Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a delight to pick up on the 18 seconds of wonderful contribution I made the last time we were considering this particular bill.

We’re in the third and final reading of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill, and it is a pleasure to be taking a call on this. This is a delicate piece of legislation. Any time we’re talking about organ donation, it is a very sensitive topic—

💬 Todd Muller: Even Darroch thinks it’s funny.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN:—and I’m sure Mr Muller would agree with me that it’s something we need to be very mindful of when we are working through numerous debates in this House. I’d encourage members to have a little bit more decorum when we’re talking about organ donation. It is a serious topic, and making light of the situation I don’t think is appropriate in this setting. I would like to commend—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but—

Again!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe):—it’s come time for me—[Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. It’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Take three.

This is my third attempt now on this call, and I’ve advanced so far one minute. So I’m looking forward to continuing this fantastic contribution. I won’t drag it out too much.

But look, this is a really important piece of legislation here. It is a sensitive issue; I was just touching on that before the dinner break as well. Organ donation rates in New Zealand have been increasing but are still much lower than we’d like them to be, 13 per million as of last year, which is quite a low rate. At the moment, as I understand, the waiting list for people who are looking for organ or tissue transplants is over 550 people. So there is certainly a need to focus on increasing that.

This bill comes about as a result of the Increasing Deceased Organ Donation and Transplantation: A national strategy paper that was released in 2017. And there are some good processes in here to try and lift that rate of donation. Of course, anyone who becomes deceased and is looking to or has previously indicated an intent to donate organs—it’s a very sensitive time, as I mentioned, for their family. Of course they’re going through a grieving process and there are some difficult decisions to make. This helps to tidy up that; helps to encourage a few more people to get involved with this.

I’m proud to say I have “donor” on my driver’s licence as well. It’s fantastic and I’d encourage everyone in this House to consider that if they’re not already.

This is a good piece of legislation. We’re supporting it at this stage. I look forward to seeing some positive increases in donation rates as a result. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this, the final reading of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill.

Kiwis, we’re really well known for giving the shirt off our back but we’re not so great about giving one of our organs. There’s considerable tapu around giving organs. There’s a certain amount of emotion around giving organs, whether that’s being a donor when you’re alive or after you have passed and becoming a deceased donor. But it’s a really important thing to do.

Each year we do have a large number of genuinely anonymous New Zealanders who give away a very small part of themselves, and they give it away for nothing. They give this gift that is life saving and life changing; and that is the ultimate gift. It’s the ultimate taonga. In fact, you could consider it the ultimate koha.

There is a key perception, though, in Māoridom that body parts are tapu. One of the problems with that concept is that it means Māori, Pasifika, and other cultures aren’t coming forward in terms of making organ donations, not unless it’s a person who is directly related to them. So we need to find ways to encourage whānau to become donors. Because that is the challenge we have, ensuring that we have plenty of people who are willing to make this ultimate koha.

I won’t traverse the detail of the bill—that has really been done ahead of me by previous speakers—but I would like to talk about a couple of cases of people who’ve been donors. We all have them, whether they are close family or someone in our community—maybe they’re, you know, a sporting legend. We heard the Hon Michael Woodhouse talk about Jonah Lomu and receiving that kidney, that donation. But there are just cases like recently a young 22-year-old Kiwi was killed overseas in the United States, and his parents, a year after he died, went over to the woman who received his heart and they listened to the beat of his heart inside this 60-year-old woman. What an amazing moment it was for them. They knew it wasn’t their son, but to have the sound when they put the stethoscope in their ears, and put it to the chest of their 60-year-old recipient to hear their son’s heart beating—you know that was a very emotional moment for them.

Another woman, she’s given half of her liver to her husband and we know that the liver regenerates, so both their livers have grown back. [Interruption] So, yes. So that’s been an ultimate gift that the wife has done for her husband.

