Shaw James: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Green): I would like to start by just responding to one of the comments from Mr Hipkins and thank you very much for your acknowledgment. You said that the Labour Party was not going to be supporting our Supplementary Order Papers because you had not had time to test and tease out the Supplementary Order Papers but of course you have not had time to test out the primary legislation either. So I say take a punt because it is not going to be any different from voting for the legislation as it stands. Nobody really knows how this is going to turn out so you might as well take a chance on us as they say. I think that I heard the Minister in his earlier comments talking about the reason for tying the MP remuneration to the Public Service. I believe I understood you correctly when you said that one of the reasons to do that is to make sure that a future Labour Government or a Labour-led Government would have the incentive to hold down public sector pay because it would be so ashamed of the consequences of having its own pay—Hon Michael Woodhouse: No that’s not what I said.JAMES SHAW: That is what I understood you to say before and I think that using the public outrage at MP pay increases to score a political manoeuvre to restrict public sector pay increases is kind of sneaky to tell you the truth. I would also just say that that could actually backfire. So what you are relying on is the fear of the opprobrium that future members of Parliament could attract in terms of their own pay increases to hold down public sector increases but I have a suspicion that the reverse could actually happen. So yes there would be some kind of reticence about allowing public sector pay to increase too much in case that means that MP pay goes up too much and therefore you get a public backlash—I can see that rather unfortunate logic there—but in time with the economic incentive of doing that to public sector pay you are actually saying to future MPs: “Increase public sector pay and your pay goes up.” Right? That is the actual economic incentive that you are saying to future Governments. So there is actually an economic incentive for MPs to increase public sector pay enormously. That would be quite convenient actually for MPs at an economic level at least.This is one of the reasons why we think that MP remuneration should not be tied purely to the public sector but it should be tied to that of the population as a whole and why it should be tied to the median income as we have laid out in our Supplementary Order Paper 57. I would like to get a response to that in the next round. The other thing is that I just wanted to say that we do have an opportunity given that just about everybody except for those on the Government benches has spoken about what a poor process this is—and this is not exactly lawmaking at its finest I think you will agree Mr Chair—that the third Supplementary Order Paper that we have got—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! Please be seated. I have given the member quite a bit of latitude when he has referred to “your” but asking me whether I would agree with what he is saying—he cannot do that and bring me into the debate. Please carry on.JAMES SHAW: I beg your pardon Mr Chair. So we are looking for support for the third Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 58 which would ensure that members of Parliament did not receive the most recent round of pay increase as outlined by the Remuneration Authority but would give us time to actually go through a proper process with this legislation so that we can have a select committee process so that we can hear from experts so that we can hear from the Remuneration Authority and so that we can actually do a decent job of lawmaking around this. So if we cannot get support for our first Supplementary Order Paper which would tie MP remuneration to the interests of the population as a whole and if we cannot get support for the second Supplementary Order Paper which would use a better measure of public sector pay than the one that has been proposed then perhaps we could have support for our third Supplementary Order Paper the principle of which is to not take the pay increase that we were given and to give ourselves the time to do this properly.