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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-10-14 Daily Xml
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PARLIAMENTARY REMUNERATION (BASIC SALARY DETERMINATIONS) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:09): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Parliamentary Remuneration Act 1990. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:10): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is a subject that is close to the heart of all members of parliament, and no doubt there is always some trepidation when a member rises to amend the parliamentary remuneration legislation, but my amendment is very straightforward and simple, and I am confident that it will attract widespread support from the council.

For some time it has been very convenient for members of parliament not to have to vote ourselves pay rises. That is why South Australia and all the other jurisdictions have come to arrangements to take the decisions about member of parliament salaries away from the members themselves and to give them to some other body, most commonly a remuneration tribunal, and that is an approach that I support. The current situation in South Australia is that the base salary of members of parliament is $2,000 less than that of federal members of parliament. The regime that exists is that, when federal members of parliament get a pay rise, so do we. Other entitlements for state members of parliament are set by the South Australian remuneration tribunal.

I believe that this system is unfair, and it is unfair because we get a pay rise automatically, and we get that pay rise without asking for it. It is unfair because other workers have to fight tooth and nail to get pay justice. Our teachers, for example, have to rally and protest for over a year, and they still have not achieved justice in terms of pay. Health workers also have had to take industrial action to get decent pay, yet when members of parliament get a pay rise it is very convenient for us to simply throw our hands in the air and say it has nothing to do with us: it just turned up in our pay packet.

What this bill does is that, very simply, it provides an opportunity for members of parliament to collectively choose, if the circumstances require it, not to accept a pay rise. What the bill does is, first, to break the linkage between state and federal member of parliament salaries and, secondly, it puts our own South Australian remuneration tribunal in charge of setting MP salaries, but it also requires that, before a pay rise comes into effect, it has to be put into regulation by government.

That first step would give the government a chance to decide not to give us all a pay rise by not passing the regulation, but let us assume that the government accepted the remuneration tribunal's recommendation and proclaimed a regulation. What that means is that members of parliament would have the opportunity, if they chose, to disallow that regulation. They might not, and in most cases they probably would not, but it seems to me that, when our economy is in a difficult situation, when we find people exercising wage restraint in other areas of the economy and we see people losing their jobs and unemployment on the rise, it may well not be the best time for members of parliament to be getting a pay rise. So it gives us the opportunity, if we choose to take it, to disallow the regulations that enshrine the pay rise.

That is a very simple arrangement, which does not do any particular harm to the current arrangement, because it still involves the setting of MPs' salaries by an independent remuneration tribunal. All it does is give us the opportunity to say to our constituents that, if economic times are tough, we can choose not to accept that pay rise. I commend the bill to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway.

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