Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to contribute in the Committee stage debate of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. I want to acknowledge the member who was responsible for bringing this piece of legislation to the House Chris Bishop and also the Health Committee.The relevance of this piece of legislation to many families is actually immense. We have a waiting list of over 550 New Zealanders requiring organ donation. Of those 450 require kidney donation. I just have some statistics from the Organ Donation New Zealand Annual Report 2015. The longest surviving kidney transplant has been 42 years 168 kidney transplant recipients have lived longer than 20 years and another 30 have lived longer than 30 years. The relevance of this piece of legislation is huge. On average in terms of the kidney donations in 2015 there were 139 and as my colleague Meka Whaitiri highlighted of those donations 72 were from live donors and 67 were from 46 deceased donors and of those five were Māori. So Māori are not participating in this particular area very highly within a context of being some of the most needy in terms of it being us who require these organ donations. In terms of international statistics we actually have an incredibly low rate—it is 9.3 per million. France has nearly three times the rates of donation to ours Britain has nearly two times more and Australia has one and a half times more. What this piece of legislation is attempting to do is remove the barriers that have historically prevented a number of our families from donating. If the needy are Māori and Pacific then it actually makes perfect sense that within that unmet needs base which is approximately 70 percent of those who need organ donations—actually our Māori and Pacific families and communities are not in a position to be the donor. I think this is going to create an opportunity now for Māori and Pacific communities to start talking about organ donation. I actually think that by removing that barrier many more whānau members will put their hands up and say: Yes we want to be donors for our whānau because it is not going to affect the financial viability of our families." What I really want to highlight is that in Part 2 I think that having the earnings compensation for up to 12 weeks is at the extreme end of that recuperation time frame. I want to commend the select committee and the officials for making sure that we provided the maximum time for recuperation because for recovery from a kidney transplant there is an estimate of between 2 and 12 weeks in terms of recuperation or rehabilitation post-transplant so to provide that minimum—well I guess it is a signal to the community that for up to 12 weeks you will be able to be 100 percent compensated because we are not treating this as an accident which is how this bill was introduced in the House. That is why it was under the accident compensation legislation and how we ever assumed that donors were having an accident and that it was unexpected is an interesting little quirk in the legislation. What I also wanted to highlight is that for the people who donate there are a lot of emotional and psychological effects of the donation. I mean it is not just a straightforward process and some people do have detrimental consequences for their health and well-being. So it has also been good to see under clause 10(4)(b) that if anybody requires more than the 12 weeks' compensation then a medical clinician can authorise an extension of that time period. I think that is an incredibly important clause in this legislation because it allows for the worst-case scenario which is that somebody has an adverse event from being a donor and to have that factored into the legislation I think is commendable. Kia ora.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 238 in the name of Chris Bishop be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Parts 1 to 3 schedules 1 to 4 and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to.House resumed.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted."