Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking today on the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Bill 2008, I would like to spend some time speaking about two very special blokes—two brothers, two husbands, two fathers—who live on the north-west coast of Tassie in a town called Smithton. These men are Roger Popowski and his big brother Kelvin. Roger Popowski has always described himself as an active, hardworking man. He works at the local school as a teacher’s aide and maintenance worker. When he is not there, he and his wife, Ara, have six young children to run around after at home, so you would have to say a lack of energy is definitely not in his nature.

Up until two years ago, Roger often felt a bit tired but just put it down to needing a holiday, as most of us would and do. At age 36, Roger’s life changed forever when one night, completely out of the blue, he could not catch his breath as he lay down in his bed. He thought it was just a chest infection, so he took himself to the doctor for a dose of antibiotics. But it was not a chest infection: Roger’s kidneys were failing, and he required daily peritoneal dialysis to survive. No-one in Roger’s family had ever suffered renal failure or had any trouble with their kidneys before then. In fact Roger did not even know what renal failure was. Roger spent the next eight months on dialysis. He could not work; in fact he could not be active for more than two hours a day. His quality of life was all but gone.

When his condition continued to deteriorate, doctors told Roger his best chance of restoring his quality of life was a kidney transplant. Yet, with the flagging rate of organ donation in Tasmania, he faced a wait of up to five years to receive this transplant—five more years of dialysis, five more years of not being able to work to provide financially for his family and, worse still, five more years of not being able to kick the footy or run around playing with his kids. Roger was told his best chance was to ask one of his siblings, which was lucky for him because he was one of eight kids in the family.

Three months later, his older brother Kelvin tested as a positive match. Donating a kidney is a pretty massive gesture of sibling love and a huge decision for anyone to make, but for Kelvin there was no decision to be made when it came to the life of his little brother. Roger says he initially found it difficult to accept such a gesture from his big brother. Like others that receive organ donations from their family, he worried that Kelvin, also a husband and father, might fall ill as a result of the transplant or live to regret his decision. Two years later, both Roger and Kelvin are both at peace with the part they played in the transplant. Roger is back at work and back kicking the footy and playing with the kids. Kelvin is also still fit as a fiddle. Roger says he literally owes his life to his big brother.

Roger is one of the lucky ones. For those people who do not have family members who are able or willing to donate organs, the plight of transplant waiting lists is dire. Indeed, every single day five Australians commence expensive dialysis or are told they need a kidney transplant to survive. This statistic is far direr in my home state of Tasmania. Tasmania has the highest prevalence of chronic kidney disease in Australia. If we talk about my home electorate of Braddon on the north-west coast of Tassie, about 95 out of every 10,000 residents tested have at least moderate chronic kidney disease.

In 2007 there were 341 kidneys donated across Australia, compared to about 2,000 people who either commenced dialysis or were put on a transplant waiting list. Kidneys are not the only organs that are desperately needed for transplant, though. There is also the heart, liver and pancreas. Then there are the tissues, which include heart valves, bone tissue, skin tissue, eye tissue and pancreas tissue. When you consider the current obesity epidemic facing our country and the increasing instance of diabetes, emphysema and heart disease and put them together with Australia’s rapidly ageing population, the need to do something right now to increase organ donation is absolutely crucial, as speaker after speaker in this place has made clear.

To put this into context, it is worth dissecting the statistics on some of Australia’s most prevalent illnesses which may require organ transplantation. Some 2.4 million Australian adults are currently obese. It is estimated that 1.23 million Australians will have diabetes by 2010. More than half a million Australians, it is estimated, suffer from emphysema. About one in three Australians will be affected by coronary heart disease throughout their life. All of these statistics are higher in Tasmania, where the population is older, and those statistics for Tasmania are even higher in my electorate.

Let us take a look at the need for organ donation versus the actual statistics on donation. Over the past 60 or more years, more than 30,000 Australians have received transplants. When you say it like that it sounds like a lot, but it really is not at all. That is only about 500 per year for six decades. When you consider that there are more than 1,800 people on organ transplant waiting lists across the country at any given time, the transplant rate is clearly inadequate. The reality is that hundreds of Australians die every year while waiting for a transplant. There were just 198 deceased organ donors in all of Australia last year, which resulted in 657 transplants, just one-third of the amount needed.

Of these 198 organ donors in 2007, just one of them came from Tasmania, putting my own state at the bottom of the donation list for Australia—that is, equal with the ACT. In 2006 there were just eight organ donors from Tassie and in 2005 there were just two. I hope any Tasmanians listening to me speak today or reading this speech in the future will note this statistic and sign up to donate. We as a nation have been talking about the great need to lift donation rates for a long time now but, until now, there has been no real national leadership on this chronic problem.

There have been some initiatives set up in recent years to attempt to generate support for organ donation in Australia. The Australian Organ Donor Register was established in 2005 as Australia’s only national organ and tissue donor register. It is the only national register in Australia where people can legally register their consent or objection to becoming an organ or tissue donor after death. You can register on the Australian Organ Donor Register 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere in Australia by calling the toll-free number: 1800777203. Then, in the event of your death, information about your donation decision will be accessed from the donor register and provided to your family. Even if you have registered your intention to donate on your drivers licence renewal—like me—you still need to register officially.

I am really excited about the introduction of the Rudd government’s Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Bill 2008. The new package would be set up by 1 January 2009. This package will establish Australia as a world leader in best-practice organ donation for transplantation. The package is intended to deliver $151.1 million, including new funding of $136.4 million over four years, to boost the number of life-saving organ transplants for Australians. The key features would include: $67 million to fund dedicated organ donation specialist doctors and other staff in public and private hospitals; $46 million to establish a new, independent national authority to coordinate national organ donation initiatives; $17 million in new funding for hospitals to meet additional staffing, bed and infrastructure costs associated with organ donation; $13.4 million to continue national public awareness and education; and $1.9 million for counselling for potential donor families. The latter is a very important initiative to fund. The package will not change the framework for giving legal consent. This will still go through the national Organ Donor Register that I spoke about previously.

This package will also address what is probably the most fundamental flaw in the current system: as I mentioned, it will employ and train dedicated staff to help families through the process of their loved one donating an organ. This issue is crucial, because in the past there has been no-one there to talk to or support grieving families as they try to come to terms, firstly, with the death of a loved one and, secondly, with the notion of organ donation. I must make mention at this point of the absolute importance for all of us to talk to our families and friends about our personal views on organ donation. If we die, it is our families or our close friends who will be left to relay our views on organ donation to doctors and hospital staff. I commend the bill to the House and urge all Australians to pick up the phone or log onto the internet and register to donate.

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