Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Amendment (Governance and Other Measures) Bill 2021, and I signal I'll be moving a second reading amendment on behalf of the member for Hindmarsh, who will take up the longer slot in this debate, being the shadow minister for health. I think that amendment is being circulated in my name as we speak.

Organ and tissue donation is something that's very dear to my heart. When I was the parliamentary secretary for health, I had responsibility for this area, and it's an area I feel very strongly about. It's a very important issue. It's in fact a life-and-death issue. We don't get to debate those very often in this place, but it's an important one. This bill reforms the governance structure of the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority, and it's following advice from a well-respected former member of this place, Dr Mal Washer, who is currently the chair of the Organ and Tissue Authority board, to enable the board to have a more strategic and advisory focus.

This bill will transition the role of accountable authority from the board back to the CEO and replace the existing governance board with an advisory board under the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Act 2018. It undoes the changes the government brought in in 2017, taking the board back to the model that was introduced by Labor in 2008. We were a bit unclear as to why the government changed the way in which the board functioned. We thought we had it right when we established the authority and the way in which the board operated as an advisory body when we introduced this, but the government obviously thought differently. It now has changed its mind, and we're grateful for that.

Organ and tissue donation is a great Labor legacy, and we're very pleased that it is something that the government has continued with. It was initiated under the leadership of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, someone who also feels very strongly, and continues to contribute to the policy debate, around this issue. As I said, we don't really know why the government changed the governance structures back in 2017, but we welcome the government's now choosing to act on the board's own view about the governance of organ and tissue donation, as represented by advice by the chair.

This advice conforms with Labor's view that non-corporate Commonwealth entities like the Organ and Tissue Authority should have a governance structure that allows for the CEO, who actually runs the organisation and is accountable for its functioning, to be the accountable entity in a legal sense, all the while being guided by an advisory board that focuses on the strategic direction of the authority and can take the time and effort to actually look at what is happening to organ and tissue donation in Australia and look at how there might be improvements in the strategic direction, rather than getting into the minutiae of running the authority.

We did have it right back in 2018, because organ and tissue donation, as I said, is a very proud legacy of the former Labor government. National reforms introduced by Labor in government, and the creation of DonateLife in 2009, saw organ and tissue donation rates increase by almost 40 per cent in less than five years. One organ and tissue donation can transform the lives of 10 or more people. We welcome this change, and we encourage all Australians to consider their eligibility to register as an organ donor and to also, importantly, have that conversation with your family members that it is what you want to do. Tell them that is what you want to do if they are ever in the circumstance where they might be asked whether you wish to donate your organs. That conversation is incredibly important.

While this change is welcome, what it does highlight really strongly is the difference between a progressive Labor government focused on health reform versus a government that is not a reforming government but rather a managing government—and sometimes not managing that well either. It shows what you can have when you have a government that wants to focus on health reform. It also focuses on the failings you have when you have a government that clearly should be doing far more to improve health and to take us through the pandemic.

The crisis we are in at the moment is a health crisis. Our current lockdowns are driven by the government's failure to do the two jobs that it had: rolling out the vaccine and fixing hotel quarantine. It is, to borrow the Treasurer's phrase, 'One of the biggest policy failures in living memory'. That's what we are seeing writ large when it comes to health at the moment. Eighteen months into the pandemic, we should be doing far better than we are. If we remember, right back to the start of the rollout, the coalition promised four million vaccinations by the end of March, six million by 10 May, all aged-care and disability workers vaccinated by Easter, and every Australian vaccinated by October. Not one of those targets has been met. Far from being the envy of the world, the government is now being held up internationally as an example of what not to do. We're an example of how countries like ours, who got complacent about our early success of keeping the virus out, are now struggling because of failed vaccine rollouts and leaders whose hubris led them to believe the vaccine rollout was not a race.

This bill on organ and tissue donation is very welcome, but, again, it shows the contrast between a progressive, reforming government that is interested in trying to address the problems of health reform and a government that can't even manage a vaccine rollout program. That being said, on behalf of the member for Hindmarsh, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House urges the Government to deliver better health outcomes for all Australians, including through better management of the COVID-19 pandemic".

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