This is T-Bear. T-Bear is a very cute wee bear. The reason that I would like to point out T-Bear is that there’s a well-known Kiwi entertainer Pio Terei, and his son died of leukaemia about three years ago. He lost Teina—his son is Teina, also known as T-Bear—and he lost his battle with leukaemia. Although bone marrow transplants aren’t part of this bill, what is something that we need to do, and will do as a result of this piece of legislation, is we need people who will go out and champion the cause of making donations of their organs, particularly in our Māori community. Pio Terei has set up an organisation which is called Trust Teina, and what they want to do and what they are doing is they are encouraging Māori and Pacific donors to give of their bone marrow. They’ve made a range of bears, these T-Bears, and each teddy bear is uniquely made. And a koha from each T-Bear that is sold is gifted to the Trust Teina. It’s to help raise awareness and donations of Māori and Pacific bone marrow. So Pio Terei is championing that. We need more champions in our community who will encourage others to donate their organs, whether they’re alive or deceased.

Ultimately, this is a good bill. It’s about saving people’s lives. It’s about extending the life of someone. And so, without further ado, I’d like to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill.

I just wanted to comment how much I enjoyed the previous speaker’s contribution. I thought that was really interesting. Koha, it’s a very good way to think of it, and I like the visual aid as well.

I want to thank the select committee for progressing this. This was our bill. It was grounded on Chris Bishop’s initial work, so I want to acknowledge Chris. This was sort of a tidy up. Like most select committee processes, it was vastly improved through the select committee process so that we were able to address the main issues, which primarily were around creating an organ donation agency, of which it was appropriately decided that the blood bank—blood people, blood transfusion service—was the most appropriate Crown entity to bed the organ donation agency into.

Then there were some tidying-up things to make it easier to donate. We had the issue that we’d said initially donors and recipients could only be located in New Zealand when, in fact, some approved overseas, international, programmes were also worthy to be a part of this. There were also issues around variable return to work. We’d been a little bit too firm, too tight, in the initial drafting of the legislation, and it made sense to relax that and accommodate more flexible returns to work.

I have a particular interest in organ donation in as much as that when I was working in Boston my clinical appointment was to a place called Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and right opposite Beth Israel was Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Brigham Women’s in 1954 was known as a Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and that’s where the first transplant actually occurred, the first successful transplant. This was in a gentleman who needed a kidney transplant. Previously you would always succumb within about a week or two because no one quite understood the immune system implications of a transplant. But there’d been some sense that there was something about twins that made transplants successful.

So at Brigham Women’s or Brigham Bent, as it was, there was a gentleman, his kidney was failing, and they got his twin in the operating room next door to actually do the kidney transplant. They finger-printed both—I think Richard Hickman—of them to make sure they were identical twins, and they thought, “Look, this is our best chance. We don’t understand what it is in the immune system that causes previous transplants to fail, but if we have two almost identical humans, we think that good things will happen.”, and that’s exactly what happened. The first successful organ transplant was of a kidney at Brigham Bent in Boston around about 1954. It was 100 metres from where my clinical appointment was, and a fine institution. So I have a particular interest in the history of this bill, and, like the people who have previously spoken, I strongly support organ donation—what greater gift could you give than something that is of you to someone else?

I also just want to hasten the progress of this bill into legislation. I thank those that have brought it to this point, and I too commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. The Green Party is very pleased to support the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill and would like to commend Stuff for the series of articles that they have been doing on organ donation.

I was struck as well as Jenny Marcroft by the recent article which told the story of Jamie Shennan and his parents. I think that article really conveyed that amazing gift of health and of life that organ donors provide, whether they’re deceased or whether they’re living. The work that Stuff has done with these articles in just showing readers what is involved—getting beyond that whakamā, that shame process that means that people are often reluctant to ask others for the gift of an organ, because it is the ultimate gift, but making organ donation more understandable.

