Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill

It is a shame about the results of the last vote. I thought maybe you were going to announce that we had taken it out after all.

I rise with pleasure to support Chris Bishop’s member’s bill. I think this is a good use of the House’s time. It achieves something positive, which the Green Party certainly supports. I sit on the Health Committee and, of course, I look forward—along with Simon O’Connor, I am sure—to hearing the submissions on the bill and its provisions that will be made by members of the public, medical professionals, and those with expertise around ethics.

I would take issue with something that Simon O’Connor just said. He said that New Zealand has a low rate of donation of organs. When organs are donated from recently deceased people, the issue is raised from time to time that that rate could be higher. In fact, the evidence that the select committee has heard when it has previously considered the issue of organ donation rates has been that actually the rate of donation from recently deceased persons is as high as we could reasonably expect; the problem is that the need for organ donation is so much higher than the available supply of organs from that source. That is why the live organ donation that this bill is concerned with is so important.

One of the reasons that that is going to become even more of an issue in the future is that New Zealand has such a high rate of diabetes. We already have Kirsten Coppell from the University of Otago, who in 2012, I think it was, conducted research that indicated that one in four New Zealanders over the age of 15 either has diabetes already or has pre-diabetes. That is a massive problem because the rate of complication in all sorts of areas of the human body is very high from diabetes, and one of those areas is indeed the kidneys. So the need for kidney tissue in the future is only going to increase.

So if we are to respond to that need of a growing number of New Zealanders at all, we need to increase the rate at which live donors participate in this programme. Elizabeth Prasad’s work is very clear that probably the main reason that people are disinclined to join that programme is the financial penalty that we, effectively, place on them currently. So Chris Bishop’s bill addresses the issue that we know to be the greatest obstacle to an extremely important and necessary service as part of our health services.

The Attorney-General has made a report finding a problem with the bill, as members will be aware. The bill treats inappropriately those New Zealanders who both receive benefits and also have paid employment. It discriminates against those persons, but Chris Bishop has, to his great credit, acknowledged that problem in his response to the Attorney-General’s report and has indicated that he would be very pleased for the select committee to address that issue when we consider the bill. Certainly, that will be my intention.

I think that is probably all I need to say at this stage. I look forward to hearing those submissions from the public and from the health professions at the select committee shortly. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.