Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Mallee and her commitment to organ and tissue donation. I'm sure, Member for Mallee, your niece is incredibly proud of you and what you are doing, and I would like to echo and join with the member's call for people to register to donate. It is a simple thing to do and it can change so many lives.

Before I return it to what I wanted to say, having heard the Deputy Leader of the Opposition's speech just then, I do want to say it should be beneath a deputy leader of the opposition to use a bill like this to make completely unrelated political remarks, and in particular to try to personally draw in the assistant minister who is speaking on this bill, which is about saving lives. This parliament deserves better from a deputy leader of an opposition who apparently aspires to be at least a deputy prime minister. It needs to be put on the record that the assistant minister in question, the member for Dobell, is doing an outstanding job, and she is absolutely unwavering in her commitment to increasing the health of Australians, including through access to cheaper medicine.

The Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Amendment (Disclosure of Information) Bill 2023, as others have said, shouldn't be a matter of politics and should be bipartisan. From what I've heard from those opposite, essentially it is, with some not-unexpected criticism to come from an opposition about process. But the reason this bill goes beyond politics—or it should—is that it genuinely is about saving lives. Others have read out the statistics, but they really do matter. Last year alone, 454 organ donors resulted in 1,224 Australians receiving a life-saving organ transplant. One donor—any one person—can save the lives of up to seven other people and then help many others through eye and tissue donation. As the member for Mallee pointed out, though, it is quite a restricted situation in which your organs can be donated. You do need to pass away in a hospital with well-functioning organs, and it only equates to two per cent of people who die in hospital each year.

That's why it's so important to be registered and to make sure your family knows what your requests are. In 2022, of the 1,400 people who passed away in circumstances which meant they could be organ donors, 1,300 of those people's families were asked to consent, which always happens even if you're registered, and only 701 families said yes, leading to those 454 donors. If registration were higher and people had had conversations—because most Australians, when asked, say that they would like their organs to be donated—families would be in a much easier position to say, 'Yes, you can use my loved one's organs.' In fact, once a person is registered, nine out of 10 families say yes—nine out of 10 families. So it makes a huge difference.

DonateLife say that there are three things that we can do to increase organ and tissue donation. The first is to have specialist donation staff to support families in hospitals—staff like Jodi Vuat, who works at Frankston Hospital in my electorate. She had experience overseas, working in intensive care, helping families to consent or to understand the donation process, and came back to Australia wanting to do exactly that and still does that at Frankston Hospital to this day. So her role is to support families at the time of organ donation. She talks to them about the donation. She explains the process. She supports the hospital and the medical staff. And Jodi—who works in that field—says that people need to talk to their families about organ donation. It's really important, she says, to have the conversation with your loved ones so your family is in no doubt about your wishes. 'The more people who have registered their donation decision, the more transplant recipients we can help,' Jodi says.

Jodi is out and about in the community, raising awareness about organ and tissue donation, and one of the most common myths she encounters is that people think their organs are not good enough to be donated. People say, 'You wouldn't want my liver, because I like to have a few drinks.' Sometimes that might be the case! But it's not always the case. So don't assume that you're too old or too unhealthy to become a donor. Register, and that assessment will be done if you are in a position to be an organ donor when you pass away. That's Jodi's message.

DonateLife says (1) have donation specialist staff, (2) register on the Australian Organ Donor Register and (3) talk to your loved ones—and that is what this bill is intended to do. It will allow donor families to talk about the experience of their loved one having donated and helped the lives of others. So it's about having specialist staff, registering on the Australian Organ Donor Register and talking to your family about donation—because, as I said, only four in 10 families say yes to donation if they don't know what their loved ones wanted. They're three easy steps.

I've said in this place before that I personally am quite attracted to an opt-out system instead of an opt-in system. DonateLife suggests that the three steps I've just talked about will increase organ donation, but I still think it's worth us looking at an opt-out system so that there are more people—rather than the two per cent of deaths in hospital that can lead to donation—who can be a donor with the consent of their families. But it wouldn't take away the need to talk to your family about what you want.

The other thing I wanted to talk about in terms of donation is that, while Jodi is right—don't assume that, because you have a few drinks or you're not a spring chicken, your organs aren't fit for donation—there are people who can't donate their organs, because of diseases like metastatic cancer, to name one, but who, when they pass away, still want to be able to contribute to better medicine and the lives of others. You can donate your body to science. I've had a look at it and I looked at it again today. There isn't actually a national register for donating your body to science. How it works in Australia is that each state regulates it slightly differently, but, in effect, you have to donate your body to a specific university and go through their scheme. You have to fill in all the paperwork before you pass away to do so, and there are a number of limits to that. For example, for the University of Melbourne, you have to pass away within 40 kilometres of the university.

Donating your body to science means that your body is used to help train doctors, nurses, pharmacologists and research scientists. In some circumstances, it can be used for research. You're helping the very people that will go on to save other people's lives. I think that's an incredibly worthy thing to consider if you are in a position where you can't donate your organs and tissues to other people to use. There's probably more work to be done in that space to make it easier for people—or their loved ones—to donate their bodies to science in an effective way. That's a task for the future, but I think it is something that is absolutely worth doing.

Before I conclude, I want to talk very briefly about a young man in my electorate, Dylan Briggs. I've mentioned his friends in the parliament before. Dylan went to Frankston High School and, tragically, died riding his bike home from school in March of 2020. It was a very difficult time for everyone, during the pandemic, and then his family had to deal with the fact that this young man, in his teenage years, was killed on his way home. Dylan was an organ donor. Dylan was a teenager and he was an organ donor. He saved lives through that act as a young man.

To this very day, his friends are continuing to do all they can to honour Dylan. They set up the Chill Out & Look About initiative, which is about road safety. They've collaborated with local police to make videos and to go out and talk to young people about road safety. They designed the logo and the emblem for Chill Out & Look About as a character modelled on a photo of Dylan, where Dylan looks like he's on watch, looking out for everyone's safety. His legacy after his tragic circumstances is to donate organs so other people's lives can continue and for his friends to take up a cause to save other young people's lives on the roads. I want to congratulate Dylan's friends and give a shout-out to Dylan's mum, Sarah-Jane, who is an incredibly strong woman after the loss of her son.

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