This bill, in the establishment of the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, by widening the mandate of the New Zealand Blood Service, is also doing what Stuff has been doing in ensuring that there is more advocacy and a greater public understanding of organ donation based on encouraging more people to think about putting that inscription on their driver’s licence so that if they die, their organs will be available. So the work in the bill and this provision for now having a national agency that has a clear responsibility for raising the profile of organ donation and supporting clinical governance and coordinating that whole donation and transplantation process is a really good step forward.

I would acknowledge Chris Bishop, because, of course, this bill is based on his original bill. I concur with the comments that Dr Reti has made about the very practical changes that the bill provides in order that people who are taking time off work to recover as living donors from giving, perhaps, a kidney can be recompensed for that. Similarly, if they are part of a recognised international organ donation scheme, this bill makes the changes there that they will be able to be recompensed for lost work time, and gives the Director-General of Health some discretion around that as well.

So it is a good and practical bill that makes significant changes that will, I hope—particularly through the work of the new New Zealand Blood and Organ Service—increase the profile of organ donation and increase the number of New Zealanders who are prepared to do that. So I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak with great pleasure at the third reading of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill, as I have in each of the readings. This is a bill whose time has come.

We have, as a House, I think, traversed the issues very carefully at select committee level—things were ironed out. This is a piece of legislation that needed to happen, but it’s very encouraging to find that as it has made its passage through the House, it has attracted journalists to write stories about people who have had organ donation problems and who have had successful outings as well, because I think, as with dementia and a lot of other issues, some of these things are not properly discussed. So I think the general conversation about planning for the provision of our death and what we might do with our organs afterwards—we’ve all, I think, had a boost in the idea of putting information on drivers’ licences and doing all of these things. When the original legislation went through, I think there was a 500 percent increase—that’s the one—in organ donors receiving compensation for the year before. So it really does work to offer people compensation.

It’s a huge undertaking. A friend of mine—whom I spoke to only yesterday, actually—a couple of years ago had a heart transplant. This is a guy who was very fit, had a healthy lifestyle—all of those things—and his heart failed him, and he needed, with great urgency, to have a transplant. The provision for it, the way it was enacted, the counselling and so forth that went around it, and the aftermath, I think, where the person who has donated the organ is able to, perhaps, meet with the donor organ’s family—which I think must be incredibly challenging and confronting for the family but also, at heart, very comforting to think that you have given another person a life that emerged from a tragedy, whether it’s a car accident or so forth.

But I think it is important that the change to section 10 set out in clause 6, providing for qualifying donors to get earnings compensation for up to 12 weeks while recuperating, is really important. Obviously, it depends what you donate, and a heart, obviously, is not something that someone can give and survive. But none the less, I think that when it comes to all of the other issues with kidney failure—people that have been in this House and members of Parliament and their families. I know we all know of them and their personal stories. But none the less, the availability of compensation, the raising of the level of awareness—I think all of these things have made this a healthy debate and one of great rarity and scarcity, that there is such an outbreak of agreement across the political divide. It’s rare enough that this happens.

💬 Andrew Bayly: It’s a beautiful thing.

It is a beautiful thing indeed, as Andrew Bayly, my colleague, has piped up from the back seats. I, without hesitation and with complete conviction, commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Marja Lubeck.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. Contrary to some of the previous speakers, I have not spoken on this bill in the other readings and I wasn’t part of the Health Committee that considered the bill, so I had to do a little bit of reading up on it. I also went to the Organ Donation New Zealand website and I found it quite sobering: the statement that the website opens up with. It says, “In New Zealand, there are currently more than 550 people waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Sadly, some of those people will die waiting, while others will continue to lead lives restricted by long-term treatment.” I think that’s the submissions that the select committee heard: 16 in total and five submitters came to Wellington to be heard. As a result of considering that feedback, the select committee then recommended several amendments to this bill to make clarity and practicability within that bill’s provisions.

One of the stories of the submitters was particularly touching. It was a person who was very passionate about making organ donation and the whole system easier. Also, he wanted to ensure that those people who choose to be donors do not have that decision overturned when they actually die. That person told the select committee a very personal story of a person they loved and who died while they were waiting for such an organ to be donated.

