Dyson Ruth: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2325. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I want to make just a brief contribution in the Committee stage of this legislation. The first point I want to make is to just express my disappointment in the Minister given that this is an issue that has had extreme public interest and actually he has got an overwhelming majority of members of Parliament supporting it. I would have thought that it would be a better approach to the Committee stage of the House during what is clearly rushed legislation—it is being put through under urgency; we have not had any consultation—to answer questions seriously and to listen to the comments particularly members like the co-leader of the Green Party Metiria Turei. She has three Supplementary Order Papers in her name. She has put up some arguments that should be considered. This is the only opportunity we have got. Instead the Minister has really made arrogance an art form tonight. There are better ways of doing that sometimes. I know that the Minister likes that approach but I do not think that it is always the best way. So I just caution him that at times like this when there is a lot of public interest—not just in the outcome but in the process as well—it is worth putting a little more effort in and trying to get it right.The second point I want to make is to reinforce the concern that Iain Lees-Galloway expressed in his earlier contribution—that is the dismissal by the Government of the use of median wage and its insistence on looking at average wage. It distorts what is happening in the real world. It undermines exactly what should be the purpose of this legislation which is to provide a fair basis for relativity when looking at the increase in wages for members of Parliament compared with other people. By using the average it always looks at what is often the result of an increasing number of people on much higher wages rather than what is happening to people on lower wages.The final point that I want to make is just to express my shock at a National Party member tonight who referred to public servants as “union thugs”—people like firefighters teachers nurses doctors a lot of caregivers in public hospitals and some really good people actually who we have argued during this debate should be getting a fair increase in their wages after having sat on the side line and waited for the last 6 years under a National Government. It is quite an inappropriate term. It was quite a surprising term. For somebody who stood in Wellington Central seeking votes it was quite a stupid thing to say actually. But I just want to express my sorrow that that sort of terminology is used in a debate that is actually not heated. This has been a pretty calm debate. It has been one where lots of different perspectives could have been listened to respectfully and could have been considered and answered and they were not.My concluding comment is to really tease the Minister for winding us up about saying how bad the seven first drafts of this legislation were. He was accusing us of making that up. It was his own blogger and pollster David Farrar who alerted the public to the fact—not the insinuation the fact—that the first seven versions of this legislation were all considered and thrown out by somebody in higher circles than the Minister. It was probably the Hon Chris Finlayson I suspect who is regarded as being the single member of Cabinet who actually reads his papers and draft legislation. All those seven versions were thrown out. It is widely known that the reason for them being thrown out was that instead of making sure that members of Parliament got a lower salary increase what they actually risked doing was giving members of Parliament a bigger salary increase. I find that point amusing. I think the Minister has been suitably embarrassed by it but he should not resort to name-calling. He should not accuse other members of Parliament of making things up which is what he did. We all know that it is true. He may not have ever read that earlier legislation and that is why perhaps he is remaining in ignorant bliss.I just return to the first point I made. This is a bill we support. It could have been proceeded with tonight with a little more dignity and I regret it was not.