Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have seen firsthand the life-saving gift of organ donation in action. At the Alfred, I was one cog in a machine that took patients hanging on by a thread through to transplant and into aftercare and then on to wellbeing. Lung, heart, renal and bone marrow transplants were my wheelhouse. There are two major threats that present to patients post transplant. One is rejection and the other is infection, I dealt with the latter, from bacteria, reactivating viruses and fungal infections. Infection and rejection are two interacting forces, and they are synergistic. One makes the other worse and vice versa. When the call came, it was like watching an orchestra swing into action. The surgical team did their bit; then ICU took over, always under the watchful eye of the transplant parent unit, with support teams, like the infectious diseases team stepping in from the beginning to keep those pesky bugs at bay—usually, with a cocktail of therapeutics. The attention to detail was meticulous: every vital monitored; every drug level analysed and calibrated, to walk that tightrope between therapy and toxicity. In the wards, the allied health teams took over, helping patients to walk, clear their lungs and, eventually, go home.

The transplant teams I worked with, alongside, were experts, whose only focus was to get the patient through those stormy waters and then on to health. I mostly dealt with adults; but occasionally I came across a child, because the Alfred also performs paediatric lung transplants. Our focus was on the recipient, and the only mention of the donor was a read-out at the start of the transplant with some basic medical details, cause of death and infectious diseases screening.

Behind that record, we knew, though, that there was always a grieving family who had made some pretty courageous choices. I just want them to know that those organs were treated like precious cargo. The patients were at the centre of the universe, and none of this would have been possible without fraught decisions being made through tears by families far, far away.

It was the Rudd Labor government who, in 2009, initiated a national program to increase organ donation. It falls now to the Albanese government to extend this proud Labor legacy.

Until now, disclosure regarding the details of donors has been variable throughout Australia. The Northern Territory, WA and South Australia have the most restrictive rules, preventing disclosure of information—including from family members, who authorise the donation. This has had the effect of curtailing the telling of stories—good news stories—and community awareness campaigns regarding the merits of organ donation.

Around two per cent of the 1,400 people who die in hospital are eligible to be donors. It's not a great number; but it has a multiplier effect, because one person can go on to save the lives of seven other people and to assist many more with eye or tissue donation. In 2022, there were 454 deceased organ donors. We profoundly thank their families for that decision. There are, clearly, an additional 1,000 or so people who could become donors when they die, at a time when we have waiting lists groaning with adults and children waiting for that gift of organ or tissue donation.

Some years ago, I went to theatre and I watched a kidney transplant. When the kidney was perfused—basically, when it was hooked up to the blood supply—it started to make urine, right then and there, and that urine squirted out in time with the heartbeat. In doing so, it freed that patient from the shackles of dialysis, the tyranny of dialysis.

These amendments will now allow donor recipients, family members and agencies like DonateLife to boost their public awareness campaigns around organ donation. Consent from families will always be required, meaning that privacy will always be protected. The bill will not facilitate direct contact between donor families and organ and tissue recipients. They can maintain their contact with each other anonymously, if they wish, through DonateLife. By harmonising legislative requirements on disclosure nationally, it will make it easier for families of donors to engage in promotional and educational activities—noting that, in many cases, donors live interstate.

It is important to pull back the veil over death and dying, to end the taboo. Talking about the greatest gift being organ donation is a way of commemorating life—the one that has passed and the ones that are re-emerging from the brink of despair. What could be more life-affirming? It is enormously validating for those brave families to share their stories—in the swirling miasma of grief, to know that some good was born.

It is important to have these conversations about end-of-life and being an organ donor. It's better to do this with your faculties intact and in calm weather than at three in the morning in an ICU with alarms buzzing. You can register at donatelife.gov.au, or on your Medicare Express app. It only takes a minute.

I commend this bill to the House.

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