There are many more stories, in particular, on this website that I mentioned: Organ Donation New Zealand lists several stories. One is of a woman called Marcella Russell, who inherited a genetic heart condition, lived a good life for 16 years, but then needed an operation, had another 17 years, and then slowly started to decline, and, at some stage, quite rapidly. She spent a lot of time in hospital waiting. She couldn’t do the things that we all take for granted. She was basically just waiting for a lifeline, for someone to come up with a donation that would give her more time. She was very lucky. She was one of the lucky ones for whom an organ became available, and, after a successful operation and seven weeks in hospital, she did end up having a second lease on life, if you want to call it that.

So it’s really clear from reading those stories on the website that organ donation makes a real difference. If there were more donors, there would be more people that could benefit from lifesaving operations. So that is exactly what this bill does: it makes the whole system of organ donation easier, and it does so in two parts. People have spoken of those already, but I quickly want to just recap that Part 1 of the bill provides for increased compensation for live organ donors, and it amends the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016. Basically, in the current legislation if live organ donors go back to work earlier than the 12 weeks—perhaps go back into part-time employment or reduced hours—they immediately cease to have their entitlement to compensation. That is a gap in the legislation that this bill is fixing with Part 1.

Part 2 establishes a national organ donation function, and it will be renamed the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service. Again, that is to raise awareness of the organ donation and transplantation needs.

So, in short, the purpose of the bill is to encourage and support live and deceased organ donation and transplantation rates in New Zealand. It can be said that the changes in this bill perhaps are small. They will, however, make organ donation easier, and, by enabling people to live fuller lives and to not spend the rest of their lives waiting for an organ to be donated, that makes, obviously, a huge difference. Someone has called it a koha in previous speeches, and it is the greatest gift that someone could give.

There’s, of course, one first step people can take. They can go to the Organ Donation New Zealand website to have a look at what can be done to perhaps become a donor. You can make a note on your driver licence. I know people have mentioned that in second readings. I, too, have that noted on my driver licence. Greater awareness is great. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. Can I start by acknowledging my colleagues from across the House on the Health Committee. It’s actually great to be part of a committee that makes a real difference. I think, out of all the committees, when you look at them, the Health Committee is the one that I think makes a real difference. You look at some of the others like the Finance and Expenditure Committee—I’m not really sure what goes on there. In the Primary Production Committee it just seems like they sit around and have a chat! But, of course, the Health Committee is one that really makes a difference in individual New Zealanders’ lives.

This bill, although a small bill and very technical—an omnibus bill, if I get that correct at this hour of the night. It had a small number of submitters, but those small numbers of submitters made a real difference to the bill, and I think it shaped up very well.

Although I do give one warning with the bill: it really shows the limitations of Parliament and of Government. We can pass legislation and provide a framework for the national organ donation agency and support more organ donations, but the problem is, in New Zealand—as many will know—we need a real cultural shift. People can put that they want to be a donor on their drivers’ licences, but we know the very real issue. When that person passes away—they might be in the hospital—the family turns up, challenges that, and puts the health professional right in the firing line. And, of course, they don’t want to take sides as well.

So, yes, this is a start, but it’s very much the start of a discussion—not the end of it—of how in New Zealand we can have a real step change, a real cultural shift, to allow more organ donations that will go on to save lives but very much enrich other Kiwis’ lives, as we’ve heard several times across the House in other people’s speeches.

Organ donation makes a huge difference in people’s lives. It saves lives. But, ultimately, now, this bill is up to the people of New Zealand to make a real cultural shift so that we increase the number of organ donations in this country. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise and speak on the third and final reading of this bill. As my colleague Matt Doocey said, there was really good cross-party support on this bill because of the importance that organ donation means to people’s lives.

