Page 629 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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awareness were held at the Canberra Hospital and at the Four Winds Vineyard. DonateLife ACT staff also attended community events at the Canberra, Calvary and National Capital Private hospitals as well as information stalls at the Gungahlin shopping centre and the Royal Canberra Show. Mr David O’Leary, the President of Gift of Life Inc, should be commended for his tireless effort in organising these and numerous other events. I would also like to thank all the volunteers in the ACT for their contribution to DonateLife Week and for their ongoing commitment to raising the rates of organ and tissue donation in the ACT.
The ACT government is committed to promoting and facilitating organ donation awareness and sees the issue as an ongoing health priority. So please continue to discuss organ and tissue donation with all members of the community whenever you can. While you are at it, think about becoming a blood donor as well—if you can; some people cannot. I wish to make the point that some people’s religious convictions preclude being an organ donor; I wish to tell those people that I respect their position and would not wish to try to change that.
However, we all know that we value our life. Our lives are unique. When we are gone, that is it. There was only ever going to be one of us, and the place will be quite different because we are gone. Here is our chance to give somebody an extended life—if we can donate something after we have passed on that can be used to save their life or prolong it. When you think about it, when we have gone to meet our maker the organs that we leave behind kept us alive and they may be able to keep someone else alive as well. I do not think that is too much of a hard ask. We are not asking to have the whole of our body just chopped up and handed out. This is not what it is about at all.
This is about giving somebody some relief who has waited years for a heart transplant, a lung transplant or a kidney. When I see young kids with kidney failure, renal failure, I just wish that there were enough kidneys to go around. I have got two; I do not need two. Perhaps we can think about it. But after we are gone, there is no reason to hang onto them unless there is a religious conviction which precludes it. So I would ask each and every one of us to congratulate the people behind the organ and tissue donation system.
I would also like to for the moment recognise Anne Cahill Lambert in the gallery. It is nice to see you here, Anne.
I would also like to take the opportunity for a couple of seconds to recognise the work that a former member of this place and member of the Liberal Party, Harold Hird, played in the organ donation system within the ACT. He has been a tireless patron of the association, which has been trying to talk people into doing the right thing and having their licences endorsed or carrying a card saying that they are an organ donor. I pay my respects to Harold Hird for that. It would be remiss of me not to have done so.
I commend the motion to the members.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (4.04): I genuinely thank Mr Hargreaves for bringing this motion before the Assembly today. I think it is a rare moment where—I assume the
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