Dean Jacqui: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1780. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):It gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak in the first reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill. I will move straight to the matter raised by the previous speaker Jacinda Ardern around the mandatory response to coroners’ recommendations. Before I do that I want to thank the Labour Opposition for its intention to support this bill. I think indeed that this is an important bill that builds on the Coroners Act 2006.To address the member’s question around mandatory responses to coroners’ recommendations—and I believe this is something that we will have a pretty good look at in the Justice and Electoral Committee—my response and the Government’s initial response to that query is that it sounds good on the face of it and of course heed should be taken of the coroners’ recommendations because after all the coroner is charged with considering all aspects of his or her inquiry but to make a response mandatory in the first instance will require a significant amount of time and a significant amount of resources particularly for smaller organisations. It may be that in a particular instance of an inquest an organisation might not have a direct interest or need to respond and so that mandatory requirement might have a bit of a perverse effect in that it ties up a number of smaller organisations with responding to a matter that is not necessarily of direct concern to them. One would expect that those organisations and groups and agencies that do have a direct interest in that particular coronial inquest would no doubt be responding anyway because it is in everybody’s interests for them to do so.The other point I would make around mandatory responses to coroners’ recommendations is that perhaps it is more beneficial that we are moving towards the inclusion—and it is contained in this bill—of those relevant individuals and organisations early on in the process of the inquest and the investigation itself. So it is a matter of bringing those interested parties on board in the process so that when the recommendations are made those parties that have a view or a response to make are brought inside as part of that report. Having said that the previous speaker raised a valid point—and it is one that the Justice and Electoral Committee will be considering during its consideration on this bill.The whole purpose of this bill is to make more timely and more efficient coronial decisions in what are in anybody’s terms very very difficult situations for grieving families. That will be at the forefront of the consideration of all members of the select committee and all members of this Parliament when we come back to debate it throughout the course of its passage. It is a fact that the average coronial inquest takes around 400 days. That is over a year for the grieving family and friends and those involved to have the matter still unresolved for them both on a personal level and also if it involves perhaps an air accident or some other form of mishap or misadventure there may well be consequential legislative or regulatory changes that the Government may need to look at as a consequence of that death. Expediting an inquest has got to be for the benefit of all New Zealanders not only those who were involved and who have sadly passed away but also those who may be impacted and affected in the future. Even more disturbingly perhaps with an inquest that is a little more complicated and involves other agencies such as perhaps the Air Accidents Investigation Commission there might be multi-agencies involved in an inquest and that can take up to 700 days which is a couple of years. That is too long for a family to wait for closure and resolution.There will be families out there today perhaps taking an interest in this debate. I know there are people with many many personal stories who will come and speak to us and I welcome those people. This matters to them so for those people who are listening or watching the debate today this Parliament is determined—and I do hope we enjoy the support of the rest of the House—to speed up the process to make it more relevant to those people with a personal interest and also to those Government agencies and other sectors of New Zealand that will have an interest in the result of inquiries.One of the bill’s main provisions is to require a coroner’s recommendations to be more specific to the actual case that they are considering and the evidence before the coroner and to be clear about how the recommendations would reduce the likelihood of future deaths in similar circumstances—so maybe tightening up the criteria around what the coroner is reporting. The bill will give the chief coroner better tools to improve timeliness and I have already made reference to that. One such tool—and I think it is a very good provision—is a requirement to monitor the progress of older cases. I would not like to think that due to perhaps caseload management there are older cases waiting for resolution because these are not just cases; these are inquests into the deaths of people. So we want a sharper focus on providing resolution for those.I want to acknowledge the input of a number of organisations into the drafting of this bill. The Law Commission of course—let me just go through my notes because we met with the Law Commission this morning and it made a submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee and it made reference to its work on this bill. The commission made 17 recommendations to the Government on coroners’ inquests and the Government fully accepts 14 proposals for changing the Coroners Act and generally accepts three further recommendations about developing reporting standards around inquests. I want to acknowledge the Law Commission for its work on this but also other organisations. The Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand is a relatively small association and it has a new chief executive who was mentioned by the previous speaker and that is the former MP Katrina Shanks. Katrina Shanks as its new chief executive has made an absolute focus of the care of families at the time of death but in particular in this instance the care of families in times of sudden death unexplained death or suicide.In the couple of moments I have left I just want to talk about suicide and the suicide of young people. I want to talk about a meeting I attended in Alexandra and there was another one in Kurow and another one in Ōāmaru. I am describing my electorate but this happens throughout New Zealand. At the meetings groups of parents and educators are getting together to discuss youth suicide. In those meetings that I attended late last year Mike King came along and spoke of his experience of depression and the prevention of youth suicide. At each of those meetings the town halls were absolutely full of concerned parents and concerned children. Youth suicide suicide and suicide reporting are a critical part of this bill. There will be new regulation around suicide reporting. We do not want copycat suicides through misreporting to continue in New Zealand. It is a concern that has been raised in many quarters.I look forward to the examination of this bill. I look forward to working collegially with members across the House and on to the second reading and the Committee stage.