I think—just again reflecting on what my colleague Marja Lubeck was saying about that whole transformation it can make in somebody’s life—for many, having an organ donated is lifesaving. It makes that difference between life and death. For others, it just transforms their life because they’re not having to rely on dialysis or other things that, basically, limit their quality of life. So it’s incredibly, incredibly important that we get this right.

Basically, at the moment there’s a real waiting list for organ donation and, on average, about 550 people waiting at any one time for an organ. So it’s incredibly important that we raise the profile of organ donation and make sure that for people that are happy to donate—either, basically, by putting something on their driver’s licence, or for people that they can get a match with as a live donor—that process is facilitated.

So there is a national strategy for increasing deceased organ donation and transplantation, and Part 2 of this bill looks at how we can create that oversight and the governance for this, by creating an entity within the New Zealand Blood Service, renaming that the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, and giving them the governance role for looking at the oversight of organ donation and also supporting organ transplantation in our country.

At the Health Committee, there was quite a bit of discussion because many people thought that if they put something on their driver’s licence that said “donor”, that was it—that, basically, you automatically became an organ donor. But the actual practicalities of the situation are that, in that situation, usually the discussion has been happening at the ICU level, and it’s usually between grieving family members having to make a really tough call. But it’s also about the health professionals that are guiding the family through those decisions. And so there was quite a bit of discussion, again at select committee and in some of the submissions, about the need for training and support of those health professionals to lead those conversations, often at an incredibly difficult time in families’ lives, and to actually explain the benefits of donation but also making sure those conversations happen at the right point for that family in their decision making.

It’s having, basically, an entity that can oversee that process and make sure that we’re looking at implementing the strategy—what the strategy looks at is raising the profile of organ donation so that people not only put something on their driver’s licence but they also have that conversation with the family so their family knows somebody’s intent and are not having to think about that at an incredibly stressful time—but also looking at effective clinical governance, looking at training, and having that oversight so that we do actually know what we’re aiming for, and making sure our health professionals in that situation have the adequate resourcing and training. So it’s really important, in terms of Part 2 of that bill, just to put in place that critical infrastructure to make sure that can happen.

Part 1 of the bill, though, looks at live donors and compensation. Up until now, we did have compensation for live donors, and it could go up to 12 weeks, but it was an all-or-nothing thing where somebody, basically, had donor surgery and then, if they wanted to go back to work, their compensation ceased. For many people, you might want to take a more gradual approach in terms of getting back to work. One of our submitters raised a scenario where a close relative had donated a kidney to him and then they ended up with an unexpected infection, and so that really knocked them back for quite a few weeks. There’s a whole range of scenarios where somebody may want to go back to work part-time or they may go back to work and then they realise, “OK, I need some more time.” So what this bill does is allows that flexibility, where you can go back part-time or you can actually go back and then, if you need to, you can get further compensation up to that 12-week period. So it just makes it that little bit easier for people to consider that donation process.

Just one of the other things, before I close, is just looking at some of the scenarios where we’ve got overseas paired exchanges in terms of organ donation and thinking about how we make sure that the legislation keeps up with that. Up until now, you could only get that compensation if the surgery happened in New Zealand for both the donor and the recipient and also if that person receiving the transplant was eligible for publicly funded health services. What this does is it changes it so that we can actually accommodate the fact that you might actually be part of a paired organ donation programme that’s been approved. So what the bill does is it allows for that and also creates a schedule that then lists approved paired organ donation exchange programmes. So the Australia and New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program has been added to Schedule 5 so that that then comes in, in terms of when you’re considering eligibility, in the criteria.

Basically, this is an important bill, and I think it’s got the potential to put that framework in place that will increase the number of people that are making those donations, and then the follow-on effect is having that impact on people’s lives.

I just want to close by reading you a quote from Lisa, who, basically, on the Organ Donation New Zealand website, had told her story. She just said, after her transplant: “I’ve never felt more alive than I do today. I’ve been liberated from the battle of breathlessness and absorb every moment I have with my daughter with immense pleasure. I work full time in a vibrant, energetic environment, and, miraculously, I can breathe big, deep, oxygen filled, life-giving breaths. Thank you would never be enough.”

