Bayly Andrew: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBayly Andrew: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2299. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to again talk to this bill at the second reading of the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill. It is certainly interesting to hear the diverse submissions from a number of the members and particularly the revelation from the previous speaker Grant Robertson who is obviously the Opposition spokesperson on finance that he has trouble with algebraic equations. I would have thought that he would have revelled in those calculations and would be looking forward to running his calculator over the sums but obviously not.The argument seems to have been slightly diverted. This bill is actually about us as MPs and I think personally that the Prime Minister was particularly courageous in making this change which he announced on 2 March. It is all about showing restraint. It is also about members of Parliament showing leadership. It is about the Government continuing to live within its means. I also would like to reiterate that the Prime Minister has a number of times previously discussed this issue and it came as no surprise that he finally had to act on it. The aspersion that this is a sudden rushed response is not correct. The Prime Minister has been clear about his position on this over a number of years and ultimately we have got to a point today where we as MPs are doing what is right.As most people know the bill has three parts. The first bit is about changing the criteria in the Remuneration Authority Act 1977 to take away the authority’s discretion on MPs’ pay increases. Secondly it puts in place a sole criteria that when determining pay increases it will be the average of the ordinary-time weekly earnings for a fulltime-equivalent employee in the public sector using the quarterly employment survey. Thirdly the changes of course will be backdated to 1 July 2014.In essence the bill provides for the Remuneration Authority to fix the salary of MPs having regard for their salaries having regard for their superannuation subsidy and thirdly having regard for their personal benefits—a combination of all three—in line with public sector pay increases. The law will come into force immediately following Royal assent and as I noted before will be effective from 1 July last year. The result will be an increase of 1.5 percent versus the 3.56 percent that was proposed.Using the quarterly employment survey will mean that the authority no longer has to take into account other factors such as comparable positions and there has been a number of speakers talk on that about other industries. We are public servants and we are here to serve the public and it is probably appropriate in this case that we have a different perspective on what our salaries and remuneration should be.The Remuneration Authority will just need to apply the annual quarterly employment survey amount. This will give certainty. It will be clear to everyone what our remuneration is and how it has been based and of course it is referenced back to the public sector. The Remuneration Authority can still look at the elements of our pay whether it has cash or non-cash elements and the indexing will occur at the same time every year.I commend this bill to Parliament. Thank you.