Hutchison Paul: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4605] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to speak on Part 2 of this Coroners Bill which National is supporting. Unfortunately the Labour member opposite who has just spoken Lynne Pillay seemed to go a little astray as to which part she was addressing. Part 2 certainly deals with deaths to be reported and post-mortems and I am grateful to my colleague Chris Finlayson for being a Latin scholar and pointing out that the correct term is post-mortes. 
This part of the bill is particularly important in the historical context of informed consent because this country has gone through some very important inquiries where unfortunately the lessons were not learnt initially. I am of course referring to the National Women’s Hospital cervical cancer inquiry where the issue was around informed consent. The inquiry really revolutionised the practice of medicine to ensure there was a thorough process of gaining informed consent. 
Unfortunately following that inquiry came the Gisborne Cervical Screening Inquiry and after that the Green Lane Hospital heart library episode which resulted—[ 
Interruption 
] I am sorry; there was an interjection from across the Chamber? The Green Lane Hospital heart library episode was particularly important. A group of health workers and clinicians had totally altruistic aims of collecting body parts to be used for learning and for improving techniques—indeed that is exactly what happened. Unfortunately despite the previous inquiry they had not been thorough in their informed consent processes. So it is particularly worthwhile to see in Part 2 the extremely thorough informed consent processes relating to post-mortems and particularly to body parts and bodily samples. 
If I may digress for one moment I want to acknowledge the work of the Auckland coroners Dr Murray Jamieson and Sarn Herdson who have been full-time coroners there over the last 4 years. They reported in their submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee that since 2001 the number of coronial files opened and post-mortems carried out in Auckland has fallen by 30 percent despite the fact that the Auckland population has increased substantially. They point to three major reasons for this. One is changes to the Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act which widened registered medical practitioner powers in respect of issuing medical certificates and stating causes of death. The second is the availability of one of the coroners from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. 365 days a year. That is quite an incredible service. In fact the service begins even earlier; police officers gather at the mortuary at 5.30 a.m. and call through to the coroners themselves at 6.45 a.m. This enables the coroners to discuss deaths with doctors police officers and families which results in much more complete understanding and information transfer than previously. The third reason they point to is that the education processes put in place for medical students medical practitioners police officers and the general public have generally been enhanced. Those three reasons together have meant that there has been a 30 percent decrease in post-mortems in the area under the Coroners Act. That has been a very important contribution. 
The Auckland coroners have also been responsible for supporting the whanau facility which is available to all although it is used mainly by Maori whanau. It is also used by Pacific Island families and members of the Jewish and Muslim faiths. It provides for an early-release scheme such that a body can be returned to a family within hours of its arrival. That too is an incredibly important change from a situation where bodies could remain for days and even weeks to the huge distress of the family. 
To finish the other point the Auckland coroners’ submission makes relates to clause 44 and to the retention and return of body parts or bodily samples. The Auckland coroners although they agreed with the general intent of clause 44 felt that the proposal: “A part or sample retained under section 43(2)(a) or (b) or (c) must be returned … ” was problematic. The reason was that usually these samples are very tiny—minute in fact—and can be used much later for either chemical biological toxicological or genetic analysis. If retained such remnants might be quite valuable to the family later on. 
So it is pleasing to see that this part has on the one hand detailed very carefully the informed consent procedures and on the other hand allowed the technical ability if the family agrees for bodily samples to be retained so that they may be used later on.