Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Kia orana and thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Firstly I do want to acknowledge the member for bringing the bill to the House and for its judicious passage through the various stages. I do also need to acknowledge the hard work of the Health Committee. We often remark that our select committees work very hard and in this case I have to say it was very very true. It took months of extraordinary work to bring some clarity to this particular piece of legislation. I also want to note that the officials and the advice that was sent to the committee were very useful in getting the legislation to the stage that we are at now. But first before I launch into what is going to be a fairly technical contribution to this piece of legislation I want to just add a little celebratory note and welcome Charlie Douglas Hipkins into the world—the baby boy of our senior whip Chris Hipkins and his partner Jade.Hon Ruth Dyson: The baby boy of our baby boy.POTO WILLIAMS: Yes the baby boy of our baby boy as the Hon Ruth Dyson has said. So welcome Charlie Douglas Hipkins. I just want to quote from the commentary from the select committee about the proposed amendments. I think it is a little bit of an understatement in that we said: We recommend substantial changes to the bill to provide cost neutrality for donors. It became clear through the submission process that there were additional complexities in the organ donation regime. This has led us to recommend significant changes to the bill." Here are some of them that we recommended. Firstly I do want to note that the Attorney-General did raise some concerns with regard to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and as our previous speaker and the sponsor of the bill Chris Bishop has already noted it is really around the ability for beneficiaries who may have income to actually be entitled to compensation should they become organ donors. Some of the examples that were quoted were people who may be working part-time and receiving New Zealand superannuation or a veterans pension as they are able to do. In the bill that came to the select committee they would not have been eligible for financial support so at the Attorney-General's request the select committee made the due amendments to the bill so that those donors could actually receive reimbursement for 100 percent of their forgone employment income. We also suggested and got some very good advice on who should actually be responsible for the bill—whether it should sit with the Ministry of Social Development which as we all know is responsible for ensuring that our citizens have adequate income. Given the technical nature of the donations—there are often some mitigating factors around what will happen with recovery times and what complications may come up during surgeries for example—it was felt that it was more appropriate that the Director-General of Health manage this so the committee made the suggestion and it was taken up that the responsibility move to the Ministry of Health. The select committee in its report back clarified several things. The organs that qualify to be part of this piece of legislation—currently we conduct kidney and liver transplants in New Zealand but we are able to offer a range of other transplants. We currently are not doing them but it was felt that we needed to ensure that the ability to provide for those organ transplants later on should be provided for and that is through regulation I believe in this legislation. We have included a new clause 9 which defines what a qualifying donor actually is and that is very important. A donor has to be someone who donates to a person who is able to receive a publicly funded health service in New Zealand. It also needs to be for someone who is going to undertake their transplant surgery in New Zealand. Clause 4 defines what surgery is and ensures that this relates to this surgery to collect an organ for donation and then to transplant it into a recipient. Clause 10 looks at extending the period of entitlement to earnings compensation by up to 12 weeks post-surgery. We are all human and we recover at different rates and sometimes we need a little extra time to ensure that we can recover well before we are required to go back to work so we looked at extending the entitlement to 12 weeks. Clause 12 provides for compensation for donors should they need time prior to the surgery to do things like assessments and tests to judge eligibility for example so there is provision to be compensated for loss of earnings in that period of time. Clause 13 sets out the discretions in terms of being able to provide compensation for some other additional items should it become necessary on a case by case basis and it sets out the payment deadline of no more than 30 days after payment is due. The biggest part I guess was also looking at the structure of earnings compensation and looking at the definition of earnings. We looked to a model that is already working for us and that is the definition of earnings as we see it in the ACC legislation. That was due to the complexity that we have around calculating income especially when we are looking at people who may be donating if they are self-employed. The definitions within the Accident Compensation Act give some very good definitions about how we can deal with that complexity. We also looked at how we might provide for donors who might have some foreign-sourced income and for that we looked to the provisions of the Income Tax Act—specifically section YD 4 of that Act—and used the definitions in section YA 1 of the Income Tax Act with regard to foreign-sourced income. We have ensured that the rate of compensation and the payment schedules are included in new clause 11 and have based payment on being weekly fortnightly or monthly as determined by the director-general. Clauses 13 to 17 deal with such matters as calculating income that comes from a range of sources and also from foreign-sourced income. The role of the director-general with regard to decision making resolving disputes and reviewing decisions is dealt with in clauses 17 18 and 20. The recovery of payments which is an important factor if there are any potential overpayments is dealt with in clause 27 and clauses 21 to 25 deal with the disputes. In the time I have remaining—there are far more technical aspects to this piece of legislation but I just want to make one final note and one final comment. This is I guess by way of dedication to a friend of mine Catherine Mary Jacobs who for many years was on the list for kidney donation and sadly was not able to receive a kidney donation. We talked often about what that might look like for her in her life should she be lucky enough to have somebody donate to her. She was unable to get a donation at that time—we were pretty much reliant on people passing on and providing donations from that source. She had had a couple of people who had indicated that they were keen to donate their kidneys to her but of course at that stage it was financially impossible for them to do so. So I dedicate this reading to my friend Catherine Mary Jacobs. Thank you."