When Dean Hunter was faced with the lengthy waiting list for a kidney transplant he publicly offered $10,000 for a donor.
"At the time (in 1996) I had a six month old son and I just didn't want to die. I wanted to get to his 21st. He's 15 now, he's 16 in January that was the whole motivation behind it.
"In the end I didn't have to pay for it but it made donor awareness so much better and when you're in the system and you see people that are sick all the time , the more people getting body parts the better."
He says the sensitivities around organ donation in New Zealand are "silly".
"We live in a country that's murky waters everywhere ... It would save a lot of money save a lot of time and I think if we were a little bit honest with everybody.
"If you have a renal problem you deserve a crack at it again as opposed to someone who didn't look after themselves in the first place. Why would you give an alcoholic a new liver? I need a liver transplant and as soon as you've done it I'm going to start drinking again."
Mr Hunter praised the care he had received from hospital staff in New Zealand; he said the problem was that the system was "overloaded".
"Its like someone standing in a supermarket queue for 25 minutes; you're kidding, open another aisle."
