Tuesday, 14 May 2024

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Register and Talk about It: Inquiry into Increasing the Number of Registered Organ and Tissue Donors

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (11:05): It gives me great pleasure to rise today to speak to a committee report that was tabled by the Legislative Assembly’s Legal and Social Issues Committee, and it is the Register and Talk about It: Inquiry into Increasing the Number of Registered Organ and Tissue Donors tabled in March of this year. I was a very happy contributor in fact to this committee as a member of it up until February of this year. As this is my first contribution on this particular report, I would do what is customary in acknowledging all my fellow committee members in producing this report: the chair the member for Lara; the deputy chair the member for Euroa; we also had the members for Geelong, Mornington, Eildon and Clarinda on this committee. It would be remiss of me to not give a very special shout-out to our very hardworking secretariat, and Jessica Strout led a terrific team including Katherine Murtagh and Raylene D’Cruz in helping the committee in putting this very, very comprehensive report together.

The report itself is quite comprehensive, and it is quite reflective of the number of submissions that were received by the committee as well as the number of hearings that were held. There really was wide engagement on this issue. You are probably asking, ‘Well, what is the actual issue? What was the inquiry about?’

Paul Edbrooke interjected.

Gary MAAS: I am glad you ask, member for Frankston, because the issue is that, while people across the state are interested in organ donation after they pass, the numbers that we once had previously are now in decline. As I said, the evidence shows that there are some 81 per cent of people across the state who are willing to donate their organs, but when you look at the actual figure, that translates to a figure of 23 per cent of Victorians. That figure is quite low, and the trouble is that with our younger members of our population, when you look at the stats around that, the numbers are even lower. We are looking at figures of around about 10 per cent. Even though the engagement is high, the numbers are low, and when we look at some other states across the country and other jurisdictions across the world, they have still been able to hold high numbers. So the committee held an inquiry to really look at what some of the best ways are that we can form a good evidentiary base that potentially government could rely upon in creating good policy to get a good legislative outcome to hopefully make sure that these numbers are high again.

We did hear from very many different stakeholder groups. We heard from medical practitioners and transplant directors from the Austin and over at the Alfred. We had research teams from La Trobe University present to us. We also had some really moving and very touching lived experience from Zaidee’s Rainbow Foundation, as well as hearing from very diverse and different multicultural and First Nations groups to this end. There are something like 41 different recommendations that the committee has made. It is a very comprehensive report, but as I said, this report will form a very good evidentiary base to create some really good policy and hopefully one day some legislative change.