Finlayson Christopher: Coroners Bill — Second Reading 
Finlayson Christopher: Coroners Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2668] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 Like the member for Waitakere I too am pleased that this bill has now come back to the House for its second reading debate. As the report states it was referred to the previous Justice and Electoral Committee on 14 December 2004. It comes back about 18 months later—an elephantine gestation period of the sort that bedevils so much legislation in this House. There must be ways in which on non - party political but important matters of principle this kind of legislation can get through the House rather quicker than this bill has. 
I begin by congratulating the member for Waitakere on the way she chaired some very sensitive hearings. As she said we had a number of submitters before us and there were some very difficult issues that needed to be grappled with. I think the committee worked very well indeed. 
It is an important debate and it raises some very important questions some of which have been touched on by the Minister and some by my friend Dr Worth. As Dr Worth said the office of coroner is an ancient one in the State; it goes back to medieval times. As he also said the coronial court is a court of record which is very important. He touched on the reasons for that in his speech and I will say something about it myself. 
The Coroners Act 1988 was well overdue for reform. As the member for Waitakere said the regime that operated under that Act has now been replaced by a regime of full-time coroners and gone are the days where for example justices of the peace would act as acting coroners. I join with the member for Waitakere in acknowledging the huge contribution to the process of justice by justices of the peace over the years. I know of one justice of the peace in Wellington—a good friend of mine—who was required to be an acting coroner normally at the most inconvenient times. With no pay whatsoever she was always available when the police contacted her about untimely deaths and she did an excellent job. The service by Mrs Bernadine Pool of Wellington as an acting coroner has been reflected across the country by the service of numerous justices of the peace. 
The Minister outlined key changes introduced in this bill. I really want to touch on three. The first concerns the need for expeditious hearings. I am pleased that the committee saw fit to include what appears in the bill as clause 4A which is a statement of principle but it also emphasises to coroners the need for them to conduct their functions powers and duties without delay. The committee received a number of submissions that addressed the length of time it sometimes takes to deal with coronial hearings and as we heard from the people making submissions to the committee that can place huge stress on the families of deceased people. It is in the interests of justice of finality and of the families of the deceased that a coronial inquiry be conducted as quickly as possible. As the clause notes—and I will say a bit more about it in the Committee stage of the debate—the primary consideration must of course be that of justice. Coroners obviously cannot be permitted to cut corners in order to reach a quick result and it must also be practicable to conduct an inquiry without undue delay. 
The second issue that the Minister touched on which is a very important issue concerns clauses 61 to 63 and the restrictions on the making public of details of self-inflicted deaths. The committee’s report states that we found this a difficult task. We debated it at length. We were very lucky to receive some excellent submissions. I have to say to the House that this issue has troubled me greatly over the past few weeks; indeed it is the most difficult issue that I have had to deal with in the short time I have been in Parliament. I think it is in the interests of New Zealand that there be a proper debate in the House on this issue both in the course of this reading and in the Committee stage of the bill because—as is obvious—suicide and particularly youth suicide is a major health issue. 
Clause 61 substantially re-enacts what was in the 1988 Act. It is very broad indeed and it applies even before the matter comes before the coroner. I refer members to subclause (1). In the case of a suspected suicide the media may not state—even in a news item—how the person died unless they have the authority of a coroner and I really do grapple with the issue of whether it is in the public interest that we have such a protective provision. 
On the one hand we had very powerful submissions from for example the New Zealand Press Council and I will quote what it said because it is very important. The council was concerned with the issue of freedom of expression and said that issue was at the very heart of its submissions: “The Council is strongly of the view that the present statutory provisions inhibiting publication of information and discussion of self-inflicted deaths with no proposed change in the bill are against the public interest. Whatever the reasons in the past for the restriction they have now been overtaken by the wish of the public to be informed and to discuss the major health issue of suicide particularly for the young.” The submission was prepared by the Press Council under the chairmanship of Sir John Jeffries for whom I have enormous respect and it was presented by Justice Paterson for whom I also have great respect. 
The key issue is that the print media recognises suicide as a grave social issue. The Press Council described it as one of urgent public interest but it had to confront what it called the “impenetrable thicket” of the current Coroners Act restrictions. The council acknowledged that editors need to continue the utmost responsibility to readers while exercising freedom of the press. It stated that reports of suicide should be tempered by awareness of the language used and by the way articles are used and treated and where possible reports should be accompanied by information about where help is to be found. The council stated that the best way of dealing with this is to reinforce self-regulation in the press rather than to rely on restrictive statutory prohibitions. In concluding its submission the council stated that the press has a crucial role to play in any public debate about suicide and its causes and effects. It subscribes to the philosophy of the Canadian Suicide Information and Education Collection centre which is that suicide affects us all and that we should talk about it. 
The contrary argument is comprehensively covered in the Justice and Electoral Committee’s report and I will not repeat it here. As I have said I and I believe other members of the committee found this a very difficult issue. I acknowledge the importance of freedom of the press and the force of what the committee said in its report. Indeed since the bill came back to the House I have been making inquiries of people who have had a suicide in their family. One particularly sad case involved friends of mine whose son committed suicide. The mother told me she favours liberalisation of reporting. She thinks that the issue does need to be addressed by the public of New Zealand. So I hope that over the next few weeks as we look at this bill we will debate it in a manner that befits the hugely important topic we are dealing with. 
Finally Dr Worth has already covered the issue of transitional arrangements so I will be brief. I have a problem as other National members do about the transitional arrangements. The Minister said that most coroners are not really full-time coroners. The reality is that many coroners in this country who are lawyers have given up their practices to concentrate on coronial work. I refer for example to Garry Evans a noted defamation and workers’ compensation lawyer in Wellington for many years in the firm of O’Regan Arndt Peters and Evans. I know for a fact that although he is not a full-time coroner in effect his old practice has gone because he has needed to concentrate on coronial work. 
We in the National Party are concerned about those people if these transitional arrangements apply because they would cease to operate as coroners and would be cut loose. I would have thought that after years of doing coronial work they would not get back into full-time practice easily. So the constitutionality is something we will discuss during the Committee stage. I know the Government obtained an opinion from Crown Law. The coroners in fact obtained an opinion from the former Deputy Solicitor-General Mary Scholtens QC and I happen to prefer her opinion because I think it is correct. 
Those are the three issues I wish to address in the second reading debate but particularly I wish to focus on the issue of suicide. I have had grave difficulty grappling with the policy issues involved there. From my point of view it is a very finely balanced debate. So I will spend some more time thinking about it before the Committee stage and I hope that other members will as well.