Stewart Barbara: Human Tissue Bill — In Committee 
Stewart Barbara: Human Tissue Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13054] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of the Human Tissue Bill. As previous speakers have said this bill actually replaces the Human Tissue Act of 1964. 
When we look at Part 1 we see that it focuses on the “General provisions” around the bill. A number of definitions are listed in Part 1 and explained and updated to be relevant in today’s society. One of the interesting clauses is clause 7A which defines who is a “close available relative”. It looks at that in subclause (1) in relation to a “close available relative … who was 16 years or older at the time when he or she died” or in subclause (2) in relation to a “close available relative … who was under 16 years of age at the time when he or she died”. It is quite interesting to see what process actually has to be followed if one of those situations occurs. This clause states that a “close available relative” is either “a spouse civil union partner or de facto partner” or the “close available relative” could be “a parent of the individual;”. The provision goes through a whole lot of scenarios that were previously not in the Human Tissue Act and it is good to define that clearly. In the Health Committee we discussed extensively the cultural context of a person who is a “close available relative” as well. 
All in all in the select committee we believed that this was a very good opportunity to discuss the issue and to hear the views of the people of New Zealand. We were very aware at the time that there was no way we could actually satisfy everyone and although we would have liked to satisfy Andy Tookey and have a compulsory binding organ donor register it was generally felt that merely setting up a register was not going to be the way to ensure that a register was successful. We want to ensure that anything that is set up is totally successful. I must say that we have not had a lot of information circulated widely in the community about becoming an organ donor. I was very interested today to see in  
Change the World for Fifteen Bucks 
—a book that MPs received from New Zealand Post and we must thank New Zealand Post for it—that action 15 one of the ways to make a change for the world is to register as an organ donor. I will quote some of the words here because I thought they were quite telling quite poignant in their own way: “After you have died let your heart beat inside someone else’s chest. Let your liver live after you have passed on. Even your eyes could give somebody else a new look.” 
The book reminds us that in 2005 there were only 25 organ donors in the whole of New Zealand and that here we have one of the countries with the lowest organ donor rates in the world. We know that a lot of organ donors think they have done their bit when they tick their driver’s licence but it is a shame that that is really only the very start of the process and is not a binding register. There is no way that that can be taken to be part of a binding register in any way. We in the select committee were very interested to hear the various views from the groups involved in this and it was interesting when looking at the definitions and going through some of those definitions to ensure they were updated to see who was involved in making the decision—who were the immediate family. In this we had a very interesting discussion initiated by the Maori Party about who actually owned a person’s body when that person passed on—whether the whole whanau owned it or whether the person owned it. We had a very interesting discussion when we went through this particular bill. 
We are very aware too that with the shortage of organs we will have in the future many many more people are waiting or are on medication and anxiously hoping that some organ will become available that they may be a tissue match for so they may be a recipient and live a reasonable quality of life. I know that for some of the submitters we saw compulsory organ donation was the way they believed we should go—that when one died one should have mandatorily signed one’s body over to the State for whatever organs were required.