Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to talk to the House today about what is a vitally important issue, an issue which is about an act of goodwill, pure and simple, that saves lives and which every one of us has the potential to participate in. That issue is organ donation.

In Australia, at any one time around 1,700 people are on the organ and tissue transplant waiting list waiting for what is, for them, the gift of life. We can be justifiably proud of our transplant success rate in Australia, but unfortunately we also have one of the lowest donation rates in the world. So, in that context, I was particularly pleased to learn that in my community of Geelong the rate of registered donors is very high. In fact, according to the Australian Organ Donor Register, the City of Greater Geelong has the highest number of registered organ donors of any local government area in Victoria. Greater Geelong is home to 44,323 registered organ donors, which is more than a quarter of the local population and well above the number of registered donors in other local government areas. The next closest are Mornington Peninsula, with 29,500 registered donors, and Yarra Ranges, with just under 27,000 registered donors. These figures show that Geelong families are generous in spirit and happy to help others in need—in this case, the many hundreds of people waiting for life-saving surgery and the chance to lead a happy and healthy life.

I did not know this, but one organ donor can save up to 10 lives. Of course, organ donation is not an easy subject to discuss and the decision to register as a donor is not made lightly. But, for a family dealing with the traumatic experience of a sudden and unexpected death in the family, there can be greater comfort in knowing that their loved one has made this decision for them.

In highlighting the wonderful response from those people living in the city of greater Geelong, this is also a good opportunity to urge other people who have not registered as organ donors to consider adding their own names to the list. We know, for example, men in blue-collar jobs are the most common Australian organ donors. The median age of donors is 48. Nearly half the deaths of organ donors are from heart failure. Road trauma accounts for 13 per cent of donor deaths. There is enormous tragedy in the death of an organ donor, but through the act of organ donation there can be a small but wonderful other side to that tragedy, and that of course is the gift of life. I am pleased to say that so many people in the city of Geelong have given this issue some thought and made a very conscious decision to give this very generous gift of life.