Mallard Trevor: Remuneration Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Remuneration Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I think that in normal circumstances this bill the Remuneration Authority Amendment Bill would be waved through all its stages without much debate. But unfortunately as members are aware the Government has taken a set of decisions that mean that the bill is no longer non-controversial. The broad remuneration of Ministers is something that Cabinet has decided to take beyond the Remuneration Authority; therefore there will be a debate on the bill through all its stages. The Labour Opposition will be voting for the bill to be referred to a select committee.  
I regret that it has taken the Hon Kate Wilkinson so long to bring the bill before the House. The policy decisions around the bill were I think debated some time close to Christmas. I can certainly remember Michael Cullen being in our caucus at the time that discussions were had on this bill. I think that Bill English is someone who would have been keen for the bill to have been dealt with before his current problem developed.  
There is a general acceptance of the need for belt tightening. I am not absolutely certain that this legislation will make a lot of difference. I think it might make a difference to the timing of pay increases for members of Parliament judges the Governor-General and some others; they might get them a little bit later than they would have otherwise. But if the relativities and the other approaches of the Remuneration Authority were used then it would all come out in the wash and it would all be the same thing.  
I now want to focus on the reason why I question whether this bill should be being debated under urgency this week. It goes to a matter frankly of sheer hypocrisy. It is sheer hypocrisy— 
Jo Goodhew 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I believe that it would be known to all members of the House that to use that word in this Chamber is not acceptable. I ask you to ask the member to desist. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Speaking to the point of order I say that I had not applied that word to any member of the House. I was very careful in what I said. 
Hon Simon Power 
: I note that the member carefully avoided naming any one individual but the former Minister one of the longest-standing members of the House will know that to raise a matter like that and to use that word in a generic sense actually brings all members and their reputations into disrepute and reflects badly on the House more broadly than would a reflection on one individual member. That in itself is out of order. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am in a slight quandary here to be perfectly frank with both sides. Firstly it is clear that it is out of order to call a member hypocritical or to accuse a member of hypocrisy. Secondly it is out of order to accuse a party of hypocrisy or of being hypocritical. But use of the words “hypocrisy” or “hypocritical” is not unilaterally ruled out. A member might want to raise an issue about something being hypocritical but not attribute it directly to an individual or to a party. On this particular occasion the member speaking has skated very close to the wind. He has called the issues hypocritical. He has not named the individual member or the particular party. I will not rule the member out of order on this particular occasion but I say to him that he is exactly on the edge. The Hon Trevor Mallard has now heard that the House is concerned about this and I advise the member not to pursue this line of debate from this point onwards. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I will not challenge your ruling Mr Assistant Speaker or pursue that line at all. In fact what I am going to do is lay down a challenge to the House: I ask members opposite what the word is for a Cabinet that decides on the one hand to pretend to limit the salaries of Cabinet members and on the other hand to say to the Deputy Prime Minister that he can have $37500 with no receipts required for pretending to live in Dipton. What is the word that one uses for giving a person who is one of National’s number $37500 extra for pretending to live in Dipton when that person actually lives in Wellington? Why did Cabinet take away the rules around this in order to protect one of its own? In order to give money to the Hon Bill English John Key who is in charge of Cabinet decided to undo the rules in order to effectively give Bill English a pay increase.  
I do not care if that money goes to a trust—there is a whole pile of issues around the trust and those will be pursued—but it is effectively paying Bill English’s rent. It is paying for him to live in Wellington. It is paying for a mortgage that should be paid for out of his own pocket out of the very generous salary that the Government is pretending to limit at this time. I again challenge members opposite: I ask them what the word is for a Government that pretends to be keeping down salaries but at the same time gives $37500 to someone who is not eligible for it. They do not have a word for that. I do not think there is a word for it that we are allowed to use in this House when we apply it to John Key or Bill English. We know that it is wrong.  
We also want to know again as with the money-laundering bill whose brilliant decision it was to bring up this bill this week under urgency. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Gerry Brownlee. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: It might have been Gerry Brownlee; he does not like Bill English very much because he put him out of his job. I tell members that it might have been John Key. John Key might have asked his Cabinet to try to get rid of this while he is out of the country to please try to get rid of the stuff which points at a scandal that he is responsible for because he is the person who is in charge of Ministerial Services and he is the Minister responsible for the extra funding—funding that goes nowhere near the Remuneration Authority. I tell members what someone with integrity would have done. That person would have referred the issue to the Remuneration Authority. That person would have said to the Remuneration Authority that its job is to sort out the rules and make them clear. But what do those members do? They decide to take some money out of taxpayers’ pockets—some of the poorest people in New Zealand are paying extra tax as a result of the decisions that this Government made—and to give it to the Deputy Prime Minister. They are putting it into his pocket in a way that I am certain an independent body like the Remuneration Authority would never do.  
I just do not know how wrong one can get in this particular area. If Mugabe did this we would call him corrupt. I do not know the names of the rulers of Nigeria but I know that they are corrupt. If they were doing this sort of thing if they were saying publicly that they were holding their own wages down but at the same time were making decisions that were sneakily putting cash into the pockets of people associated with Ministers we would call it corruption. I cannot believe that a country like New Zealand has come to this. It is absolutely outrageous.  
We are a country that regularly comes out at No. 1 in the world for lack of corruption. We are a clean country. All of us were absolutely ashamed at what Phillip Field did—what he was convicted of doing. We saw the court case and we know how wrong his actions were. But Phillip Field was a junior Minister outside Cabinet. And what do we have here? Our Minister of Finance is meant to have international credibility. He is the one who fronts up around the world to say that New Zealand is in a position to pay its debts. “We are a clean country. We are a transparent country.” is what Bill English is meant to say. I ask why the Government brings in legislation like this at the same time as it is handing tens of thousands of dollars to its Cabinet Ministers on a tax-free basis with no receipts required and without going to the Remuneration Authority. I thought Simon Power was better than that. Frankly I thought that Chris Finlayson as Attorney-General would have put up his hand when that money was going through Cabinet to his colleagues and said that it does not look good that it is not credible. As the highest law officer of Parliament he should say that it is wrong and that it is not good for New Zealand’s reputation because It makes our Government look like Zimbabwe’s and it is just wrong.