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill is a bill that I’m very proud of, actually, because I’ve had a little bit to do with the laws and the rules around organ donation. This bill actually seeks to improve on the status quo which was improved in the last Parliament, and it was my member’s bill that provided for people to get greater amounts of compensation when they are an organ donor.

The law used to be that you got the sickness benefit—we’ve changed the name, but it’s the equivalent of the sickness benefit. You used to have rock up to Work and Income New Zealand, and say, you know, “I want to donate a kidney to my sister” or whatever, and after a laborious process of talking to a Work and Income New Zealand case manager, most of the time the case manager didn’t even know that the entitlement existed, so they had to file through the luminous case files and the material that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I’m sure you’re very familiar with from your past roles. And at some point, various people were declined compensation and they were declined their benefits. And, of course, when you do donate an organ—typically, in New Zealand, a kidney—it’s anywhere between six, if you’re lucky, you know, more likely 12 weeks off work, so for a lot of people having to sacrifice that income and go down to the sickness benefit was an enormous sacrifice. And, of course, it puts people off donating. Most people do it out of altruism, they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, typically for a family member—although, not always. There are actually people, every year in New Zealand, who donate organs, kidneys for people they’ve never met, because they’re just good-hearted people. I think the law was wrong, and the law didn’t treat them like the heroes that they actually are.

So now the law says: if you are an organ donor, you are entitled to earn, from the Government, exactly what you were earning before. So if you’re on a good salary—$100,000, say, for example—and you donate a kidney to your brother to save his life or prolong his life, you get what you’re earning for that time that you’re off work. I think that’s an improvement. What this bill does is build on that and it makes some minor and technical amendments.

When we were crafting what became the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act at the Health Committee—it spent quite a long time at the Health Committee; I wasn’t a member of the committee but I subbed in—it was quite tricky crafting the provisions, because you’ve got ACC and you’ve got the various income support mechanisms in New Zealand, and it’s a very tricky area to get the definitions of “hours” and “weekly earnings” and “monthly earnings” and all of that stuff right. It started off as a member’s bill. We were very fortunate to have officials’ support—and I do want to pay tribute to the health officials; they do a great job. But what this bill does is make some technical amendments to the way in which “usual hours” is defined. I think that’s going to be a positive thing. It’s largely a bit of a tidy up and technical.

The other major part of the bill is, of course, around the Blood and Organ Service, which has been renamed. For quite a long time now, we’ve been going back and forth about who should be the appropriate body to oversee organ donation in New Zealand, and that will now be the New Zealand Blood Service to oversee and provide clinical governance of the organ donation and transplantation service. It’s a good move. Actually, it was the previous Government’s plan to do that pretty much straight away, so it’s a little bit frustrating, I have to say, that we’re now sort of into the fag end of November, and we’re sort of still passing the legislation to do it, but, you know, “good things come to those who wait” is the saying, and that’s a positive thing. It should have happened earlier, but it’s a positive thing.

The next step is the funding. I stay in touch with this space, and the people who work in this area say to me that it’s a positive move. They say that it should have happened sooner and all the rest of it, but they also say that the next step’s the money. So my plea to Minister Henare over there, who’s an Associate Minister of Health, is: you’ve got to come up with the dough in the next Budget, my friend, because the blood service is going to require an infusion—not a blood infusion—of cash to get on with the job. But it was a positive move—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Easy to do when you’re not doing tax cuts.

Ha, ha! Well, we’re not talking about a huge sum of money; we’re only talking about a few million, Minister Little. I’m sure—with the largesse that’s been showered upon the Government of New Zealand by the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand over the last two years—you can find it within your measly hearts for a few million to make the blood service work.

