Dean JacquiJACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): It is a pleasure to rise to speak in the second reading of the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill. First as other members in this House have done it is in order for us to congratulate Chris Bishop not only for having the luck to have the bill drawn out of the ballot but also for his thoughtful contributions and positive contributions to the consideration of this bill through the select committee. It was Chris Bishop who drove through the various amendments to improve the bill and I also want to note the willingness of the officials to pick up on the suggestions of the member in charge of this bill. As a result we have a bill that is not only better improved and certainly more user-friendly for people who come within the realm of being live organ donors or recipients of live organs but also now certainly enjoys widespread support and the input of this House and that has been evidenced by the contributions made so far in the reading of this bill. So that is the thankyous out of the way but they are important because a member's bill is a joy and a chance for any member of this House to make a contribution to the legislative programme—and this is one of those bills that certainly does that—and for many members it is something that they can and should be very proud of. So well done Chris Bishop—one of many contributions that I am sure this member is going to be making to this Parliament. This bill has enjoyed some very extensive consultation. I think that is right because it is a bill that is wide-ranging in nature and the impacts of this bill do have impacts on the people who come within its orbit. In terms of a donor or a prospective donor of a live organ the provisions and the improvements in this bill will certainly I hope and expect encourage higher rates of live organ donation and for those who feel compelled or able or who have the right mix to make a live organ donor it will ease their experience as well as having huge benefit clearly to the recipient of the organ. This bill has been before the Health Committee for 12 months so yes it has had quite a long gestation but I can assure the House and I can assure members of the public that those 12 months have not been ill-spent. We have certainly picked over all—all—the aspects of this bill and what the House sees before it today is certainly an improvement. I want to just go over the fact that we received 110 written submissions and the question is: why is that significant? It is because they were quality submissions; not pro formas necessarily but people who wished to share their own experiences of their passage—either being a person who wished to donate or more critically perhaps a person with a chronic disease a kidney disease or some kind of disease where an organ donation would vastly improve their chance of survival or improve their quality of life. The committee was privileged as always to have well-considered submissions on the subject. We in fact heard 14 oral submissions on the bill and again they were submitters who felt strongly enough to come to our committee and to make a contribution to our discourse and to our consideration. I want to take this opportunity to thank them also for doing that. All of those submitters—I may stand to be corrected but from memory and from looking back—all of those submitters very broadly supported the bill's central objective. That objective was to remove the barriers to live organ donation and the way that this bill does that is to increase the level of income replacement that was provided. That brings us of course to the title change of the bill. It did seem to the committee only 2 or 3 months ago in our consideration that maybe the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill title did not quite capture what the bill had transpired to become and so the title will now become Compensation for Live Organ Donors to reflect the focus on providing donors with compensation for lost income rather than merely providing financial assistance to those donors. It is easy is it not for us to tick the organ donor aspect on our driver's licence and as I was having my daily catch-up with my darling husband he mentioned to me that he had done the tick and once again he is an organ donor—I hope it does not have to come to pass. It is easy to become a live organ donor and good on all those New Zealanders who do that but we have got to now remove the barriers by way of compensating those donors should they be required to donate an organ so that their income is compensated not just because we feel like it but because as they recover from the procedure that they go through in donating that organ they will clearly not be working or in any fit state to work so this provides compensation. This bill is not the silver bullet—I know that Chris Bishop thinks it is a silver bullet and it nearly is—it is a small change but it is a significant change and it is there to encourage organ donation. There are other strategies being employed to help improve transplantation rates including—and it is a good thing—a wider Government review of deceased organ donation. Just going through some of the recommendations as they came through from the select committee—there were substantial changes in the bill to provide for cost neutrality for donors and that is the key to this bill. Donors should therefore be reimbursed 100 percent of their income rather than the 80 percent—rather parsimonious I have to say Chris Bishop—recommended in the bill as it was introduced to the House. We noted through the select committee process that the UK has a core policy of cost neutrality and that is based on the idea that donating should financially be neither advantageous nor disadvantageous to the person concerned. There was a point in our consideration where it seemed logical to shift the administration for the legislation from the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development over to the Director-General of Health. That was logical to us because the Ministry of Health has the primary interest in organ donation—it is a medical matter—and transplantation rates of course are a medical matter. Submitters also noted as did we the difficulty in seeking entitlements through the Ministry of Social Development. That was quite a significant change in the bill. We considered what a qualifying organ was. Obviously kidney and liver transplants are the only types of live organ donations carried out in New Zealand but again this was a conversation led by the member in charge of the bill Chris Bishop who contended that we needed to futureproof this piece of legislation. It is a prudent thing to do with a piece of legislation—I was going to say a live piece of legislation" but no that would have been really bad to do that so I will not say that. Obviously clearly medical advancements are happening all the time and it just seemed prudent to us to futureproof the provisions within this bill. There are other provisions in this bill but then there are other speakers and we have other opportunities to speak on this most excellent bill. In commending it to the House I do want to say that I agree entirely with Louisa Wall who in her contribution noted that it is a rare and wonderful thing for the House to join together in supporting a bill that is only there for the betterment of people and therefore I commend this bill to the House."