Jacinda Ardern
Minister, Arts, Culture and Heritage
Minister, Child Poverty Reduction
Minister, National Security and Intelligence
Prime Minister
All right. My apologies, everyone, for the delay. Welcome. The coming week, obviously, is a recess, but the Government has another busy two weeks ahead. We have our justice summit kicking off this evening, and running the next two days and later in the week, and there will also be key announcements on capital spends in health and education.
Tomorrow morning, I have the honour, along with Minister Mark, of welcoming home the remains of 27 New Zealand Defence Force personnel buried in Malaysia and Singapore, including also—to take it to 28—the body of an infant, following the Malayan and Vietnam conflicts or those who were based in Singapore and lost their lives in our service.
On Wednesday, I will celebrate Book Week with the children at Marist School in Auckland, and will hold a bilateral with President Duda of Poland. On Thursday, I’ll be making an announcement around the Government’s capital spend on hospitals in Auckland. On Friday, I’ll be making a school capital announcement, and Saturday will be quite rugby-focused. I’ll be opening the Women in Rugby conference in the morning, before attending the Black Ferns and All Black games at Eden Park that evening, where our teams will be looking to continue their ongoing trans-Tasman dominance.
Today, though, before we begin, I would like to advise that the Remuneration Authority has issued its determination on MPs’ salaries to the Minister responsible for* Ministerial Services. It indicated that based on the formula that they are legally obliged to use, and have no discretion over, they would be issuing us an increase in the order of 3 percent. That is not acceptable to this Government. Cabinet has today confirmed a decision to freeze MPs’ salaries and allowances for a year while we develop what we believe will be a fairer formula for future pay increases. Cabinet agreed that while the Government is focused on improving incomes for ordinary working Kiwis, it’s just not appropriate for MPs to be the subject of such an increase. Now, this move doesn’t save a lot of money in the scheme of things, but it does send, we believe, a strong signal about what our Government values—what we stand for— and our determination, of course, to make sure that the economy is working for everyone. Today, this afternoon, before coming down here, I notified party leaders that we’ll introduce legislation to freeze MPs’ pay for one year—in fact, the only way we can freeze our pay is by changing the legislation. We’ll then use that 12-month period to develop a fairer formula for the Remuneration Authority to use when determining future pay rises. I have with me Minister Iain Lees-Galloway, who, of course, as *Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, has a role in the drafting of that legislation, so he’s accompanying me for any questions that relate to that announcement.
Good; any questions.