Finlayson Christopher: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
Finlayson Christopher: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4603] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 Part 2 deals with a lot of the machinery provisions of the Coroners Act and will re-enact a lot of what is contained in the 1988 Act so I will concentrate on one issue in particular—that is the retention of bodily parts and bodily samples. But before I do so I want to acknowledge the huge contribution to law reform in this area by Denese Henare when she was a member of the Law Commission. For those who do not know her Denese Henare is an extremely distinguished Auckland lawyer who made a huge contribution to the Law Commission and it is fair to say that at the end of her term the Law Commission was very keen for her to be reappointed but the then Minister in charge of the Law Commission—a Labour member—refused to reappoint her and instead appointed— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: What appointment did they make? 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
 I think it was a Labour flunky. Labour appointed Professor Ngatata Love who I have to say has made absolutely no contribution whatsoever to the Law Commission and in fact it is fair to say that no one in the Law Commission wanted him. Be that as it may let us move on to Part 2 “Deaths to be reported and post-mortems”. I begin by saying that I think it is pretty unacceptable that we have the term “post-mortems” because it should be “post-mortes”. But this is the way legislation is going; no one observes correct Latin terms any more and no one seems to understand them. It is a very sad state of affairs. 
So what are the sorts of deaths that need to be reported in this legislation? They are set out in clause 11 and there are five of them. The first obviously is suicides and deaths where there is no established cause; the second is deaths for which no doctor’s certificate is given; the third and important cause is deaths during medical surgical and dental operations which happens quite a lot—although I would not have thought it happened very much in dental operations but there we go—the fourth is deaths in official custody or care; and the fifth is deaths in detention. 
I point out to honourable members an interesting jurisdictional clause in clause 11(2) which provides that the subsection will apply only to deaths that have occurred in New Zealand or deaths that are on or from an aircraft registered in New Zealand or a New Zealand ship or a ship or aircraft of the armed forces which is all pretty standard stuff and not surprising. Then there are a number of clauses that deal with custody and removal of bodies and as they simply re-enact relevant provisions of the 1988 Act I am not going to dwell on those. 
There are very important provisions that deal with the interests of families and other relevant people or organisations and the need to keep families informed about exactly what is happening with a post-mortem. But the particular part that the committee spent quite some time on was the clauses from clause 40 onwards dealing with the release of bodies and the retention and return of body parts and bodily samples. We spent some time dealing with the definitions of those two terms because as the bill was originally drafted the phrase “bodily sample” was very generally defined and we thought that some specificity was required so that members of the family would know exactly what was involved and what rights they had. Then secondly there is the definition of “body part”. Originally it was simply going to be that a body means any part of a body but as members can see from the definitional section the definition is that much clearer. 
The important part about these sections are the ones that the committee substituted—that the pathologist although he or she may remove a bodily part or bodily sample has to keep the family the immediate family or those interested advised of what is going on with that bodily part and importantly a person is to be advised of the right to request the return of those parts or samples. The sort of situation that we heard of during the Justice and Electoral Committee hearings—a situation which often occurs surprisingly—is that some months after the funeral the body having been buried or cremated the immediate family is sent a bodily part or bodily sample which can cause a great deal of stress— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: The brain case. 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON 
: As my friend the member for North Shore Dr Mapp said there is a famous case concerning a brain. Imagine the feelings one would have if a relative’s brain turned up in the mail. It would probably not affect Labour members because there are not too many with them. But anyway that is what those clauses are about. They are very important clauses. The rest of them are basically machinery and that is why we spent quite some time on those clauses in the select committee.