Subj : MPs should 'keep out' of pay review processes - Hipkins
To   : All
From : News
Date : Wed May 01 2024 01:44 pm

Members of Parliament should keep well out of their pay review decisions,
according to Labour leader Chris Hipkins.

The independent Remuneration Authority this week decided MPs will receive pay
rises this year after salaries were frozen at levels from more than six years
ago.

The decision delivers a backdated 2.8% rise that covered the period from
October last year, since the election, then a 2.9% increase later this year
from July 1, a 2.4% rise from July 2025, and a 2% increase in July 2026.

The prime minister's salary of $471,049 annually would rise to $484,200 and
reach $520,500 by the end of Christopher Luxon's current term.

At the moment, cabinet ministers were paid $296,007, as was the leader of the
opposition. That was set to change with the opposition leader - currently
Chris Hipkins - receiving a bump to $298,000 this year.

Despite the Remuneration Authority recommending a 3% pay raise in 2018,
then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a pay freeze on all MP salaries.
There were widespread strikes by nurses and teachers over their own pay at
the time.

Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Hipkins said politicians shouldn't
interfere with pay reviews - acknowledging some responsibility as a member of
Jacinda Ardern's government that did so.

"Politicians have made a mistake in the past interfering in the Remuneration
Authority's processes and one of the reasons that the pay increases we're
seeing now are probably larger than they might otherwise have been is
because, for a long time, politicians have meddled in this process.

"I think we're best to keep out of it.

"We have to think not just about ourselves but actually 10-15 years down the
track who might sit in the chairs that we sit in now and I think the best
thing that we can do is just keep completely out of that process. It's done
interdependently and that's the way it should be done."

"Both John Key and Jacinda Ardern's governments - and I was part of Jacinda
Ardern's government so I accept some responsibility for this too - tried to
sort of make a political problem go away by effectively creating a longer
term problem.

"I think the best thing that we can do is set the parameters in which the
Remuneration Authority operate - which Parliament has done - and then just
let them make the decisions interdependently and that means we can't complain
either way.

"We can't complain when we think we're hard done by, but we also can't
complain when we think it's inconvenient for us to be getting pay increases."

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