Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. We're pleased to be able to support this bill noting that it contains a number of improvements to our organ donation programme. That really is long overdue. We like it because it helps to meet the needs of living people who donate an organ and also the families of deceased people who donate. We also like the fact that it will fold neatly and very cost effectively into the New Zealand Blood Service which has the experience and the ability. They'll be able not only to manage the programme very well but also to promote the service to get the numbers up because that's what this bill is all about; it's about increasing the number of donors for all of those who require an organ donation.It's also a very sensible and not unnecessarily coercive type of bill. It comes from the strategy to increase New Zealand's organ donation and transplantation rates and we believe that the resulting bill actually covers a number of areas that will actually help to achieve that goal. It's an omnibus bill and we will see that it will amend the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016 as well as the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000.It's really when you think about organ donation an unconditional gift of life. The very word donation" implies that there's no direct compulsion. So we strongly believe in this particular ethos. In New Zealand we don't have very high organ donation rates. Some countries like Singapore and Israel lead the world in organ donation transplant rates but they're also known for the fair amount of pressure that they put on grief-stricken families when we're talking about deceased organ donation. That could actually border on coercion. So that's not an area where we want to go but we would like to see that there is greater ability to have families understand their young people perhaps—like the Canadian young man who's been mentioned—how they can feel that they can make those decisions particularly if they didn't know that that person wanted to be an organ donor. So this will create a great pathway for that.We have a number of kidney transplants. I'd like to speak to those briefly in New Zealand. In 2017 there were 187 recipients of kidney transplants in New Zealand: 69 were living donor and 118 were deceased donor kidney transplants. The year before in 2016 there were only 172 donor transplants. Three district health boards around New Zealand conduct these. They provide kidney transplant procedures. They're in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch. Auckland has the most. In 2017 there were 126 in Auckland 37 in Wellington and 24 in Christchurch giving that overall total of 187.To give the gift of life is the most selfless gift you can possibly give and organ donations are actually a very sensitive issue a very emotive issue and in New Zealand we have around 200 or so ethnicities. Each ethnicity has its own cultural practice that must be respected and understood. This is a new area and I'd like to speak to this briefly in terms of Māori and looking at this gift of an organ as being a taonga—as a gift. So that is an area that I'd like to note that Dr Lance O'Sullivan has made discussion about and the question being in his mind "What if an organ donation actually didn't diminish tapu? What if it actually enhanced it?" So that's a conversation within Māoridom that is ongoing and this bill will certainly link to the donation in terms of how it can work through into various communities of New Zealand.I'd just like to make mention of the Māori man who made a live kidney donation. He made a request that when that recipient eventually dies a long time into the future he would actually like to have kidney returned back to him after he's passed on and to go into the grave with him. So there are all sorts of ways that society and community are looking at what it means to be an organ donor and giving that gift of life. New Zealand First absolutely believes this bill is a very important bill to make that process and increase those donation rates. And so we'd like to see it speed its way through the House as it works to give more people the gift of life. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."