Victoria’s digital licence rollout unlikely to include organ donor status, inquiry hears

Victoria could be years away from restoring organ donation status on driver’s licences, despite growing concern over lagging donor registration rates.

Victoria could be years away from restoring organ donation status on driver's licences, despite the state’s lagging registration rates.

A parliamentary inquiry into the state’s sluggish organ and tissue donor numbers has heard VicRoads hasn’t considered whether registrations should once again be included on driver’s licence applications and renewals.

Victoria’s donor registration rate is trailing all Australian states, with only 23 per cent of those aged 16 and over registered in 2022.

NSW has almost double the rate of registrations, at 42 per cent, while South Australia – the only state where residents can register through their driver's licence application – has the nation’s highest registration rate, at 72 per cent.

Brian Guy received a heart and double lung transplant in 2008.

Jacqui Sampson, from the Department of Transport and Planning, told the inquiry on Monday that adding drivers organ donor status to the upcoming digital licence rollout would require “huge technology considerations”.

Ms Sampson noted VicRoads is currently piloting digital licences in Ballarat, but said there had been no discussions about organ donor registrations.

“There would need to be some feasibility testing,” Ms Sampson said.

“It will need to be scoped properly … there will be privacy considerations.”

“I can’t necessarily say it would be easy.”

Ms Sampson noted that in 2002 confusion around whether a checkbox on licence applications was actually confirming if a person wanted to donate their organs had led to the practice being scrapped.

Dr Rohit D’Costa, medical director of DonateLife Victoria, told the Herald Sun it was disappointing to hear the department flag so many barriers.

“It seems a shame that it’s not possible, if that’s the case,” Dr D’Costa said.

“It’s part of trying to make it as easy as possible. We know that it works.”

Committee member, Labor MP, Gary Maas said Victoria had missed a generation of potential organ donors.

“Hats off to South Australia because what they’ve actually got … is a cyclical momentum that’s happening through the generations that just automatically knows that this is the way you register your interest in organ donation,” he said

Six in 10 Australians are in favour of being able to register as organ and tissue donors through driver’s licence applications, according to a recent YouGov poll.