Ardern Jacinda: Coroners Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Coroners Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7399. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to begin by thanking the Minister for Courts for bringing the Coroners Amendment Bill to the House because certainly we could see from the very outset as a party what the intent of the bill was. Obviously it was in 2006—from memory—that the initial enabling legislation was passed and putting parameters and good guidelines around how we expect the coronial system to operate and reviewing the effectiveness of those mechanisms is just good practice. But we did have concerns that in the attempt to try to narrow the scope of the work that our coroners do that we had gone too far. We did keep a broadly open mind going into this legislation but on balance have concluded that we cannot support the legislation for a couple of key factors that the Minister raised and that I will give Labour’s perspective on.Just to give that context again though the initial briefing from the Ministry of Justice outlined that there are about 6000 deaths reported to coroners every year. Coroners accept they have jurisdiction in about 3500 of those cases about 1300 of those cases lead to the opening of an inquiry and then about 300 cases are the subject of a public inquest each year.Just to be really clear on the difference between an inquiry and an inquest for those who may be listening and may not be clear on that difference an inquest does allow for a coroner to undertake questioning allows for there to be a more open and public hearing and allows cross-examination. And in contrast to that an inquiry therefore is seen to be I guess a less in-depth version of an investigation in that it can be conducted on paper and without those individuals appearing or being cross-examined or questioned. There are therefore circumstances where in our minds the risk-averse approach would be to opt for an inquest and in our minds that should include deaths in custody by and large.So I will cover off the issues where we had the greatest concerns—an area I know that you are very familiar with Mr Deputy Speaker. The first I would put under the general heading of narrowing what a coroner is able to make recommendations around. So clause 30 of the bill under new sections 57A and 57B requires a coroner according to the Ministry of Justice advice in making a recommendation to show how the recommendation if implemented would have prevented the death in question. So it is about making a direct causal link between the recommendation and the death.That may seem on paper like a perfectly reasonable definition to have for making a recommendation but let me put that into the context of an example. Say for instance a coroner has referred to them what appears on face value to be a traffic accident. It has occurred on a dangerous stretch of road where a number of deaths have occurred and it is found though that the individual was intoxicated at the time of the accident. You could therefore say that the only recommendation a coroner could really feasibly make would be to make the recommendation about something around drunk driving because that was obviously the direct cause of that death as discovered by the coroner. However what of the fact that there were five or ten deaths on that corner of road? If the coroner cannot determine that that was the direct cause of death therefore they cannot make a recommendation around a potentially dangerous stretch of road.That is a little example. But even if anecdotes do not persuade you I was heavily persuaded by the view of the coroners themselves who believed that this provision did narrow beyond their comfort levels what they were able to issue recommendations on. That was compelling enough for my colleague Peeni Henare and me on the Justice and Electoral Committee to determine that that was something that we would continue to raise and take issue with.The second area of concern the Minister has already given some context to and that was deaths in custody. As she pointed out according to the advice we received from memory we are talking about 60 deaths over 5 years. It may have even been less than that but it is a relatively small number. Granted that number will grow particularly as we now have aged-care facilities essentially within our corrections infrastructure but clause 41 and the replacement of section 80 means that it will no longer be mandatory for coroners to hold an inquest into deaths that occur in official custody or care.We are concerned that that greater level of discretion which means that now obviously there will be inquiries instead of inquests—we are not arguing that they are being ruled out altogether but they will be to a lesser degree of investigation—could lead to inappropriate decision-making less transparency and potentially a loss of faith in the system by family members.The Minister talked about the amendments that have been made to try to counter that but it does go beyond just deaths for instance in a corrections facility. It could for instance apply to a death in a Child Youth and Family residence. I had someone who worked in the coronial system raise with me a very specific example for instance. When I issued an Official Information Act request some time ago for reports on deaths in Child Youth and Family’s care not all of them were inquests—some of them were inquiries—and that was determined by the nature of those deaths.But as a coroner pointed out to me they had brought before them a death that by rule they could have conducted only an inquiry into. It was a suicide-related death but he decided he wanted to conduct a full inquest and as a result of that he identified that within a tiny small community there had been a string of related deaths. It was his view that had he not opened up that process that officials and the district health board would never have been aware of that situation. So he saw real value in inquests particularly when we are talking about those who are involved in State care of some form. So it is our concern and our belief that we need to maintain that higher level of scrutiny where the State has such a powerful role.Thinking of corrections specifically I can think of examples where family members have raised with me concerns about deaths that have been explained as being from suicide or natural causes by the Department of Corrections and in their minds they have had doubts over whether that was the case. An inquest allows that transparency. So again that is one of the concerns that we have with that provision.The next issue is of equal significance and it has been raised repeatedly by Phil Goff as our defence spokesperson. It is the significant shift away from the current role a coroner can play in conducting inquests into deaths in hostile action. The Defence Force went specifically to the Minister and asked for that to be removed. It asked that instead the Attorney-General could simply recommend when they wanted the coroner to be involved in an inquest or inquiry into a death in a hostile action. In our minds that again takes away that critical transparency and oversight of the Defence Force.The argument that the Defence Force made was that it could reveal important information around security which could jeopardise the safety of soldiers. It was our view that we should take on board the regulatory impact statement recommendation and the alternative option which said that you could instead allow the Attorney-General to point out to coroner the circumstances under which they cannot conduct an inquiry but make the default that they still have that role. So it would be reversing the onus from what the bill currently has. In our minds it would have created much greater transparency and much greater faith in the system.We are concerned that the Government is creating a closed shop around the Defence Force with these provisions and we know that that request came off the back of the inquiry by the coroner JP Ryan into the deaths of Private Richard Harris Corporal Luke Tamatea and Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker. We do not believe that the Ministry of Justice should have listened to that request from the Defence Force and we are disappointed that it has.My final concluding remarks are that a coroner’s recommendations are in-depth they should be listened to and they should at least be responded to. We will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to make that simple request because it has been suggested by coroners that it is a flaw in our system that you are not required to respond to a coroner and you should be. I hope that members of this House will at least support that Supplementary Order Paper because it put forward in good faith. Thank you.