Clendon David: Coroners Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionClendon David: Coroners Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11681. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): Before addressing some of the key clauses of the Coroners Amendment Bill in this part I would just like to make two more general comments.This first is that we do have considerable sympathy for our Labour colleagues’ view that this legislation unfortunately does not go as far as it might. There are things missing from this that could usefully be put in here. The primary legislation is now about a decade old. Coronial legislation is not something we want to be coming back to too often. We all want a system that functions well and meets the needs of New Zealanders effectively. For that reason we will be supporting I think most if not all of the Labour Party’s proposed Supplementary Order Papers 145 and 146 which do for the most part reference a later part of the bill.The other general comment that I would make is derived from some comments from the Chief Coroner’s submission to the select committee. In it the Chief Coroner said at the outset she notes that the amendment bill does impose some further requirements some further obligations on the Chief Coroner and indeed on other coroners. She points out: “The ability of my office to meet these requirements is dependent on sufficient resourcing.” She goes on to say: “The Office of the Chief Coroner staff consists of a judicial support manager and a personal assistant.”—at that point at least—“…there are two recent law graduates responsible for legal research for the Chief Coroner and the 16 coroners nationwide.”I have heard comments along those lines from all of the coroners I have spoken to personally: that they operate in an under-resourced environment that there probably ought to be two more of themand that they all need more administrative assistance in order to do their work in a timely fashion. Because after all as the point has been made nobody actually wants to be involved with a coroner and it is incumbent on us to endeavour to make sure that we get the most effective means we can so that they can do their work as swiftly as possible and get the outcomes.To speak to some of the specifics in this first part of the bill one of the first matters that came to the Justice and Electoral Committee’s attention was the conversation or discussion about the relationship between coroners and the police. I think it is not a well-known fact that the coroner’s office has no particular investigative resource of its own; it is completely reliant on New Zealand Police to go out and do the investigations for it.The original drafting of the bill had it that “the Commissioner of Police must cause to be made all investigations that are reasonable and necessary to help to achieve the purpose of this Act in relation to the death including any investigation directed by the responsible coroner.” The Chief Coroner again was concerned at the use of the word “reasonable”. She felt and the committee in turn agreed that the original wording actually gave too much discretion to the police to say no to a coroner—to refuse effectively to carry through investigations that the coroner might have thought were necessary and called for.I do think that the wording that has replaced it now still allows for the Commissioner of Police to object if he or she thinks that a request from the coroner is unreasonable or unnecessary. There is then a process where the commissioner might go to the Chief Coroner make the case and ideally they will come to some arrangement whereby the needs of both will be fulfilled.To me again this whole concern about that relationship seems to rest on a resourcing issue. It does require significant resources over time for police to investigate well to the standard required by the coroner particularly when an inquest is occurring. It would seem to me that they are put in this unfortunate position of the coroner’s office and the police having to have the language nailed down fairly tightly because I do not believe there is any sort of inherent opposition from within police to following the reasonable instructions of the coroner’s office. But there is a concern that on occasion they may well lack the resources to do that given the demands that are placed on them and the obligation they are under to prioritise everything that they do.I think that was reflective as I say of the fact that too many of the functions and purposes of our justice system throughout are being constrained by a lack of resource and it is reflected in the changes made here.