Kedgley Sue: Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party would like to congratulate Dr Jackie Blue and Andrew Tookey on bringing this important issue to the House. It is really only those families with family members who require organ donation who know just how important this bill is. I think it must be terrifying to be someone like Andrew Tookey. He has a child who he knows will need an organ transplant and he knows that there were only 29 organ donors last year. He knows too that there are literally hundreds of people waiting—I think about 350 people in New Zealand are waiting for a transplant; they are waiting mainly for kidneys but also for other organs—that some of them are dying because they cannot get an organ and that their lives would have been saved if one had been available. 
I think the key issue in this whole debate is the fact that more than 1 million New Zealanders have indicated on their driver’s licence that they are willing to donate one of their organs yet only 29 people were donors last year. Why is there a discrepancy? What is going on? When more than 1 million New Zealanders say they are willing to donate an organ why do we have one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the world? Of course as the Minister has indicated it is an issue we must address because we will need more and more organs particularly kidneys if the epidemics of type 2 diabetes and obesity etc. continue. 
The interesting thing is that Andy Tookey brought this issue to Parliament about 3 years ago I think. The Health Committee considered it and wrote a report. We had a whole lot of recommendations and basically the Government turned down most of them. I suspect that really this bill is implementing a number of our recommendations—for example the establishment of a national donor register to replace the current driver’s-licence system. I personally feel frustrated at the length of time this has taken. We discussed this issue and all members on the Heath Committee agreed that it was urgent and that it was a priority yet nothing seems to have happened. So I am absolutely delighted that this bill will force the Health Committee to deal with the issue. I hope that we can deal with it as expeditiously as possible because frankly I am frustrated at the seeming lack of action despite the petitions and the recommendations that we have already made. 
We have to respect cultural values. That must be inherent in the bill. We have to incorporate tikanga Maori. We have to acknowledge that whanau have a very significant role. We have to find a way to accommodate all of that. Yes concerns have been raised about whether the wishes of the donor should be able to be overturned by the family. We will have to wrestle with those issues and we will hear submissions on that. 
The other problem is that at the moment it is not clear what a request on a driver’s-licence application form exactly permits. It states: “Would you be willing to donate organs in the event of your death?”. As Barbara Stewart has pointed out what does this mean—for what purpose? Would it be for a therapeutic purpose? It could be interpreted as giving permission for one’s organs to be used for medical research and education which some people may not be happy about at all. So frankly the driver’s-licence system as we all agreed many years ago does not work and we need to scrap it. We need to set up an organ donor register and we need much more publicity. Those are the sorts of things that are proposed in this bill—and were proposed to the Health Committee a number of years ago—and we hope that this time it will result in the select committee or the Government coming up with legislation that will address the situation and we will not have 2 or 3 more years of delay. The Green Party is extremely happy to be supporting this member’s bill and congratulates Jackie Blue and Andy Tookey on their work in bringing it to the House.