Ultimately, of course, the more organ donations there are in New Zealand, the better. People who spend their lives on dialysis—firstly, their quality of life is low, and, secondly, it’s vastly expensive for our district health boards, because it’s an incredibly expensive ongoing procedure. So, of course, the more organ donations we can get, the better. This bill is a step in the right direction, so I commend it to the House.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t here to take the first call as the lead Minister on this particular bill, but I’m thankful to have the opportunity to speak as the final speaker on this bill, and I want to commend all members across the House for their contributions. I do want to acknowledge Mr Chris Bishop, and he is right. The work that he did in the last Government to progress and to bring the issue of organ donation once again back on to the radar of the general public I think is commendable. As has been mentioned by many members, those involved in the Health Committee process, and those who have just recently studied up on the bill have found that, actually, collectively we made a far better bill, something that will be progressive and allow a platform to look into the growth and the expansion of organ donation, and, dare I say it, donations of other kinds.

It’s easy to focus on the organ donation part. From my discussion with the New Zealand Blood Service, there is also a huge lack of donors in the blood space, in the plasma space, and, as was mentioned earlier by my New Zealand First colleague, the bone marrow donation space. I’m proud to say that I’m a donor of all three. I’m on the bone marrow register myself. I donate blood. I donate plasma. I think this will allow for an opportunity, as was mentioned by other members of the House, for what organ donation looks like from a Māori perspective. But in order for that to happen, the framework had to be set up, and this bill does that.

In a sort of hand-in-glove moment, it allows the New Zealand Blood Service and the Organ Donation Service to come together. I want to just pick up, briefly, on a point made by my colleague Dr Liz Craig about clinical governance and how important that is for the organ donation side. One can imagine the clinical aspect of organ donation is significant, and it does provide some challenges for an organisation so small. But in making the two organisations one, it’s important that we acknowledge the challenge of clinical governance, and also, just as important, that we get it right.

The back-office function, if you like, is one that will allow for better efficiencies and economies of scale as we look into the administration of this into the future. I want to pick up on the point made by Mr Bishop that, from my discussions with the New Zealand Blood Board, there are some options and opportunities for us into the future to look at the funding model.

As we’ve brought together these two organisations and the role that the district health board has played in the past in supporting the organ donation aspects, it’s important too that we have a look at what the funding model might look like into the future—in particular, if we hope to grow on the aspirations that have been offered by my colleagues across the House with respect to organ donation.

I’m also the Minister responsible for diabetes in this country. Much has been made about the kidney transplant and the exchange programme with the Australians, our counterparts. It’s important, then, if we’re going to consider all parts of somebody who suffers from diabetes, how we look into the way we front-load the system, and that’s primarily about education and making good lifestyle decisions to make sure you lead a healthy life, and, then, all the way to the other end, where we actually opt for an organ donation. That entire spectrum must be considered as one, and this is actually just one part of that entire spectrum, in particular with those who suffer from diabetes.

Just in my concluding remarks, I do want to offer a number of thanks—one, to the officials who have continued to hold this bill as it’s progressed through the House. The committee has already been mentioned for their great work in coming together and working collaboratively on such a good bill. I’ve already mentioned Mr Bishop. And, just finally, I want to thank all of the donors—those who have donated in the past, those who are considering donation, and those in the future who we hope will donate, because, as has already been mentioned, it is one of those gifts of life, and I think we can’t thank them enough, for those who have and for those who may consider it into the future, because it is important.

Dr Reti talked about the history of kidney transplantation and identical twins. As a twin myself, I consider myself lucky that, if ever the case was needed, I’ve got a twin brother that might, in the goodness of his heart, consider to donate to me—

💬 Chris Penk: Might be the other way round.

Ha, ha! It could be the other way around; that’s for sure. To see just where it’s come from to where it’s headed, I think, really does offer us some good opportunities for this space, and I think that this country can certainly put its hand up and make sure that organ donation becomes one of those key conversations in our families and in our communities to make sure that people, when they need it, are able to receive it. This is a good bill. I’m thankful to supporters across the House, and I look forward to the work to be done by this organisation as it moves into the future.

Bill read a third time.