Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is something tragically beautiful about the concept of organ donation because it almost exclusively occurs in a circumstance in which life is lost and from that loss, like a magnificent flower blooming in an inferno, life is sustained. It is a challenge to create the momentum to sustain that life through the various complex bureaucratic and administrative processes that are required. But more importantly, in very challenging emotional circumstances, the decision-makers, usually the family who have just lost a dearly beloved loved one, have to make a decision to give life to one or many people they don't usually know and may never know. They don't necessarily have that personal connection. They have to do it right there in that moment, at the height, at the most excruciating point, of emotional anguish for themselves. Yet so many families do make a decision. Of course, they are helped when people have assisted them to make that decision by registering. We have heard a number of speakers speak about the importance of registration, of communicating clearly about one's wishes in this space.

As we know, there is such a limited number of people passing who qualify under very strict circumstances to have their organs donated. You start with a very, very small pool of people. You start with a set of families who are often put under the most intense and terrible circumstances in which they have to make a decision that is often a life-and-death decision for another human being who they usually don't and may never know. When you think about that set of circumstances, there is something wholly statistically challenging. How do you thread that needle to get an outcome? And yet, almost as if by magic, it does happen, and it happens regularly. It's not as regularly as we would like, but it does happen regularly. So many people at that critical point find enough love in themselves, enough love for the person who has passed, in order to take that love and make something so beautiful of it. I pay my absolute respect to those families that make that decision under such terrible circumstances.

We have a good organ donation system here in Australia. We have a great organ donation system here in Australia. It's one of the legacies of the last government. It has been largely, I think, supported by all sides of politics in terms of it being a matter that we don't quibble over. We all support this as a great thing for our society and, obviously, at a human level, it's something that most of us have been affected by one way or another. We know that the circumstances that present the need for organ donation are broad. Whether we know someone who has received an organ from organ donation or we know someone who is on a waiting list or could be eligible to receive an organ under a donation program, largely, we have all been affected by one or other of those circumstances.

We have a best-practice system here in Australia, but this is an opportunity to again improve upon it. This is about the further empowerment of family members. That is so important because family members are ultimately usually the decision-makers in these circumstances. They make the hardest decisions. They make the fundamental decision to donate, often. They then also make the decisions associated with the legacy of that donation and how that legacy is managed. Obviously that legacy is intricately tied to the donor themselves. This legislation empowers those families to really take advantage of that legacy, to use that for all of our society's benefit, to tell the story of the donor, to paint for those who may not intimately understand that process what it is like, to deal with it in honest terms on both its challenges and its amazing benefits and also, ultimately, fundamentally, to encourage more families to make that difficult and beautiful decision.

In telling their stories, we know that these families, who are the most powerful advocates for organ donation in our society, will create opportunity and authority. They will give permission to other families to make these decisions. Under that intense pressure of having lost a loved one, it can be very challenging to make decisions that fundamentally you cannot unmake once they have been made. If someone goes into those circumstances and they have not had a chance to think through that decision and its implications and how that decision applies particularly to the donor, the person they have lost, that can be a very challenging prospect. This allows our community to have a broader and more honest conversation that is informed by the experiences of other families so that before people in their time of peak anguish have to make that decision they have hopefully been exposed to some of the thinking and the experiences of other people in such circumstances. That is such an important component of how we raise awareness of organ donation generally but also prepare people who are going to find themselves in that circumstance to make the best possible decision they can for their loved ones, for their own families, for the person who is ultimately the donor and, indeed, for the people for whom life will be sustained off the back of that decision.

I just want to talk briefly about a dear friend of mine, someone who many people in this place knew, former senator Mehmet Tillem. Mehmet Tillem was a fierce advocate for organ donation in this place, in his time here. He spoke about it many, many times. He spoke about it in his first speech. I knew Mehmet Tillem for a long time, before he came to the Senate. He was a lifelong advocate around this issue. He believed fundamentally in the beauty of this concept. He progressed it in places outside of this parliament through his community activism, and he brought that passion here. He brought it on behalf of his own community; he brought it on behalf of his own family. Ultimately Mehmet Tillem, by circumstances of irony, ended up finding himself part of that conversation, under the most tragic of circumstances. He said in his first speech:

Organ donation, what we can do after we have passed away, is something that we can hang our hats on as a legacy to those that come after us.

After that he went on many times to speak about this issue. He remained an advocate after he left the parliament. Ultimately he believed that the best option was, as the member for Dunkley discussed earlier, an opt-out system.

I think that is the goal many of the people who are passionate about this issue would like to see us get to. There's a long pathway to get there. It's not going to happen overnight. There's a reform piece, and I think there's an ultimate ambition that we can all share that Senator Tillem advocated for very strongly. He would be extraordinarily proud of this legislation today, this bill. He would be so proud that after the best-practice work of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments we now have an Albanese Labor government who are building upon that legacy, who are continuing to improve Australia's organ and tissue donation systems and continuing to seek sustainability in that space, to raise awareness, and to empower more families to make those decisions and ultimately to save lives through those beautiful decisions.

I also want to quickly note the member for Lara in the Victorian parliament, Ella George. She has also advocated fiercely around organ and tissue donation. She and I and Mehmet Tillem shared a very special professional and personal friendship that developed over many years. He was a mentor to both of us, and she's done some extraordinary work in this space as well.

As I said, I think Australians are fundamentally generous and kind people, we are decent people, and we understand the opportunity that organ and tissue donation presents—the creation of something beautiful out of something very dark and tragic, as is often the case. Fundamentally I think the raising of awareness, the further education of people and indeed the active pursuit by many of us to ensure that we are registered on organ and tissue donation registers and that we communicate clearly with our family members will continue to increase the rates at which organs and tissues are donated from the rather limited pool that are eligible. This legislation will help families who make that decision to continue to tell their story, to uphold the legacy of the person they have acted on behalf of as the donor—and indeed the lives they save through that very beautiful and difficult decision.

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