Kuriger Barbara; Tisch LindsayBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to again speak on the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill in the third reading. As others have pointed out it is compensation rather than the financial assistance that it was originally introduced as. It is a much better concept because people do this for love or for the willingness to help another human being not for the financial implications of it. But it is also important that they are not out of pocket.It has been a pleasure to be working on the Health Committee again. The Health Committee generally is working through our programmes and it is quite common that we come in here and we are all united in one cause which we are behind this piece of legislation. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. It is a no-brainer—everybody was for it—but there were obviously some pieces in the legislation that we just needed to tidy up as we worked our way through. They were mainly around the levels of compensation and some of the other details that needed to fit in with the other Acts that it affects. I would like to acknowledge the member Chris Bishop again for bringing this forward and the Hon Michael Woodhouse and Cam Calder before them.A lot of people have mentioned today that live organ donors are heroes and that organ donors offer the gift of life and this is pretty special. What better gift could you give somebody than an organ? I think it takes real courage for a person to be able to do that. To do it for a loved one is one thing but for somebody who is outside of their family relationship I think it is an even bigger sacrifice. I really want to commend all those people who have done that.It is important—as we know our road toll is going down on what it has been. Our roads are getting safer. Unfortunately we are still having a few tragic accidents and that is really sad but we are trying to limit those and bring the number down. For those people who need organ donations we have got to find a new way. I have also been listening to the conversation as we have worked our way through this bill in terms of future discussions that we will have around organ donors on drivers' licences and in wills and the difficulty that family members have with honouring that donation when the time actually comes. Despite the good intentions it is not actually that easy for people to give away the organs of a family member often after they have passed away. It is really important to remember that these donors are not sick. I looked it up on the New Zealand donor site. If you are fit and healthy you can actually give an organ donation up to the age of 80 years of age. Although that actually seems quite a length of time my grandmother has just turned 100 and I remember her having a hip operation well into her 80s. She was up and about a couple of days later going: You can't kill weeds." She is 100 and some 80-year-olds are in very very good health.We have talked about cost neutrality and that is really important. We talked a lot about ACC and the 80 percent but actually these people are giving up an income to go away and do this and it is important that they be fully compensated.When you end up speaking on the third reading of a bill particularly where everybody is on the same page and you have heard all the discussions up until now and there are a few more to come sometimes you look in a few different places for research. I happened to be with our esteemed chair of the Primary Production Committee today Mr Ian McKelvie who spoke about his taxi driver who desperately needed an organ transplant. He said it was amazing. He went off to Auckland. He had the transplant. He was out of hospital within a week and he was back at work driving Mr McKelvie around within 3 weeks. So we can be grateful for the taxi driver for the organ donor and also for the fact that Mr McKelvie's transport has not been put in danger.We have talked about the 100 percent. We have talked about wills and drivers' licences. We have talked about so many things through this process. It really is a no-brainer. It is just about time to move through and get on with it. One of the things that we did decide we needed to do through this process was to put it under the guidance of the Director-General of Health. It was previously under the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development but because of the Ministry of Health's primary interest in organ donation it meant that that was just a much more sensible place for it to be.Others have talked about futureproofing as well. There may be other types of organs that we are able to donate in the future. I know that a conversation happened along the way several times about 3-D printing. Who knows what the future might bring. We all know how slow legislation can be at times so it is great that this is futureproofed so that we do not have to go through the whole process at any time in the future. We can just make sensible changes.Thank you again to all of those donors. Thank you to Mr Bishop. As a member of the Health Committee it is a pleasure to be recommending this piece of legislation to the House. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Catherine Delahunty—5 minutes."