this is not it.I disagree with the member for Rimutaka Chris Hipkins who earlier claimed that voting against this bill is the same thing as voting for the status quo although I can understand his point. If the bill has no meaningful impact—and the member from Rimutaka also said that we could not have any confidence that it will have any meaningful impact—then voting for it is the same thing as voting for the status quo. It is better to vote against a flawed bill. Passing a flawed bill that has no impact will mean that it may be some years before the matter comes back before the House when we are once again embarrassed by the massive pay rises we are all getting. A completely different approach is needed.According to this bill MPs’ pay would be linked to public sector pay as calculated by the quarterly employment survey. A few other people have mentioned this. It is a bizarre choice. The quarterly employment survey is hardly ever used as a measure of pay. Not even the State Services Commission uses it as an indicator of pay. This is because it fails to control for changes in the quantity or quality of labour. As a result changes in pay as calculated by the quarterly employment survey are not necessarily indicative of what workers are earning.Indeed we do not have any confidence that linking MPs’ pay to the quarterly employment survey would actually prevent large pay rises. We received this version of the bill only at 10.30 this morning. The analysis we did on last week’s version of the bill showed us that taken over the last 6 years MPs’ pay would be almost exactly the same now as it is under the status quo. The Government has not provided us with any evidence that this new version would do anything to the contrary.The Government’s approach to this process shows contempt for the public and for proper procedure. MPs are supposed to represent the people. To that end the people should have the right to scrutinise any proposed changes to MPs’ pay. However the Government members seem to have considered this an inconvenience. They want to be popular and they want a quick fix; they do not want select committee scrutiny. As a result they are rushing the bill under urgency. This is something that the Green Party cannot support so we will not be voting for the bill at this stage. As my colleague Metiria Turei said we will be bringing in three different Supplementary Order Papers during the course of this debate given that we are probably in the minority on the voting front to attempt to fix some of those problems that we see. Thank you.