Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I'm incredibly pleased to be in the House this afternoon at this the second reading of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill as the chair of the Health Committee. Can I just acknowledge my colleague Maggie Barry who has spoken before me and essentially I don't want to repeat everything she said but in fact she has canvassed the scope of this piece of legislation incredibly well.What I do want to do is thank the 16 written submitters and also the five submitters who chose to come and speak to the select committee. It was through that process that we were able to make some changes to the bill that obviously from our perspective as a committee we've agreed to and we are recommending to the House that they agree to what we have amended.I'll just take people through generally what this Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill is attempting to do. It is in essence to create a Crown entity. And that Crown entity—we have decided to add value to the New Zealand Blood Service—the New Zealand Blood Service in the future will be known as the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service. So we have expanded the scope of that particular organisation. I want to mihi or acknowledge those who have worked in the Blood Service and that entity because it was incredibly well received at the select committee. Your current practice model the way you engage and asking New Zealanders to contribute blood that obviously then is shared with other New Zealanders—you've done it in a manner that has then enabled the Government to identify you as the most appropriate entity to also now be involved in trying to find more organs for those of our citizens who require organ donation. So the primary objectives of this new entity will be to raise the profile of organ donation to provide that clinical governance to work within the context of coordinating donation transplantations and to also provide advice and information. So as to not traverse some of the points that the Hon Maggie Barry raised I do want to focus on provide the advice and information" because in addition to the changes that we've made to this piece of legislation there are also a number of matters that actually were determined to be out of the scope of the bill because they were for some intents and purposes considered operational issues.One of those actually was about the whole consenting process for people who wanted to be donors. In my haste I neglected to bring my driver's licence but on my driver's licence I have elected to be a donor and one of the submitters—oh you've got yours; thank you Angie Warren-Clark. So this has no legal status and one of the submitters was incredibly passionate about creating I guess a regime that meant those of us who choose to be donors didn't have that decision overturned when we actually died. The reason he presented to the Health Committee was because he had someone he loved who had died while they were waiting for a donor. So some of the international elements that we explored were in fact how we legally ensure that people who want to donate their organs at a time when they did die were able to do so in a manner that upheld I guess a whole lot of principles—those principles about informed consent and which pieces of legislation in fact most enable that to happen. And so the Human Tissue Act of 2008 does regulate the collection and use of tissue and it is in fact section 78 that provides for the establishment of an opt-in national organ and tissue donor register.I highlight those issues because they were some of the most robust conversations we had around the select committee table. And it was highlighted to us for example that in Wales they brought in a piece of legislation in 2013. It's called the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act. What that proposes is that if a person has not registered an organ and tissue donation decision—either to opt in or opt out—they will be considered to have no objection to becoming a deceased organ donor. And so they actually have a regime in Wales where people are assumed to want to donate unless they say that they don't because in the public good—we have people who are waiting on these donor waiting lists for many many years and some of them wait for far longer than an organ becomes available and they die.But within that context we obviously know that in Aotearoa New Zealand some of the factors that we have to consider are the cultural factors and so I do want to highlight that the whole issue of organ donation particularly for Māori is incredibly complex. I had a very interesting conversation with my father about this exact issue—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I don't want to interrupt an interesting conversation but I do want to bring the member back to the bill.LOUISA WALL: Sure.SPEAKER: She's only got four minutes and only spent about two minutes on it. LOUISA WALL: And the reason I did that was because I didn't want to repeat what my colleague had said.SPEAKER: Well the member will now resume her seat and she won't comment on rulings that I've made. I'll remind her if she's worried about repetition and didn't have anything to say that wasn't repetitious there is not a requirement to fill the entire time.LOUISA WALL: Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm not trying to filibuster. I'm actually trying to have an engaged conversation with the New Zealand public about this piece of legislation. So what I do want to highlight is that within the context of this bill we have ensured that the Australian and New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program qualifies.And so what does that mean? That actually means—and I have a colleague; I used to play rugby with her actually. She ended up donating her kidney but it wasn't to her mother who needed it. It was in fact part of this paired exchange program. So what we are ensuring through this piece of legislation is that people who are philanthropic who do care about their fellow New Zealanders—maybe they're a member of their family or maybe they're not—will be compensated adequately. So if you are part of the Australian and New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program you will now qualify for compensation. And it isn't anything other than what you would have naturally been entitled to so we're not coercing people or paying people for their organs which I want to highlight. What we're doing is compensating them for the good work that they're doing to enable people to fully recover and then to have you know participative lives because we know people who are requiring these organs who don't get them—their lives end up being terrible because as they wait they wait in a state where they aren't fully able to engage and do the things that we take for granted like work or be able to play sport or a whole range of other things. So we've tidied up the legislation to make sure that all New Zealanders will be compensated. They will be compensated if they are workers based on what is specified in their employment agreements and if they are self-employed it will be compensation based on the hours worked in the previous 12 weeks. We've done that to ensure that the intention of this piece of legislation is fulfilled and that intention is to make sure that people who donate their organs for their fellow New Zealand citizens are not in a less favourable position by doing so. We don't want them to have to bear huge burdens in terms of lost wages in terms of being unable to then be fully prepared to go back to work. So I think that it was a very good piece of work by our Health Committee. Can I just go back to say what I was saying before that in having the conversation with my father and telling him that I wanted to donate my organs—one of the issues that will come up specifically for Māori in the future I think is the opportunity to maybe not donate generally but to donate to someone from your hapū or your iwi. I also think this is relevant for the Pacific community because we have this hard time reconciling losing a part of our body when we go back to Papatūānuku but if we knew that our organs were going to somebody from our extended whānau then maybe we'd be a bit more engaged in this issue. Kia ora."