Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): Like others I am pleased to be speaking to this bill for the final time in this third reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill. I was feeling that this bill had been around a long time. I actually looked and indeed it has been around for quite some time. It was introduced in August 2014 so almost 2 years ago. I acknowledge of course there was an election that intervened but the bill has been with us a while and it will be good to see it progress and to finally pass. Having said that the Greens are supporting this legislation but I would acknowledge the concerns that have been expressed by the Labour speakers. For us it was also something of a line call. We fell down on the side of saying Well this bill does a number of very good things and for that reason we'll support it." but certainly it is far from complete. I am sure we will have no problems supporting the changes that Labour will make next year when from Government we are all in a position to do that. Part of the purpose of this bill is to streamline to make more efficient some of the coronial processes and procedures. That is a good thing clearly and we hope it will achieve some of that to reduce the workload. But to speak on behalf of the coroners I do think the workload will not be sufficiently relieved and I do think that there is a case to be made to increase the number of coroners and to increase the level of support for those judicial officers. Those of us on the Justice and Electoral Committee who have followed this bill all the way through have had in a sense a privileged position. We have had a very close firsthand look at the work of the coroners in their office without having to be in the very unfortunate situation of being close to a tragedy—the reason normally people would get to know what the coroners do. We have discovered in my view anyway that the coroners' workload is unreasonable. I have seen their roster and it is brutal. It is a 24/7 call on their time and expertise. It is a very difficult task. It is a judicial role but nevertheless they are also required to be grief counsellors and psychologists as well as practitioners of the law. So I do think there is a very strong argument and we regret the fact this current Budget does not actually recognise that and assist the coroners in clearing some of the backlog of cases that does exist. We are told that there has been about a 20 percent reduction in that backlog. I think that really is not sufficient and we would like to see more provision to enable them to do their job even better than they do. They are people of considerable integrity and I think we should support them better. One of the more fraught parts of the select committee process was entering into the issues around suicides the reporting of suicides and the provisions of this bill that do deal with that. The Auditor-General's report that has come out just today notes that in 2013 suicide was the third-leading cause of premature death in New Zealand after heart disease and lung cancer. No doubt the numbers have changed marginally in the last few years but it just highlights the tragedy and prevalence of suicide in New Zealand. It is something I am sure across the House we would all seek to redress—youth suicide in particular. Sadly we are seeing more instances of suicide in the rural areas as the reality of the rural downturn kicks in and for some people they do not see a way out except sadly through that. I think it is incumbent on us to do everything we can to reduce the incidence of suicide and one of those things is around the reporting of it. I think this bill has come down in the right place. It enables sober and sensible reporting of incidents when it is presumed that a death has been caused by suicide. It does not allow anyone without the coroner's approval to say anything about the method or the location when that might indicate what the method was and I think that is appropriate. The bill puts in place a process where a coroner might allow for an exemption to allow that detail to be released to the public through the media but only after there has been a panel established including a person with expertise in suicide prevention a person with expertise in tikanga Māori and a person with expertise in the media and its processes. I think it creates some fairly robust means to balance out the undoubted commitment we all have to freedom of expression and freedom of speech but it also puts some reasonable constraints in place. We had a fairly robust dare I call it submission from an organisation called the media freedom committee speaking on behalf of the media. The thrust of that submission was that the media should be allowed to report—that it should be left to their discretion and good judgment—and frankly I do not think that that submission got much traction with the members of the committee. There are too many instances when the media undoubtedly would be tempted to overstep the boundaries of good taste and of protecting other people who might be moved to emulate or copycat suicide. I think we found about the right balance. We acknowledge all the arguments that in this day and age with social media and the internet sadly some of this information will get out in a way that it ought not to but we just do what we can do to manage at least the mainstream media. I do think we have got to a good place with that. I think it is important that we do talk about suicides. Suppressing information and conversation in the wider populace—particularly with our young people who are most vulnerable—and suppressing debate is not the solution. We need to have an informed debate but a carefully managed debate—a carefully presented debate. I actually went along to a couple of—what is the organisation? Riders Against Teenage Suicide is a group of people active in Northland. I must acknowledge Arthur Harawira who suffered the ultimate tragedy as a parent of losing a son to suicide and yet is still able and strong enough to stand in front of audiences of young people talking about what the cost to his family was and to him personally of losing that young man. I think that is an admirable formula if you like: the context is such that we can address young people and explain to them why they ought never to consider that that is a choice they should ever make. But it needs to be a very careful managed and structured conversation and the media is not the place to do that. One of our initial objections to this bill was that in the current situation when deaths occur in custody—particularly deaths in prisons—it must trigger a full inquest and that is mandatory. There is now discretion for the coroners to choose in some instances not to undertake a full inquest. There must still be an inquiry but not a full inquest and we think that balance is about right. I have personally been persuaded by personal conversations with coroners and by the submission from the Chief Coroner which said in this present-day reality of more people getting older in our prisons there are situations when deaths in prisons are entirely predictable given the ill health of inmates and the like. So I do think that we can put a level of trust in the coroners to make those calls. Personally I do not have confidence in the culture of the Department of Corrections to be transparent and to be open and honest about deaths in custody. So I think we have hit a good spot with the current language or the new language of the bill as it is now presented in its final form: talking about deaths of the medically unexpected or when a medical officer would not have expected a person to pass away based on their previous history; the medical notes; and the like. Obviously it is something we will need to continue to monitor but for the moment we think there is adequate protection to ensure there is a very rigorous application of inquiry and if necessary inquest when deaths do occur in custody. There have been too many examples sadly when people have died in custody in prison and it has been the result of negligence inadequate health-care and inadequate monitoring. Preventable deaths have occurred in custody. We have got to be very sure when they do occur that there is a spotlight shone on them and that we seek to ensure that those circumstances do not recur. The final point that I would like to make is that the new bill puts in place some provisions in situations when a body is returned to the family but some body parts or samples are retained by the coroner—or the pathologist more accurately. It is a requirement effectively that families need to be informed of that and that they can request that those parts be returned to them at the appropriate time. That is important not least of all to Māoridom but to people more generally. With those few comments we do continue to support this bill."