Parliamentary Committees

Joint Committee on the Operation of the Transplantation and Anatomy Act 1983

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:35): I move:

That the final report of the committee be noted.

I was pleased to serve on the committee that has produced this report. It was ably chaired by the member for Taylor, Ms Leesa Vlahos, and consisted of myself; yourself, Mr Acting President, the Hon. John Dawkins; the member for Elder, Ms Annabel Digance; the member for Davenport, Mr Sam Duluk; and the Hon. Kelly Vincent of our own chamber here. It was, of course, a rarity in this parliament to be a joint committee of the houses, and I would say it was undertaken with the best of spirits of cooperation between the houses.

It was a committee that received five written submissions and took evidence from 13 witnesses, as well as auxiliary information. Some of the recommendations that will be put forward by this committee aim to address the issues of strengthening our safeguards against organs sourced by unethical and illegal means being used, or South Australians being involved in what is called organ transplant tourism. There are some more basic recommendations which simply seek to modernise the workings of the current act, and I certainly thank those committee members who devoted their time to ensuring not only that more mundane work be done, but indeed to provide some recommendations for the consideration of this parliament and of the government to ensure that we address the unethical, immoral and illegal trade of organ harvesting.

According to the 2014 data, South Australia has the highest per capita organ donation rate amongst all states in Australia. Our state has a proud tradition of ensuring that we facilitate best practice transplant processes in Australia and around the world, and indeed this year South Australia celebrated 50 years of success in kidney transplantation. There was some evidence that there are small changes that can be made to make our performance in this area even better and more streamlined, and certainly to give protections to those both who are from the donor family or friends and also of course those who receive transplants and are no doubt very grateful for that receipt.

The committee addressed, as I say, the quite disturbing issue of organ harvesting. We did hear evidence from those in our own state who had lived under regimes where forced organ harvesting is practised and who had felt threatened by that practice. They were quite compelling in their pleas to the South Australian government to take action where we can. As the member for Taylor stated in the other place in her contribution to this report in that house, we should not wait until we see such practices evident in our own jurisdiction or indeed become rife in our region before acting.

It is not the situation where we should wait to see failings in our laws and then be caused to address them in a time of urgency, as we have with some of the areas of surrogacy. This is an area where this government can take global leadership and ensure those citizens in our jurisdiction and those residents of South Australia are heartened by the leadership of their government in this state against this awful, horrible, cruel, illegal and unethical trade in forced organ transplants. With those few words, I look forward to the contributions of other members in coming weeks and, indeed, to a positive response from government in future months.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. K.L. Vincent.