Ngaro Alfred: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1797. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National):Kia orana tātou katoatoa. E te ora matoa o te atua. Louisa Wall can I just commend you for expressing what I think is something that is universally accepted throughout the House: that the essence of this bill is important and that it is going to the select committee. I am sure that as my colleague Chris Bishop said we would welcome you. I acknowledge your experiences. I know you and we have had some experience of working together in the community. I know that your connections especially to youth have become really important. So I am sure that there will be a number of others but I particularly want to encourage your contribution which I think will be important in ensuring that we have good law. That is what this is about. This is a bill that needs us to make a good law that helps our communities that are in need of this bill.This is the Coroners Amendment Bill. My remarks I will preface firstly by saying that this bill will be important for me being a member of Parliament and in my fourth year. This will be one of those bills that I would regard as being important because some 6 years ago when I was in the community and on a board of trustees of a local high school within the space of a month two young girls took their lives tragically. One of them was even close to my youngest son—she was one of his best friends. The impact that that had not only on the family but on the community was one that I imagine—often the talk is that at that time in a sense of hopelessness and despair the person feels that in order to remove the pain of the burden it may be easier to take their life. Yet out of that there has been a lot of tragedy and pain and I know that many families around our country have experienced that. So it behoves us to do a good job with this bill to ensure that the role of the coroner is important.I want to pick up on the aspect that the role of the coroner becomes important in this situation because it is also about ensuring that the information gets out. We know that on average most reports take around about 400 days and then at the same time too if there is another inquest it then increases to about 700 days on average. But in most cases it does take a long time. And we know that when that process is prolonged it prolongs the grieving of families who are struggling to find answers to the reasons why. And that is one of the tragedies that happens that people are constantly in this mode of inquiry saying: “So why did this happen to us? Why did this person in this situation take their life so tragically?”. And so we know that it is important to reduce that time. To have at least some understanding is an important part of the grieving process and for people being able to work through their trauma into some form of healing and restore family life. And so we believe that that is important.We knew that the bill when it came out in 2006 was important. It changed the coronial system. But at the same time two key stakeholders were not included. We know that pathologists and also funeral directors had an important contribution along with other families. Hence part of the Law Commission’s recommendations is for us to amend this Act. It was only in 2006 that this legislation was enacted and received the Royal assent and yet we know now that it is time to continue to improve this legislation in the roles that it plays. I want to cover just some of the recommendations that we believe are also going to be important in achieving this. I want to cover a couple of things too while we talk about that—some of the other contributions that I think are happening right across Parliament at the moment.Cyber-bullying is another part of the intimidation and bullying that happen. We know that the Harmful Digital Communications Bill which is now being processed is another important bill. Some of the surveying and research have shown that one in 10 New Zealanders experiences cyber-bullying. We have seen the impact of this especially on our young people and again the contribution that that makes. It is important that we take this into consideration. We know that cyber-bullying increases from the ages of 19 to 29; it almost doubles. So that is another form of bullying that is out in our communities. We believe that the Harmful Digital Communications Bill is an important contribution to addressing this issue as well.In regard to the parts of the bill that were covered by Louisa and were mentioned by her around the mandatory responses there has been a lot of talk about this and the importance of this in other jurisdictions—that there is a mandatory requirement for agencies and organisations to be able to respond. I suppose that throughout the submission process we will hear some of those views. What we already know is that there is no one-size-fits-all. We need to be mindful of the fact that where there is a tragedy and a trauma that has happened in a situation it is not as simple as just saying: “Well we need to remedy this by certain changes whether they be physical or operational.” There may be other areas and demands that may be there. So I think that what we will do during the submission process is that we will hear what those issues are at this point in time. But I think it is something that we are taking into consideration—whether we do make a mandatory response. And again we need to be mindful of the range of organisations—whether they be from schools or from other bodies sports clubs and so forth—where some of these tragedies may happen as well.We know that in improving the coronial system though some of the changes are small they do contribute to improving public safety reducing unnecessary deaths and speeding up the coronial system to make these changes easier on the grieving families. So the question I suppose is why we are making changes to the coroners’ recommendation-making powers. Coroners’ recommendations are an important way to learn from a death and hopefully prevent similar deaths in the future and I think that is the important aspect. Many New Zealanders do not realise in a sense the role that the coroner plays and especially in a sense the usefulness of that information to all those services that are out there supporting whether it be NGOs with counsellors and social workers and youth workers whether it be the police who often have to triage a tragic situation when they are met with this tragedy and trauma whether it be the other support services victim support services that are wrap around. There are a number of different services I think and key stakeholders that need to fit into this. So that is the reason that extending those powers becomes important for improving the system as well.The other thing is that while we are doing that we are improving public safety. We know that the coroners’ recommendations are sometimes criticised for not being relevant to the particular deaths that they are investigating or for not taking expert evidence into account. We believe that the proposed changes will focus the recommendations on the facts and circumstances of the death in front of the coroner and will involve individuals and organisations such as Government departments at an earlier stage and will ensure that relevant people contribute to the evidence and help develop robust and workable recommendations.I also like Louisa Wall want to commend the Hon Chester Borrows. I know that some of the work that was done around the Suicide Prevention Action Plan—and I was actively involved in some of that in our communities—was critical and was important. We know that it was all-encompassing—the contribution that was made to preventing suicide deaths in our communities. I think that work will go a long way in focusing our efforts on reducing suicide and putting better support in place as well. As part of the Justice and Electoral Committee I look forward to the submissions and to hearing from the committee. We do encourage as many as possible of those who are involved in our community providing necessary support and services to take the time to submit to the select committee just to ensure that we have covered all the necessary aspects of this bill so that it is a good bill and does empower the coroners in their role and responsibility. But at the same time too at the end of the day this bill is also focused on the families in our communities just to ensure that they have adequate information and that support services are able to operate efficiently effectively and in a timely manner to be able to address these issues. I want to commend this bill to the House. I look forward to the work in the select committee. I commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.