The Education and Workforce select committee has reported on the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Bill (No 2) and recommends it be passed without amendment.

The committee considered six submissions.

The bill is an omnibus bill that amends the Remuneration Authority Act 1977 and the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Act 2013. The bill is intended to establish a new process for how the Remuneration Authority reviews and sets the salaries of MPs.

The bill will allow the Authority to independently set MPs’ pay based on criteria, rather than a fixed formula. The Government considers that the fixed formula system has inadvertently caused unjustifiably high pay increases for MPs.

The bill makes three changes

• It restores the Remuneration Authority’s independence to determine MPs’ salaries based on criteria rather than a fixed formula.
• It links the Authority’s reviews to the electoral cycle so that the reviews would set MPs’ salary for each year of that entire term of Parliament.
• It restores the requirement for the Authority to consider the value of the personal benefit of entitlements when setting MPs’ salaries.