Wall Louisa: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1795. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa):Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare. Ngā mihi o te Tau Hou. This is actually the first opportunity I have had in the new year to make a speech in the House and I want to begin with a little bit of indulgence please Mr Assistant Speaker just to acknowledge some of our fallen leaders. I particularly want to acknowledge Api Mahuika a rangatira from Ngati Porou. I want to acknowledge Dr John Angus a former Children’s Commissioner—it was sad to hear of his passing in mid-January—and also Celia Lashlie who passed away this week. I know that all of us in different capacities have had engagements with some of these people and I think that their contribution to New Zealand should be acknowledged.It is my pleasure to take a call on this the first reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill. Unfortunately I am not a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee. I wish I was because I am actually incredibly interested in this piece of legislation and I am interested from the perspective of having worked with the Hon Chester Borrows who I want to acknowledge has led a lot of the development of this piece of legislation. My engagement with Chester was around suicide reporting specifically and whether or not there was an opportunity to increase the mandate of the Chief Coroner not only to look at individual deaths but to actually provide an analysis at the end of every year on suicides.Particularly important for me was the suicides of young people and whether or not there are themes that could be extrapolated such as regional themes themes pertinent to young Māori males Pacific and LGBTIQ. I wanted to know whether there were discernible groups for whom we could actually look at having preventative initiatives led by the Chief Coroner. So as this bill is before us I think that it is timely to also look at extending the mandate of the Chief Coroner to specifically be able to look at such things.The other interesting part of being able to speak on this bill is just reflecting back on when this bill was introduced. It was introduced on 31 July 2014. It was interesting to note that nearly 2 weeks prior to that on 18 July 2014 the acting director of the legal issues centre of the faculty of law at University of Otago Dr Jennifer Moore actually released a very interesting study about coronial cases. She looked at a discrete cohort between July 2007 and June 2012. She looked at 607 cases. Just for those listening we have about 29000 deaths in New Zealand every year and of those 20 percent or 5800 deaths are reported to the coroner. So in that 5-year period she looked at 2 percent of those cases and actually came out with a number of recommendations. Her analysis of our coronial system was that we did have issues about poor information-sharing. But one of the findings that is incredibly relevant was that this area is hugely under-resourced. So if you look at the fact that we spend $17 million in this area and there are approximately 5800 deaths referred to the coroner that averages out to only $2931 per case that we invest in the coronial process. So I think it is worth looking at whether or not the recommendations from this particular report are relevant to this bill given the bill was drafted before this evidence became available.One of the particular recommendations I want to focus on is about the introduction of a mandatory response regime. I want to note that that mandatory response regime would not be unique if New Zealand were to enact such a regime because in England and Wales they have a mandatory response regime. Looking at amended section 7(2)(e) as set out in clause 6 of the bill we are actually going to require the Chief Coroner to expand their function “to set up and maintain a register which must be publicly available of coroners’ recommendations and comments …”. So it seems to me that under this legislation if we are going to require the Chief Coroner to establish a register of recommendations actually we should just go to the next step and therefore establish a mandatory response regime to those recommendations. It seems a simple step from getting the coroner to set up a register to then monitor that register and empower the Chief Coroner to follow through on the recommendations and actually build on the capacity of the Office of the Chief Coroner to actually do what it is empowered to do under the legislation.I just want to focus us back to what the purpose of the Coroners Act is. The purpose is to help prevent further deaths in similar circumstances it is to promote justice but it is also about identifying causes and circumstances of deaths that ensure that we as a society and a country are being responsive to creating the change that is necessary to prevent further deaths and injuries. I think the whole integrity of the Coroners Act and in fact the coroners’ position in our society means we should be ensuring we actually follow through every step of the way to realising the purpose of their establishment. So I found it incredibly interesting that given our Chief Coroner Neil MacLean has just retired after 8 years in the job one of the first things he said upon his retirement was that the recommendations that they make need to be mandatory and that we as a country need to be a lot more responsive to those recommendations. I also found it really interesting that one of the things that he chose to highlight in his departure was around quad bikes. He said that if he could he would recommend that children be not allowed to ride quad bikes because there has been a number of deaths related to children riding quad bikes. I think there was a death earlier this year of a young person under the age of 10 a young girl. I think it is incumbent on people who hold these positions to be able to fully realise I guess the mandate that we give them.So I would hope that in the deliberations of the select committee it looks at the latest evidence available to it and actually make some amendments to this piece of legislation which obviously we on this side of the House support. But I think there is an opportunity for all of us to add a bit more value to the process that we are engaged in and I guess recognise that when the legislation was drafted we did not have all of the information available to us. I think if we look at the processes of the House that is in fact what the select committee process enables us to do. It is about catching up on the most up-to-date information so that we have laws that are actually fit for purpose not for yesterday but for today and into the future. So I look forward to being involved in this bill if I can in any way.This is really unusual but I will say to our whips that if they need cover on the select committee please assign me. I would love to be part of the submissions. I am on the Health Committee and I love being on the Health Committee but actually in respect of pieces of legislation like this I would welcome the opportunity to have input into them. And for me as I said earlier around issues to do with youth suicide I would absolutely welcome the opportunity to feed into the process so that we can produce a piece of legislation that actually is going to prevent preventable deaths and actually benefit our country. Nō reira tēnā koutou katoa.