Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): This bill is very welcome. I rise to take a short call. My Green Party colleagues and I warmly welcome the introduction of this bill and congratulate Mr Bishop and the Health Committee on the hard work that they have put into it as is obvious by the extensive rewriting. We agree with the principle of 100 percent compensation for lost earnings. We think that is fair. We welcome the removal of discriminatory treatment against donors. I am in a position as many of us are of having friends who have been organ donors or have received organs. From personal experience I know that both sides of that donation are immensely difficult processes. I had the great honour of knowing Jonah Lomu and I have a good friend who is currently on dialysis. The issues for organ donors are profound. This is a major undertaking and certainly this bill I think recognises that by way of financial assistance. I welcome the title becoming more about compensation than financial assistance. But it is also a huge deal for the organ recipient and I think we have to remember the people who spend long hours on dialysis—the pain and suffering that they experience with kidney failure and the huge costs that are borne by families by communities and by the country as a whole. The increase in quality of life when an organ donation is made and is successful is huge. The organ recipient is able to benefit from decent food from water from exercise from travel and from such an increase in the quality of life. This bill should hopefully enable New Zealand to up our rate of live organ donation. It is a worry that we have one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the world. As other speakers have noted there are significant numbers of Māori and Pasifika who will benefit from this bill and they are disproportionately affected by kidney failure. This is a good bill. It is good for those incredible donors good for needy recipients good economics and good for our health system. I just want to conclude that we should not really stop there. We should also be asking why we are having the level of this problem that we do. What is it that is causing such a high rate of failure of organs in New Zealand particularly kidney failure? One of the reasons is that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world and diabetes causes complications for kidneys which are particularly at risk from diabetes. Taking action on diabetes and obesity should be a major focus of our health policy. This is one of the areas where we spend an inordinate amount of money on measures to treat a problem but we spend far too little time on prevention. Health prevention with regard to diabetes is important for our society both at an individual level at a community level and for our country as a whole. I should say that the issue is incredibly important to our Pacific neighbours. In many of the Pacific countries—I think the latest figures show that nine out of 10 countries in the world with the highest rates of diabetes are Pacific Island countries. So we ought to be recognising that this is a problem for us here in Aotearoa but it is also a major problem for our Pacific neighbours. Certainly we would hope that the Government may be listening sympathetically when Green Party members stand up and talk about the need for sugar taxes and when we talk about the need for proper health education around diet and nutrition. I would also add that we ought to be looking at the things that we export to the Pacific such as waste meat exports which are a contributing factor to diabetes in the Pacific. Again—I give my congratulations to the member in the chair and to the select committee on this bill. We strongly support it. Thank you.