Kedgley Sue: Coroners Bill — Third Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Coroners Bill — Third Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting the Coroners Bill in its third reading as it seems are most parties in this House. Nandor Tanczos was the Green Party MP who was considering this bill in the Justice and Electoral Committee and he feels very strongly that we should support it and that it has been significantly improved through select committee consideration. 
It is one of those bills that passes through this House relatively unremarked but it is an important bill with significant implications for everyone who has contact with the coronial system whether as a grieving family member a friend an investigator or a medical professional and whether those people are trying to understand a death or helping prevent such deaths in future. It is a huge bill with 134 clauses over four parts and five schedules. 
The Green Party believes that the bill is well overdue. Dissatisfaction with the coronial system is longstanding and significant and the way in which the role of coroners has evolved has not kept up with the needs of our communities in recent times. There have been a number of criticisms in relation to the inconsistency of standards amongst coroners delays in holding inquests and bringing findings the relevance and quality of some of those findings and the lack of regard to the spiritual and cultural needs of people in particular—but not confined to—tangata whenua. That is not to say that the story is all bad; in fact many coroners have given very good professional service to this country and their communities over a number of years. Their contributions have been important and have helped prevent fatalities in a number of areas. 
I think it is fair to say that this bill builds on the strengths of the present system—looking at what works well and can be retained or adapted while attempting to rectify the problems that undoubtedly exist—and the Green Party is of the view that the bill largely does that. Most important perhaps this bill professionalises the coronial system. It provides for fewer—but full-time—coroners who are legally qualified and properly trained for their duties. It is simply not tenable in the complex and materially sophisticated world in which we live for the qualifications and training of coroners with the important responsibilities they have to discharge to be ad hoc. The bill provides for coroners’ proper remuneration to be determined by the Remuneration Authority and sets in place a clear complaints system consistent with that for judges. It sets up a new office of chief coroner whose function is to help ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the coronial system. The chief coroner will amongst other things issue practice notes and guidelines to help assure more consistency and better service coordinate support services and so forth. 
In essence the bill provides for a proper framework to support and improve the work of coroners. As well as legal and medical specialist advice that the chief coroner will provide the bill also recognises the need for cultural advice to be available and it contains a number of clauses that recognise the tremendous sensitivity around the handling of dead bodies especially in relation to post-mortems. The grief that families and friends already feel in these circumstances should not be amplified by insensitive treatment at the hands of coroners and pathologists. The bill has a number of clauses designed to reduce the offence that can be experienced in those circumstances. For the family of a deceased person the idea that their loved one will go through a post-mortem is quite a traumatic prospect. So there have to be very very clear guidelines around the basis of the decision as to whether a post-mortem will happen. The bill establishes those criteria as well as a right to object to a post-mortem being held. 
The issue of the reporting of self-inflicted deaths was a matter of some contention and debate because it is a sensitive issue and fairly strong submissions were heard from media representatives in particular about the public interest in the reporting of suicide. We have an extremely high suicide rate in this country and there is a good argument to say that we need a more informed and deeper public debate around those issues. The committee took that issue very seriously and had to balance it against other considerations in particular the sensitivities of families who are already going through a highly traumatic time. The details of the self-inflicted death of a family member being splashed in the media in some way is something that none of us would want to see happen gratuitously. 
Another issue is the risk of increasing suicide. There is some evidence that the reporting of suicides in some circumstances can increase the incidence of suicide and can lead to a copycat methodology which does not necessarily increase the number of suicides but may increase the number of a certain type of suicide. There is some evidence that the net amount of suicide can also be affected by media reporting. We believe that the bill has struck a reasonable balance on this issue and on many of the other sensitive issues that surround the coronial system. So we are very pleased to see this bill reach the third reading and we are very pleased to support it. We hope it will result in a substantial improvement to the functioning and operation of the coronial system in New Zealand.