King AnnetteHon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Labour supports this bill the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. You have heard of that old saying pass the parcel" I am sure. Well this is one of these bills that you would call "pass the bill". I do not mean the passage of the bill. I mean that this is a bill that has gone through the hands of a number of members: Cam Calder Michael Woodhouse and finally Chris Bishop. There is an old joke that is often told at celebrity debates and I am sure Mr Bishop has heard it. It goes like this: "He was so lazy he married somebody who was already pregnant." In the case of Mr Bishop he took over a bill where the work had already been done then sent it to the Health Committee for further work to be done while he sat taking the credit for it. I can see an analogy between that joke and Mr Bishop. The truth is that this bill came to the select committee in a very poor state Mr Bishop—Chris Bishop: Here we go.Hon ANNETTE KING: Yes I am going to say this because I want to rename this bill. I want to rename it the "Health Select Committee's Bill"—not in the name of Mr Bishop but in the name of the Health Committee. This is because the bill was not in a fit state when it came to the select committee. Mr Bishop had just put his name and the glory on it—and it was out there in the media—but he had not done the grunt work on this bill. So it came to us at the select committee and we set out to turn it into something that was going to be workable and I believe that the changes that we have made do make it workable. We started off by changing the name. We changed the name so it does reflect that it is about financial assistance for live organ donation. So we changed the name and we added a new purpose clause—and that is usually what the bill is all about so we added a new purpose clause. We rewrote substantive portions of this bill and then we worked out how you could actually give some financial compensation to people. What we put into the bill was 100 percent compensation of income to donors for up to 12 weeks during recovery. We even included beneficiaries so they are excused from a work test and related obligations. So I just wanted to get that on record. It is all very well having a bill and getting the glory but be thankful Mr Bishop that you had a Health Committee that was prepared to turn it into something that is for the benefit of New Zealand—and it needed to be because by international standards we have very low rates of both live and deceased organ donation. I want to at this point pay a tribute to Andy Tookey. I have known him for a long time. He is a long-time campaigner for organ donation. I think I first met him in the early 2000s and he said that the system is a mess. So why is it a mess? It is because in New Zealand we have not had good levels of donation either from live donors or from those who are deceased. We looked at the issue of deceased donors at the select committee and I think it is worth mentioning why Andy Tookey believes that there are such low rates of organ donation at death. At that time there was—I think he brought it up—a story on Stuff in March 2016 about a young man called Michael Boyes who died suddenly in February. His family honoured his last wish by donating his organs. Seven strangers were helped by that donation but the point was made that it does not happen in many many cases. In fact when you look at what happens for those who have deceased and the donation of their organs most family members refuse to allow their family member's organs to be donated. When they are asked six out of 10 refuse. You could say—and I think it is true—that it is the worst possible time for a family to be asked. So it is understandable that often families will overrule the dying wish of that family member. Interestingly an online survey that was undertaken showed that 88 percent of New Zealanders believed that the wishes of a person should be followed through even when they have died but that does not happen. I think it is probably because we would have to change the law because once a person has died they are no longer viewed to be a person and the family takes control of the body. They then have the say over whether a person's organs can be donated. We could not address this issue in the select committee because it does require I think as I said a change of law and it is probably going to need something like a proper register not just a driver's licence that says you are willing to give your organs. So in that area there is still work to done and I think I will return to that a little later on. But in terms of this bill I think what is important is that we changed it so that it is now fiscally neutral for a person. It is no incentive for someone to go and give an organ and be paid for it. That is immoral and we would certainly not support that. Just as we do not support people being paid to give blood in New Zealand we certainly do not pay for people to give organs in this country. But what this bill does—and we looked at it so carefully to make sure that we got it right—is that it does allow for 100 percent compensation of income for those donors. Financial barriers are a problem. People have to give up their work be off sick and it can take up to 12 weeks before they can return to work which can be a big financial turnoff for anybody who might have been willing say to donate a kidney to a family member. So I think removing that financial barrier is what this bill is really all about. As it was introduced the Attorney-General said it was inconsistent with section 19(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that was because there was unjustified discrimination against beneficiaries. We fixed that problem as well so that they could be excused from a work test—as you know that is a requirement—and other related obligations. So I think what we have done with this bill is to make it—well certainly far better than when it was introduced but something that I hope will increase the number of live organ donors.But I just wanted to raise this issue: the Minister said that what we need to do in New Zealand is to change the culture to lift organ donation. Yes we do need to change the culture. He said we do not need a register; I disagree. I think if you are going to collect organs from live and deceased donors you do need to have a register. Putting that to one side if we are then going to change the culture you would have thought that the Minister would put some funding behind the organisations that are out there to change the culture. Can I tell you that there has been no increase in funding to donor liaison coordinators—none at all it has stayed the same—since the 2014 2015 and 2016 Budgets. There has been no additional funding for Organ Donation New Zealand since 2012—and we have got funding from only five Budgets. Every year the money has been the same. So you have to say that there has not been a real interest in changing the culture and working with those organisations and people who could lift the information and knowledge to work with our surgeons in intensive care. The intensivists are there. They are there with patients who are dying; they could be working with families if they had greater information. I was really disappointed to get this answer in a written question and to see lots of fancy talk from the Minister about the culture change needed to lift organ donation and very little contribution has been made towards that."