Sage Eugenie: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1791. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe. I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party on the Coroners Amendment Bill. As the Minister has noted the aims of the bill are to improve the accountability and transparency of the coronial system and its efficiency and timeliness. As David Clendon has noted we endorse the bill and will be supporting it. It is important to put families at the centre of the coronial system and some of the changes will help do that.It is really important to safeguard the independence of coroners and as other speakers have noted we also want to ensure that they are adequately resourced. The coronial system has dealt with some major inquiries: the Pike River mine disaster the Christchurch earthquakes and the collapse of the CTV Building and it has done that on a limited budget of $17 million annually. Improving efficiency and timeliness may have more to do with increasing resources rather than changing the law.The issue around the independence of coroners is important. They act in different ways and it is important that the public can be confident in their impartiality and independence. We welcome the provisions in the bill that improve the transparency around the appointment process and around dealing with conflicts of interest. Submissions on those provisions that seek to clarify the coroner’s role and claim to reduce the duplication with other agencies will be very important to determine whether there has been any attempt to just by the way the law is drafted constrain the independence of coroners.We are very interested in submissions because as the regulatory impact statement noted the bill has been prepared after consultation with key stakeholders but not with full public consultation which the department said would have been desirable and that was not done because of the time frames that the Minister imposed.In the brief time remaining I would like to comment on the provisions around suicide reporting. There are over 500 self-inflicted deaths in New Zealand each year which is far higher than the road toll. All of those deaths are desperately sad for families and friends. Most escape public notice but some do attract significant media attention. New Zealand is quite unique in the way it deals with reporting self-inflicted deaths. We are the only country that uses the law to restrict reporting and for more than 50 years our law has had restrictions on reporting the method of self-inflicted deaths. There is certainly no restriction on the reporting of the problem of suicide in general and I endorse the comments of Jono Naylor that there is sometimes a bit of confusion there and there is certainly no restriction on that.The whole issue of constraining the reporting on the method of death has been because of a desire to avoid an inquest by media before the coroner in his or her judicial role has been able to rule on the cause of death and because there has been a number of studies as the Law Commission noted that show that reporting the method of a suicide has significant imitative effect on subsequent suicides especially when the victim is a celebrity and when people identify with the age and sex of the victim. It is particularly young people and people experiencing depression who are vulnerable here.Those restrictions have a strong purpose in preventing social harm but there has been a widespread recognition through the review that the ministry did in 2012 and the very insightful report of the Law Commission that the current law is not working or is working inadequately. There is uncertainty about the meaning of the law. It is uneven in its application. It does not apply to deaths overseas but it does apply in New Zealand and because of social media and changes in technology there has not been a lot of compliance with the existing law. So it is very timely that we have this bill and we in the Green Party will be very interested in submissions as to whether the way it is drafted actually improves the situation and gives more clarity around the restrictions on media publishing the details of the method of death. Thank you.