Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I would suggest that those opposite try to enter into the spirit of what we are doing here, which is to try to make a real improvement for a whole lot of people who need organ donations. This $136.4 million plan includes the following elements: firstly, $67 million to fund dedicated organ donation specialist doctors and other staff in public and private hospitals who currently do not exist; secondly, $46 million to establish for the first time a new independent national authority to coordinate national organ donation initiatives across the country, which anyone associated with this would know are currently poorly coordinated; thirdly, $17 million in new funding for hospitals to meet additional staffing, bed and infrastructure costs associated with organ donation; fourthly, $13.4 million to continue a national public awareness campaign; and, fifthly, $1.9 million for counselling for potential donor families.

These are very practical measures. We have engaged in a lot of discussion within the government about how to do this and how to do it better. The reason we have done that is the figures that I began my answer in question time on today. I think all of us have people in our own electorates, people that we know, who are directly personally affected by something we as a nation need to do better. That is what we are trying to do. It is not just the 1,800 who are now on transplant waiting lists; it is those who cannot even get on to those lists for a series of other reasons.

We had some good news today at a personal level when we had a visit from little Cordelia Whatman. She is, I think, 15 or 16 months old, a little bub. This case is prior to this scheme coming in. There is no direct connection here, but I simply use this little one as an example of what good things we can do as a country if we talk up, both sides of politics, the importance of getting donations right. This little one successfully, thank God, got a liver transplant at Westmead children’s hospital two months ago. I saw her today and she is looking in really good nick. But that is just one case, and there are 1,800 others out there who need help and need it now.

Therefore, I would say to all members of the House: in our own way, in our own communities, let us get behind what I think is a really good national program. It is not going to solve everything. But one of the things that is really important is for us all to talk up the need to not just commit ourselves to organ donation but, when that terrible tragedy occurs in a family, for people to go through with it to the end, because that is where the downfall is occurring.

The stats on people signing off for organ donation are huge for Australia. Australians want to do this. Some 90-plus per cent, I think, of Australians sign up saying that they are willing to donate. But last year we had a total of 198 people who donated organs. There is a real problem at the actual interface—that is, where it happens in the hospital. That is what we have to crack. That is why the advice to us from the medical experts is that they need specialist medical and nursing staff within hospitals to try and make this work—people who are not associated with the normal functions of the hospital; people who have this as their dedicated mission. As of Saturday, I understand, the positions of the chief executive officer and medical director of the new organ donation authority will be advertised. We are at this stage on track to have the new authority up and operating by 1 January 2009.

It will be good if we can get those numbers down. That is the ambition I think of all of us here, and I think we can all play a modest part in our own communities in trying to make this work as well.

Mr Speaker, on that note, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.

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