Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a privilege to speak on the first reading of the Coroners (Access to Body of Dead Person) Amendment Bill. As we know at the recommendation of the Māori Affairs Committee this bill amends section 26 of the Coroners Act 2006 to provide the explicit requirement that coroners consider tikanga Māori and the expectations of other cultures when determining who can view touch or remain near a dead body in the custody of the coroner.So why is this bill necessary? I just want to talk about a bit of background. In New Zealand the majority of deaths are actually certified by a doctor and then the body remains in the custody of the family but in about 20 percent of cases what happens if the death is unexpected or sudden or if the doctor is unable to determine the cause of death? Then it gets referred by the police to the coroner. The coroner then makes an assessment about whether he or she does need to look into this further. If they do decide to look into the death they need to confirm the identity of the person who's passed away and also establish the cause of death. In doing so what they also need to consider is whether a post-mortem is necessary to identify why the person died.While this is quite a routine process from the police and the coronial point of view from a whānau point of view it's a particularly devastating process because it comes completely out of the blue and at a very very difficult time. One of the areas that was particularly concerning that featured in a lot of the submissions to the select committee was in the case of sudden unexpected death in infancy or SUDI. What SUDI is basically—as it says by the title—is a sudden unexpected death of a baby who's otherwise well. Often these babies usually peak in the first few months of life; although babies can pass away up to one year and there's a whole lot of known risk factors but the essential fact of the death is that it's unexpected. Usually what happens is baby goes to bed and then is found by parents or caregivers at a later point and has passed away.Between 2008 and 2016 of the 495 babies who did die from SUDI 303 of those were Māori babies. Because of the sudden nature of these deaths they were all referred to the coroners. For these families it's actually not routine; it's a completely devastating process to wake up and find your baby's passed away to not understand what's happened and then to turn up and have the police coming into your home and conducting what they think it is a routine investigation but asking some questions which are particularly traumatising for families. In that context for families to not be able to stay with the baby's body right through the process it can make a bad situation worse.I just want to read some of the comments from Whakawhetū who's the Māori sudden infant death syndrome prevention group—one of the groups that presented a submission to the select committee. They were talking about their experiences with families in this situation and what they said is Many families are often completely unaware or unable to comprehend what has happened to their pēpi. Additionally many of these whānau are younger parents who feel they have already been judged as a result of them being simply younger parents." They went on to say "Given the fact that Māori are significantly younger parents the system must ensure these parents and whānau are provided with even more support and advice that is readily available [and it's] accessible and appropriate [so that] should they have to deal with [this] unfortunate situation … whether [it be] from SUDI or [for another cause]." So we really need to have a duty of care for families in this situation.So what this bill does is it amends section 26 of the Act to require the coroner when determining whether someone should stay with the body to consider tikanga Māori and the expectations of other cultures. Currently the Act doesn't require the coroner to take these factors into account but they do have the discretion to do so. In current practice coroners do work with whānau to work out what the best practice is. What this bill however does in the context of an increasingly multicultural society but also from a Treaty perspective is it codifies best practice. I therefore commend this bill to the House. Thank you."