Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Barbara Stewart to take a call in the second reading of the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill. Just before I start I just want to say a thankyou to Louisa Wall for taking us down through the history trip of how bills like this are actually transformed—the pioneers too—into great bills like this. I would like to congratulate Chris Bishop on having his bill pulled out of the biscuit tin and having the honour of watching it go through its passage through this House. The purpose of this bill is to adequately support those who choose to make selfless choices and life-changing decisions to donate an organ. New Zealand First supports this bill. Organ donation is indeed a selfless act and one that is critical for the health of New Zealanders awaiting organ transplants. There are two types of organ donations: donations from living persons and also from deceased persons. This bill of course deals with live donations. The most common organ donated by a living person is a kidney and parts of the liver and lungs can also be transplanted. This is a huge issue for us. We have such high rates of kidney disease here in New Zealand. Earlier this year Kidney Health New Zealand reported that there are 300000 Kiwis with chronic kidney disease and 90 percent of those will end up progressing to end-stage kidney disease where they will require either lifelong dialysis or a transplant. They reported that there were 2678 patients receiving dialysis at a cost of between $30000 and $60000 a year. Interestingly enough one in 10 Kiwis suffers from early-stage kidney disease and that is seriously concerning. Despite such a high rate of disease we know that unfortunately the rate of organ donation in New Zealand is very low. In fact we are well behind Australia. The Ministry of Health advised the Health Committee that donations from both live and deceased donors are not enough to meet the demand. Although this bill is not expected to have significant effect on the number of donors it does provide one way to support those who have made such a life-changing decision both for the donor and the recipient. Currently according to Kidney Health New Zealand more than 600 New Zealanders are waiting for an organ transplant and approximately 450 of those are waiting for a kidney transplant. Clearly something needs to change to increase the rate of donors in New Zealand. I would like to share a small story. One of my friends a very good friend of mine had decided that she would donate to a young girl. My friend took it so seriously that she had to be on quite a critical diet. She had to watch everything she did everything she drank and she had to forgo alcohol—and when you are in your 20s it is not that easy. I was really proud of what my friend achieved—the love for this young lady for her to donate an organ made us all as a group aware of what we could be doing.I also want to talk about the Diabetes NZ Fitbit Movement Challenge that Louisa Wall and others have talked about tonight and it is in support of type 2 diabetes. Actually I am a type 2 diabetic and one day I may need someone to help me and donate to me which is why I think this bill is so important. That is also why New Zealand First is supporting this bill. It is an issue that can only get worse because we do not have enough donors and it is timely that we are debating this bill in the House tonight but we need to do more to lift the rates of organ donation such as educating our public more and making improvements to the system too. There is another little thing that I do want to touch upon. When I was growing up in our Māori family with our elders donating our organs was a no-no. We were always told that for Māori the way that we are born is the way that we shall leave so I guess it was entrenched in us that it was tapu to have bits of our body taken away from us and that is what we have grown up with through the generations. But I can see that educating our Māori whānau that we should not be scared to help someone live and help someone have a better life outcome than if they had not donated is something that I and my generation are trying to talk to our next generation about. They are wiser now too. They are more open to change. I guess it is not such a taboo should you consider giving one of your organs away and I guess we are kind of happy that our grandparents are gone because if they could hear what I was saying in the House tonight I would be in so much trouble! So I am glad that times are changing and that hopefully because high numbers of Māori are recipients of organs they can see it within themselves to understand that this is a really important bill and it is really important to help make a change in someone's life. This bill is designed to remove the financial barrier that currently exists for donors which has been identified as one of the reasons why organ donation rates are so low here in New Zealand. We know that dialysis is expensive and an increasing number of Kiwis rely on it to survive. Savings to the health system from a 50-year-old patient having a transplant as opposed to staying on dialysis would amount to being more than $120000 even taking into account the expected life expectancy which is likely to be twice as long. But we know that it is not all about the money and the most important thing is to get to those who need organ transplants and to those people who are able to donate so that the recipients can live a longer and happier life and actually have quite a fulfilling one too. New Zealand First is becoming increasingly concerned about what we are seeing as a postcode lottery health system. More and more often health outcomes are dependent on where you live. This bill seeks to address this in a significant way as financial barriers are removed. We know that currently there are those who would desperately like to donate an organ to a family or a friend but simply cannot afford to take time off work to receive a sickness benefit which is the current situation. This means that the rich can afford treatment and the poor cannot—an unacceptable situation in New Zealand I am sure everyone in the House would agree. Many people I have talked to about this are shocked at the current system. They cannot believe that Kiwis who undergo such a life-changing procedure and selfless act for the benefit of others actually end up worse off financially. They agree with us here in the House that there is a drastic need for change and they are happy that this bill has come through. The Health Committee has considered this bill in detail. It received 110 submissions. Many submitters shared their personal stories with the select committee and I hear that some of them were quite harrowing. We heard from submitters that a loss of income was a financial barrier to donation and some had delayed donating until they had enough money in their savings account to do this. We had many submitters talk to us about the reality involved in being a donor: trips to the hospital childcare arrangements the cost of family visits to the hospital and disruption of family life in general. They also talked about the emotional physical and mental cost that they went through all of which should be compensated adequately for. We also heard from many patients who are suffering whilst waiting to receive an organ transplant. We heard from Kiwis about what it is like to be on peritoneal dialysis a treatment for patients with severe chronic kidney disease. One submitter told us that she had to give up work after being on dialysis as it took such a physical and emotional toll on her. We also heard from those who had received organ donations. They are so appreciative of being able to start a normal life again. The impact on individuals and families of giving people a second chance and getting people back up and running cannot be underestimated. Submitters were in favour of increasing the compensation rate to donors from 80 percent as was originally suggested to 100 percent for the first 12 weeks of recovery. New Zealand First is in support of the level of cost-neutral compensation like it is in the UK. The idea is that donating organs should not advantage or disadvantage the donor financially. We believe this will ensure that donors do not lose out for making such a huge decision. In the first reading my colleague Barbara Stewart raised the point that we do not want to move towards money-based compensation for organ donors. We believe that the compensation figure of 100 percent is fair and it is reasonable. It is also important that altruism remains the motivation for organ donation not financial compensation. New Zealand First is in favour of the responsibility for the administration of this legislation moving from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to the Ministry of Health. We heard from submitters about the difficulties that donors went through when accessing compensation from MSD. Mainly it was due to the lack of understanding from MSD. It would be important that the Ministry of Health develop a sound system so that the experience for donors to access compensation is seamless and it is stress-free. We are pleased that the select committee has removed the need for beneficiaries to submit their working obligations when they have leave to have donor surgeries. It has been decided that donors should receive reimbursement for 100 percent of their income regardless of beneficiary status. We believe that this clarifies the concern raised by the Attorney-General regarding the Human Rights Act 1993. Thank you.