Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Sorry—as I just organise myself here for this bill the Coroners (Access to Body of Dead Person) Amendment Bill. As we have heard this is to amend section 26 of the Coroners Act the 2006 Act. It is to take into account cultural considerations within that particular piece of legislation. I note this is the response to the Māori Affairs Committee inquiry and I note the names that were mentioned in the contribution of the previous speaker Nuk Korako. He did neglect I think—if I'm wrong—to say that he was the chairman of that committee that shepherded this through. So congratulations to you Nuk for shepherding this important piece of legislation.It might not be something that is on everyone's mind all the time but for those people that are bereaved it is hugely important and it is genuinely significant and I think it does behove us to take this piece of legislation and bring it forward so that it does allow the opportunity for comfort for those families that do find themselves in this situation. And we all do eventually from time to time.This allows us to take into account ethnic considerations. We know that New Zealand is a much more multicultural society than what it was you know 20 years ago or 10 years ago. I think almost a quarter of our population were born overseas. We've got people here from almost every country of the world and they're not necessarily sharing the same cultures. Maybe as the indigenous people or the Pākehā settlers—who maybe were more predominant in our previous times—we need to take their considerations into account too and that was part of that submission process. Our social attitudes of course have changed as well over time and I think that is something that we need to take into account.But of course I think we're particularly focusing here on the spiritual beliefs of Māori and tikanga Māori and tūpāpaku—that's the Māori term for dead body I understand. I'm a slightly unlikely champion for Māori spirituality. It's not something that I've been around so much in my life but I know matua Shane Jones and Jenny Marcroft those that are immersed in that culture within our caucus and who are probably more appropriate to be speaking to this bill this evening have certainly imparted upon me how important it is to the Māori culture to honour the body to not just allow it to head off and maybe see it just before the funeral or whatever as we may do in European culture. It is certainly something in their spiritual DNA that they wish to have a much more literally hands-on involvement and this bill allows for—not only viewing—touching and remaining near the body for immediate family members only.As we heard in Mr Little's contribution to the bill there are 5000 coroner investigations so this is not something that is rare at all—20 percent of deaths going to the coroner; I did not know that. So that shows that this is probably something that is more widespread in its importance than maybe at first glance we would think.This bill does implement the recommendations of the select committee inquiry. There were 40 submissions. They included the Human Rights Commissioner the Chief Coroner some very credible advocates and also individuals. There's one here that I will read out which I think signifies what we're talking about here. This is a lady of part-Samoan part-Māori descent who had her husband—of only 43-years-old—go into the coroner's process and found that that process lacked empathy. In it she quotes It is imperative that Cultural values are adhered to—whānau are in a state of tapu—in a place so dark not being able to even touch my husband and wipe the dirt off his face was horrific … very disrespectful. I left that night and could not go back because I couldn't touch or clean him. My husband hated being dirty." So you can just see the emotion dripping off that quote and it just shows how important that is. And I know even from my own recent experience of a bereavement having gone through that it is very therapeutic to be able to respect the body and sort of use that as part of the grieving in dealing with that process. I can actually empathise with that sentiment quite keenly.So this looks to enshrine best practice. Of course we know that it doesn't—I think the coroner's profession are working very hard to allow these things to happen anyway so we're sort of enshrining best practice as has been said but as that last quote shows that's not always the case. It's not consistent across all jurisdictions. So I think that this will help to bring this into a more formalised situation.So without further ado I think on behalf of New Zealand First we commend the Minister for bringing this forward. We support the bill and we look forward to the select committee maybe looking at it a little bit in time to make sure that it has enough breadth within its scope. I think we don't want to maybe narrow it down to just Māori or Pasifika people—that all people have access and even maybe the Scottish Presbyterians amongst us would get our time in to grieve as well if we so wanted to go down that path. It might not necessarily be our cultural norm but we may feel in that moment that that's what we want to do and hopefully that allows that we wouldn't be precluded from doing that either. The select committee will probably look at those parameters and how it can be tidied up but I think the general principle is extremely sound. It will make our society a better place and we commend this bill to the House."