Williams Poto: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1792. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):It is a pleasure to be able to make a contribution to this particular bill. I would like to use this time to do three things. Firstly I want to talk a little bit about the aims of the bill. Then I would like to look at a couple of aspects that I hope the Justice and Electoral Committee will take particular note of and that I believe some robust submissions will come through on.Firstly it is important to note that for families who go through the coronial process one of the aims of course is to improve the quality consistency and timeliness of the coronial investigations and decision making. For those families as has already been expressed in the House this afternoon it is really important that the investigations are conducted well that the issues come out in debate and that families are not having to extend the time that they grieve for their loves ones and are allowed appropriate time for the grieving process to occur.The second aim of this bill of course is to clarify the role of the coroners to identify any areas where there might be a duplication of services and to ensure that they have got the adequate resources to appoint and involve those people who are important in the investigation—maybe pathologists; it could be requiring information from the deceased person’s own health practitioner—to ensure that there is robust health information available during the process. Thirdly it is about clarifying the role of coroners in making recommendations to prevent future deaths. I will talk a little bit more fully about this later when I talk about what I hope the select committee process will engage in. Lastly it is about ensuring that resources are effectively used. Here I want to pick up on the comments that have already been made about how the resources should also include adequate funding to ensure the timeliness of coronial investigations.What is important of course is that this bill aims to ensure we recognise that the cultural and spiritual needs of the family and others who are close in relationship to the deceased person are fully taken on board and that public good associated with the proper and timely understanding of the causes and circumstances of the death is understood.Further to that this bill really wants to ensure that recommendations and comments are drawn to the public attention so that they may reduce further deaths occurring in circumstances similar to those that have occurred. So this bill adds clarity to the function of the Chief Coroner to the effectiveness of the coronial system in managing and overseeing the workloads and the processes that are engaged and additional to that to supporting coroners and pathologists and others to provide effective coronial services.The bill also establishes a process to report overseas deaths if there is some ambiguity or doubt as to the accuracy of the conclusions reached regarding that death. Here I also want to make just two comments about what I hope the select committee process will investigate further. We have already spoken a lot about the sensitive nature of suicide and the reporting of such I know has already been explored. But I want to make just one comment about the coroners’ concerns that they raised that their reporting and recommendations potentially do not have the ability to be acted upon. Here I want to comment on the work of a colleague of mine Darien Fenton the work that she did with families of forestry workers. She did significant work with those families in trying to establish appropriate reporting so that these deaths did not occur in the future. Thank you.