Dyson Ruth: Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14077. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am delighted to be speaking on the second reading of the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Bill and I want to acknowledge all the members of the Government Administration Committee for their consideration of this bill. We had Chris Auchinvole Eric Roy Kanwaljit Bakshi Trevor Mallard and Metiria Turei. The membership changes sometimes on the committee depending on the bill. There was unanimous agreement reached on the bill and that is not unusual for that committee but it is unusual given the complexity of issues in this.I want to just echo the words of my colleague Trevor Mallard and say that I am surprised when we had reached unanimity on issues like this and worked actually very hard to get unanimity that we now have a Supplementary Order Paper. That unanimity was because we heard from a lot of submitters who were experts in this area we heard different views and we talked about it a lot. There was no rushing of this. We wanted to try to get it right in the interests of transparency and workability of these provisions. We got an extension of time for the report back of the bill in order to do that so I am surprised that we now have a Supplementary Order Paper which alters the bill fundamentally presented by Metiria Turei a member of the committee which unanimously agreed to the provisions of this bill. It is unusual and I just want to put on the record my concern about that as being slightly out of the usual process when we are thinking about this bill.A lot of people get very excited when Parliament is debating remuneration for its own members of Parliament and I understand that. We do earn very high salaries compared with people who work as hard and often for as long hours as we do so I am not surprised that members of the public are interested in this. I have heard some media reports this week that during this debate we would be determining our salary rate and that is not true. Thank goodness Parliament no longer determines the salary of members of Parliament and Ministers. That so-called right has long ago gone. It is the job of the Remuneration Authority and it should never come back to this Parliament. People in this position of power should have the responsibility of exercising that power carefully. Determining your own salary does not have a role in that regime as far as I am concerned so I am delighted that the Remuneration Authority has that responsibility.What this bill does is actually many things but one of the critical aspects of this bill is who determines the support services and travel allowances and other business expenses that members of Parliament incur. Whose job is that? Is that a job for the Speaker is that a job for the Minister responsible or is it the job of the Remuneration Authority? That question is in relation to accommodation services in relation to travel services—not just to members of Parliament but also to our families—resolution of issues about those services and ongoing travel entitlements as they are known to former members of Parliament. In that package this bill has transferred to the Remuneration Authority those determinations that are currently with the Speaker or the Minister.There was one area that was not contentious within the members on the committee so much as that the members were being offered very good information and advice from different submitters and they conflicted. So we had to say out of these two different views both of which had a lot of merit which one we would choose. We chose toamend the bill that had been referred to us in this one regard and that was in relation to the travel services provided to members of Parliament.It is our view that travel services are a fundamental part of a member of Parliament being able to operate properly and being able to do their job and therefore that the determination of those travel services should rest with the Speaker whose job it is to make sure that every member of Parliament has the resources available to them to do their job properly. It is clearly not a perk. I was going to say nobody would say that travelling from their home to the capital was a perk. Perhaps the member of Parliament for Wellington Central in whose electorate this fine building resides considers that it is a big privilege for members from throughout the rest of the country to travel to Wellington but seriously travel is a fundamental part of our job.All of us whether constituency members or list members of Parliament are elected to represent that voice in Parliament and in order to do that for about 32 weeks of the year we spend 3 days a week in the capital. Of course both for Ministers and for members of Parliament there are other responsibilities that we have as well as coming to Parliament that involve travel. I remember that when I was the Minister for Senior Citizens I made a pledge to Grey Power that should they invite me to any branch of Grey Power throughout the country I would go to their meeting. They warmly welcomed that offer. I did not realise at the time that there were 77 branches of Grey Power throughout the country and over my time as Minister for Senior Citizens I visited over 55 of those 77 branches. I am making up for the remaining 20 in my time as Opposition spokesperson on senior citizens. But I did not consider that as anything other than a legitimate part of my job. It was a responsibility that I had taken up in that position and that is why I do think it is appropriate for that determination to be part of the legitimate role of a member of Parliament. But that does not extend to family members so in that regard the select committee agreed that the determination of travel services for family members should properly sit with the Remuneration Authority.We have done a few other things in this bill. One of the ones that I think the committee was most proud of—if that is the right term—was to ensure that it was very clear in the law that the support for members of Parliament with physical or sensory impairments is properly the responsibility of the House and not of the political party that that person happens to be representing. I hope that this sends a very strong and clear message to the disabled members of our communities who may have been put off seeking membership of this Parliament as an elected member and who were concerned that they might have to bear the responsibility for support services themselves.This very same select committee that looked at this bill also has an inquiry into the accessibility of Parliament as a whole. This message from the committee will help in that consideration because it is a very clear stance in terms of members of Parliament but our inquiry is looking even more broadly than that at what access to information and services from members of Parliament can disabled members of our community expect.My colleague Trevor Mallard mentioned the fact that it did not seem to be clear in the law that list members of Parliament who came in as a result of another list MP leaving and came in part-way through the term were entitled to be paid. We had a bit of a debate about that but we decided that we would include that coverage for every list member who came in part-way through the term. Obviously that has been the practice anyway so as the Attorney-General said it was not an additional incurrence of any expenditure to the Crown—they had been getting paid.There were also some opportunities in the most negative sense of that word for potential double-dipping and we wanted to use this opportunity to make sure that double-dipping did not occur. We do not think it has in the past; it was certainly notreported to us as having been the case and we did ask. But we wanted to close down any opportunity for that in relation to members of Parliament who might get the 3-months’ post-retirement payment but then come in quite soon after that as a list MP. We did not want that sort of opportunity to be exploited. It is clearly not the intention of this Parliament that any member of Parliament deserves two bites at the cherry.We have tried to make the rules very clear very transparent and workable. As I said earlier on I was really impressed with the effort and energy that all members of the select committee put into dealing with some quite complex issues and I thank them all for that.