Page 971 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 17 June 1992
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Organ Donations
MR HUMPHRIES (3.57): I want to make brief reference in this adjournment debate to an issue which has been of concern to me for some time and which I hope will concern more and more Australians. It is the question of organ donation. Members may be aware that the week before last was National Organ Donation Awareness Day, which was designed to highlight what is a very severe problem for the Australian community, and that is its extraordinarily low rate, by comparison with other countries around the world, of organ donation. It is quite unacceptable, in my opinion, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are so many Australians at the present time in desperate need of the benefit of organ donation who live in a state of either hopelessness or false hope because of the lack of appropriate levels of donations by able-bodied or suitably equipped, if you like, Australians. We have over 3,000 Australians presently waiting for lifesaving organ and tissue donations.
The principal problem that our community faces - not just in the ACT, of course, but around this country - is that people do not make the critical decision to elect to make their organs available to other people when they die. It is, Mr Deputy Speaker, in my opinion, quite bizarre, quite obscene, that this community regularly every year buries or burns tens of thousands of perfectly good organs because the necessary procedures have not been gone through to allow the person who has died to make their organs available to somebody who desperately needs them. That is why the National Organ Donation Awareness Day was held recently. It is a matter of grave importance, I think, to this community that we raise the level of awareness about that. I hope, for example, that every member of this Assembly has taken the trouble to complete an organ donor card like this, so that if for some reason their organs were available to somebody that would happen.
Of course, we have the possibility now of organ donations occurring through the auspices of the Department of Urban Services when people go to renew their drivers licences. There is a question about whether we should reverse the onus here and, rather than allow organ donors simply to elect, make the assumption that they do elect unless they specifically say that they do not wish to donate. I was originally of the view that we should be very aggressive about this, but I am now prepared to accept that we have to educate the community to understand that there is an urgent need for action in this area. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope the members of the Assembly will act to some extent as those educators; that they will get out there and tell the community that we cannot afford the loss of life and amenity to go on any longer, and that there needs to be a very urgent campaign to make sure people do not destroy, bury or burn available organs.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Assembly adjourned at 4.00 pm
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