Tanczos Nandor: Coroners Bill — Second Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Coroners Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2670] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I like previous speakers rise to support the Coroners Bill although I do so on behalf of the Green Party. We support the bill because it is a good piece of legislation. When the bill was introduced into the House I spoke in the first reading debate about the many positive aspects of it. The process of the bill going through the Justice and Electoral Committee where all the political parties worked in a very cooperative and constructive manner has strengthened the bill and made it better. It is a good example of how this House can at times grapple with important issues. It is not the hottest topic on the political agenda but it is extremely important to those who are affected because these issues are enormously sensitive. So the bill is a very good example of how members of this House can work together on these important issues. 
There have been numerous criticisms of coroners in the past. Some coroners have worked extremely well and some I think it is fair to say have been lacking. We heard some of those issues raised at the select committee and members will have heard about them out among the public as well. During the select committee hearings I became more convinced that the bill was important was needed and was an effective way to address a number of those problems. In particular establishing coroners as a professional body whose members are primarily full-time and that has a proper structure and oversight means that many of the problems that have been identified in the past can be tidied up. There is some possibility of making a formal complaint and addressing problems that exist. 
One of things the bill does is start to rectify some of the power imbalance that has existed in the past. Clause 30 “Criteria for decision whether to direct post-mortem” is important stuff. For the family of a deceased person the idea that their loved one will go through a post-mortem is quite a traumatic prospect. So there have to be very clear guidelines around the basis of the decision as to whether a post-mortem will happen. It is good to see those things laid out like that in the bill as well as there being the right to object to a post-mortem. 
I regret that one of the issues I would have liked to see addressed at the select committee was not picked up and that was in relation to who may attend the post-mortem. Clause 36(1)(d) talks about among a number of other people “a doctor nurse or funeral director attending as the representative of the family of the person …”. Although it is good to have that provision there one of my concerns is that it does not necessarily pick up all the people who may have a good reason to attend the post-mortem. In particular I think about people who may represent the family and are not a registered doctor a nurse or a funeral director but who are versed in issues around dead bodies. I understand that in Maori culture there are people whose specialist knowledge is in dealing with the deceased. I know that is true in other cultures as well and I would have liked to see the select committee recognise that through some explicit mention in the bill. Unfortunately that did not happen but those people are still covered in paragraph (h): “any other person if authorised …”. So although there is no specific mention of those people there is still some provision for that to occur. 
A couple of issues in the recommendations of the committee are particularly worth highlighting. One of them is around the issue of body parts and bodily samples. Committee members heard from people who talked about the very real sensitivities around bodily samples as opposed to body parts. We all understand what body parts will be. Bodily samples are minute samples. Often a thin sliver of tissue is taken for some kind of analysis and it may be held for some time. The committee heard that sometimes returning those very small samples—less than matchbox size—to families some time after they have buried their family member can be enormously distressful and can be a real issue for people. 
There may be quite important public health reasons for retaining some of those samples for further analysis. Of course in those kinds of circumstances the family must always retain the right to have that sample returned but it seemed to the committee that there was value in making a distinction between body parts and bodily samples. Body parts will always be returned to the family unless the coroner directs that they should be retained for a very specific purpose and very clear parameters as to what that purpose can be are set out in the bill. Bodily samples are somewhat different because of the reasons I have mentioned. The family can always request that they be returned but we thought it was useful to make a distinction between how those were treated in the legislation and that has been done in clause 43. 
The issue of the reporting of self-inflicted deaths has been mentioned at some length by Mr Finlayson. It was something that exercised the minds of committee members to some degree and for some time. It is a sensitive issue and we heard fairly strong submissions from media representatives in particular about the public interest in the reporting of suicide. I think there is a good case to be made in that we have an extremely high suicide rate in this country and I think there is good argument to say we need a more informed and deeper public debate around those issues. The committee took that issue very seriously but we had to balance it against other considerations. In particular there are the sensitivities of families who are already going through a highly traumatic time. The details of the self-inflicted death of a family member being splashed in the media in some way is something that none of us would want to see done gratuitously. 
Another issue of course is the risk of increasing suicide. Although a bit of work still needs to be done on some of the evidence the select committee was presented with reasonably strong evidence that the reporting of suicides can in some circumstances increase the incidence of suicide. It can lead to copycat methodology which does not necessarily increase the number of suicides but may increase the number of a certain type of suicide. There is some evidence that the net amount of suicide can also be affected by media reporting. Nobody would want that to be a consequence of a decision made by the House. The select committee considered those matters very carefully. 
When one works through the issues one sees that the bill strikes a reasonable balance. Only very restricted reporting is allowed before an inquiry has been completed and the bill provides that once the coroner has found a death to be self-inflicted no person may without the coroner’s authority make public the particulars of the death other than the person’s name address and occupation and the fact that the death has been found to be self-inflicted. That is highly restrictive but the coroner may give authority for publication of other details. The only ground on which the coroner may do so is that the making public of particulars of that kind would be unlikely to be detrimental to public safety. That is quite a good provision because if there is evidence that certain kinds of information are not likely to be harmful to the public good then the coroner can authorise the publication of that information. Because of the way the provision is worded the coroner can also take into account family sensitivity. That is important. The information can be published but only if it is not likely to be detrimental. 
The committee having grappled with the issue at some length—and I share many of Mr Finlayson’s concerns around it—stuck with the bill pretty much as it was drafted. That is not a bad place to end up. When we think of the issue of text bullying we see an excellent example of the leeway the media already have to report the issue of suicide. The media played a very responsible role and engaged in that debate in an informative and responsible manner within the confines of the current legislation. That indicated to the committee that even under current restrictions there is some leeway to have that public debate and that has to be the purpose of allowing media reporting. It seemed that maybe the kinds of changes the media were asking for were not necessarily vital in order to allow that public debate to take place.