Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. I am pleased to take a short call for the Green Party on the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. I do congratulate Mr Bishop and the Health Committee. This is how select committees should work not like with the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill which the Minister for the Environment issued a press statement about today and which the Local Government and Environment Committee was not even allowed to report back to this House on—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): But moving on.EUGENIE SAGE: —and where there have been closed-door negotiations outside of the select committee. But this bill—and I like Rino Tirikatene's line about heavy-duty panel-beating because it has been completely rewritten in the select committee with the assistance of officials to bring back what was a very sensible bill in terms of providing financial assistance to people making live organ donations to improve the way in which the financial assistance is considered and to change the decision making and the gatekeeping—as Mr Bishop referred to it—from the Ministry of Social Development to the Director-General of Health.It was interesting I think in terms of the points raised by some submitters that they thought the Director-General of Health was a much better decision maker here because of the difficulties people had had in getting assistance from the Ministry of Social Development and the Director-General of Health is obviously much more acquainted with the issues around this.There have been other improvements to the bill. When it was introduced it was going to provide only 80 percent of the equivalent of what you get under ACC. The select committee changed that so that if you were donating an organ it would be cost-neutral and you would receive 100 percent of the income that you would have received from ACC. That is a significant improvement.As others have commented our rates of organ donation in New Zealand are very low compared with countries like Spain. That is often in the area of organs being donated by people who have died and this bill is restricted to live organ donations. It is interesting that New Zealanders consider themselves as altruistic people. Many people support the concept of organ donation and I think that for those people who are extremely generous in donating an organ while they are alive there have been a number of barriers to that. This bill is a really good initiative because it is removing the barrier of suffering financial hardship because there is currently no compensation for lost earnings if you are on a benefit. But I think we need a much greater review of the whole system around organ donation generally—the institutional structures the mechanisms available to support donors the way in which the health and hospital services work for live organ donation and also the donations from people who have died. There needs to be much more support there.I think there is quite a comprehensive review happening. There are various papers on the Ministry of Health website and this bill is a useful initiative not just for what it does in terms of providing an even playing field in relation to financial assistance but also for helping to raise public awareness of the issue of organ donation. When we have increasing rates of diabetes in New Zealand and the renal failure that goes with that we are looking at more and more people requiring assistance there so we need to increase our rates of organ donation.One of the other things I would just like to comment on briefly is clauses 21 to 25 where there are dispute resolution procedures included in the bill. People can apply to the director-general for a review of his or her decision and the role of the director-general is in being a gatekeeper in determining whether people are actually eligible to get that financial assistance which is more sensible than what was in the bill when introduced.So the Green Party supported the bill at its introduction We are very pleased by the very sound select committee process and the improvements to the bill as a result of the select committee. We hope that all bills go through a similarly robust committee process. Thank you.