Lees-Galloway Iain: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2306. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): This is my first opportunity to speak on the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill. I have not been following the debate this afternoon so I apologise if I traverse—Hon Ruth Dyson: What?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I know. It is a shock. I apologise if I traverse material that has been traversed by other members previously. Let us be honest about why it is that we find ourselves debating this legislation. It is because the independent Remuneration Authority in determining the salary increases that MPs should receive determined a level that it believed was fair but was significantly out of kilter with what ordinary New Zealanders have received in terms of pay rises over the last 6 years or so. We have heard on a number of occasions that the Prime Minister has said that in his opinion MPs’ pay does not need to rise as much as it has done and that people would feel aggrieved about the pay increases that MPs get but that is in the context I say to the Prime Minister of ordinary working New Zealanders not getting ahead under his Government. I appreciate that the Greens have offered a Supplementary Order Paper linking MPs’ pay to median wages because median wages have barely moved under this Government certainly in real terms. Most people who are on the median wage actually in real terms find themselves worse off today than they did 6 years ago.It is interesting that the Government often talks about “average” wages which are pulled up by those at the very top getting proportionately very large pay increases whilst those who are in the middle and on lower incomes are not really getting pay increases that allow them to get ahead. That is why I think this Government so studiously avoids talking about the median wage but if it did and if it actually talked about what ordinary people who are on this middle income are getting then the story would not be nearly as rosy as it makes it out to be.We agree with and we will vote for legislation that perhaps tries to pare back the increases to our salaries to make them align more closely with what ordinary working people get but we really just do not think the process around this has been all that clever. First of all as we said the Prime Minister has been talking about this for years and years and years and yet suddenly he felt the need to act. I think the suddenly came along after some polling a couple of weekends ago. The focus groups probably told the Prime Minister that he needed to act and he needed to act fast. And this is a Prime Minister who is in need of some good news. Let us be honest. It has been a pretty rough start to the year. The Prime Minister was in need of something to demonstrate that he was in touch with the voters and this one suddenly popped out of the box. It was going to be debated last week but after it was tabled it was discovered that there were a few flaws. The Government went back to the drawing board and it has come back to this this week—Hon Ruth Dyson: What were the flaws?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Ruth Dyson asks what the flaws were. It is hard to know even where to begin but I think the fundamental flaw was possibly that we could have ended up with a greater pay rise as a result of the legislation than we originally were. There were problems with it clearly. That is what happens when legislation is drafted after a focus group on a Sunday afternoon and tabled at the beginning of the week and then the intention is to put it through under urgency. So now we are back here this week hopefully with an improvement to the legislation. We will vote for this because we think this is hopefully going to move things in the right direction but we suspect that we will be back in the future. If we do have to come back in the future we hope that we do this with an appropriate process that actually gives the full machinery of government and all the officials the opportunity to have input into the drafting of the legislation and that it gives the public the opportunity to offer their thoughts so that we can actually build a piece of legislation like we do normally. This is why we have the process we have so that we can build good robust long-lasting legislation that is actually fit for purpose and does the job it is meant to do.We are concerned that we are likely to find ourselves having to come back and address this issue again in the future. We also have concerns—I know that others have traversed this—around the fact that this links MPs’ pay to the public sector. The public sector is actually the group of workers whose pay MPs have the most influence over. I can see that the Assistant Speaker is indicating that I am coming close to time so I will take my seat but I look forward to the Committee stage.