Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): For those who are currently reflecting on the events of today which will end up being historic I have actually just spent the dinner break at Tātarakihi—The Children of Parihaka at the invitation of Marama Fox and I have spent that time with my Youth MP Leah Bell. It does put things in perspective. It is a pleasure to stand here tonight and speak in the Committee stage of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill—and it is much more appropriate that we call it compensation rather than financial assistance. I take my hat off and appreciate the love and the generosity of people who offer to donate their organs. For them it is not about the money. For a lot of people it is about the care of a loved one although there are some very amazing people who choose to donate an organ to a complete stranger. I think that really takes some courage so I would like to thank anyone who has been able to do that. This bill has been brought to the House as a result of a member's bill from our member Chris Bishop—so thank you Chris—and I will acknowledge Michael Woodhouse prior and I think it was Cam Calder before that. Chris Bishop: That's right Cam Calder—Dr Calder.BARBARA KURIGER: Yes. So we are finally here. When bills like this get here it seems like a simple process about which everybody thinks Hey that's a great idea." but when the Health Committee actually did come to work on this bill there were quite a lot of fish-hooks that needed to be taken care of—specifically how this bill related to other bills. So we spent a lot of time talking about cost neutrality because it was important to the intent of this bill. This bill is not going to be a silver bullet but it is a significant change to how we encourage organ donations. A lot of people have had donations from victims of car accidents and as we know there are a lot of people who offer to do that. They put that on their driver's licence or they intend it in their wishes and then when the time comes the family for whatever reason decides that it is something they cannot go through with. So we have heard from previous speakers tonight that there is more to be done in this area and it is important that at some stage in the future we look at that further. In the meantime I am just really thankful for those donations of organs from those families who have lost loved ones in car accidents. A lot of what we talked about was about what a fair and reasonable compensation was and that is how we came to the rate of 100 percent of the income. For some people they really dearly wanted to do this but did not have the financial capability to be able to do it and I think it is only fair that if someone takes that time out—and it is time out and it is a big decision—that should not have any detrimental effect on their income or deprive them of the ability to be able to do it. So I think it was really important that we went to that 100 percent rate and that no one is out of pocket for doing this. We also made an effort to futureproof this piece of legislation because as we know now—most of us really talk about kidneys as the main one but as science and technology and medical advances progress we are going to find other organs that we are going to be able to transplant and we do not want to be back in the House doing another piece of legislation every time we have an advance in medical technology. So this is futureproofed. I want to say what a pleasure it is always to work on the Health Committee under the chairmanship of Simon O'Connor. It is a committee that works extremely well together. As we have worked through this bill which has had its frustrations in terms of taking a little bit more time than we originally thought it was going to I think we have worked a way to get this into a really good state and it has been a pleasure to be part of it. I look forward to the next stage in the third reading. It is a really big pleasure to take this call. Thank you."