Borrows Chester: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4671] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chair for allowing me the opportunity to speak on the Coroners Bill. I believe that the amalgamation of coronial services will give some certainty and consistency across the investigation of sudden death. Also it will provide for those most affected by such deaths—the families—some sort of certainty and consistency as to what they can expect from the public agencies involved in those inquiries. 
Within my electorate four coroners are operating. They all operate as lawyers in general practice and have a responsibility for coronial matters within their patch. Three of those coroners would be ready within the next few years to stop practising and exercising their warrant as coroners so they agree with this legislation. Within those various areas though it is amazing to see the difference in time delays for providing such things as pathologist reports and so getting to inquests. In one area we can expect that after a sudden death an inquest will be held within 8 to 10 weeks. In other areas the wait can be as long as 9 months to a year. In one particular case the time delay was over 4 years. That does nothing to ease the pain of those people—the family—most closely associated with any of those deaths. In fact all it does is rip the lid off the pain again and everything is left to hurt. 
In respect of suicide matters I agree with the power of the coroner under the bill to decide whether information will be released to the public. I think that as far as death goes we have a lot of big answers to find within our country. For some unusual reason we murder people more than in most other Western countries. I have never really been able to get a handle on why that happens and I guess I could be profited somewhat if I could decide what that answer was. The other sad fact is that we kill ourselves more than people in a lot of other countries as well. 
One of the little duties I have been performing over the last few years is to officiate at funerals. Last year I officiated at 26 funerals in my small town and two of those were suicides. There was huge public interest. Despite that the circumstances of those deaths do not belong to the public; they belong to the families who are most closely involved. 
One of the things that I think the amalgamation of coronial services will do in respect of suicide is to allow for some closer study to be done into the causes of suicide and the common links of suicides. These links amount to only anecdotal evidence at the moment. Maybe I will highlight just one example. During my career I attended lots and lots of suicides. Suicides range as the Minister said from quite young people to very old people. In fact it is surprising how many very old people commit suicide. It is surprisingly common in that age group. One trend that followed all the way through in a lot of youth suicides I attended was the suicide victim’s association with cannabis. Yet to try to get toxicology tests done on a body to establish the levels of cannabis in the system—or alcohol for that matter—was quite difficult to achieve because they cost a lot of money. It cost about $1200 per test on body tissue to find out the level of cannabis in the system. What happened of course was that none of the Government agencies was prepared to have that money come out of its bucket. So I look forward to a time when we can get some sort of consensus amongst coroners and those who investigate these sad deaths that those sorts of tests should be done and that it is in the public interest to explore the reasons in and around suicide.