Page 637 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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music they like to listen to, what food they like—than whether their loved one wants to be an organ or tissue donor.
That is important information when we are packaging up messaging around raising awareness of organ and tissue donation so that it becomes part of everyday life. In future generations, with the effort that is put in now, perhaps it will be different. Certainly, my children are aware of my wishes to become an organ donor if I am placed in the position where they have to make that decision. Perhaps it comes with some generational change that this level of awareness will start infiltrating through the younger generations.
Mr Hanson talked about “discover, decide, discuss”—a very important campaign and, when you look at how we message PR campaigns, I think probably a very clever one. In relation to the ACT, we did have a fantastic DonateLife Week here in the ACT. We know that our community is very supportive of organ and tissue donation. The Terry Connolly ORGANised walk is now renamed the DonateLife walk, which I think is a bit unfortunate; I would prefer that it remain the Terry Connolly ORGANised walk, but all things move to national processes. I am sure that Terry Connolly and his family will hold a link to that event in recognition of the generosity of him and his family in him being an organ donor when he died so tragically.
Other members have spoken about David Gough, whom I had the opportunity to meet on his return to the ACT. I was able to acknowledge almost the secondary generosity of the work that he is now doing. Not only did he lose his daughter and have to go through the decision-making process to ultimately honour his daughter’s wishes to be an organ donor; he then went on to donate his experience and his time in raising awareness around this so that other families will benefit from the tragedy that confronted him when his daughter passed away. He is a very kind man who is doing a lot of good work in this area; he is taking the message on the roads through the ACT, New South Wales and Victoria, and I know that next year he plans on doing more.
We had the awards and we had the DonateLife “Book of life”, which is fantastic from what I have seen. There were the Chief Minister’s awards. We saw recognition for Gai Brodtmann, Steven Williams and Genevieve Jacobs from the ABC. And, of course, Anne Cahill Lambert, who was here today, was recognised for her outstanding efforts in raising community awareness and also for ensuring that the community is always at the table.
On behalf of the ACT government, I would like to thank members for their support of this motion and to thank all those who work in this very important area around raising awareness of organ and tissue donation across the ACT.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.32): A lot of important comments have already been made which I agree with, but I want to briefly add my support to this motion and to thank you for bringing it on today, Mr Assistant Speaker Hargreaves. It is an extremely important issue. The statistics reflected in the motion, as well as those that members have cited today and some of the personal anecdotes they have been able to share, underline the importance of this issue and the necessity of raising awareness.
I want to reflect briefly on that awareness raising and particularly to congratulate
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