Smith Murray: Coroners Bill — First Reading 
Smith Murray: Coroners Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18100] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 United Future welcomes the introduction and first reading of the Coroners Bill and we will be supporting it to select committee. I must say that it is one of a number of pieces of legislation that have been hanging around for far too long and I cannot help but reflect on the fact that if the Government spent less time on social engineering legislation and more on substantive law reform the country would be better off. 
In terms of delay I note that in November 2001 Phil Goff told the annual coroners conference that he hoped to have the new legislation in place by “next year”. Now 3 years later we are seeing it introduced with a view to it being passed in about another 6 months. Coroners play an important role in our society and the State’s role in getting involved in the whole area of suspicious deaths is to ascertain as far as possible the cause of all deaths. However it is limited to deaths where there has been some suspicion of foul play homicide or neglect and the role of investigating and determining whether any of those were the case; and secondly looking at dangerous or negligent practices with a view to trying to modify or eliminate the loss of human life. 
The State plays an important role in overseeing those issues and it is quite appropriate that we have a rigorous well-financed and well-resourced Coroners Court so that we can keep on top of those issues. It is notable that it looks only at some deaths under section 4 of the Coroners Act. It is only where there is no known cause an unnatural or violent act suicides where there has been some fault of medical procedure and where deaths have occurred in prison or in a mental hospital. 
There has been extended criticism of the 1988 Act—and the Law Commission in its succession law project carried out in 1995 or 1996 noted the issues and the particular issues of cultural sensitivity were raised. That prompted the commission to issue a discussion paper in 1999 where it identified and recorded a number of concerns in that area which it listed as the procedures for the appointment supervision and removal of coroners; the failure of Government departments to act on coroners’ recommendations; the lack of uniformity of coronial practice throughout New Zealand; the absence of a method for systematic appraisal of coroners’ reports to ensure that patterns of sudden death or factors predisposing to sudden death are identified and accorded an appropriate response. There were a number of factors with regard to the conduct of the office—in particular the insensitive handling of the body and/or body parts by coroners and pathologists despite provisions in the Coroners Act that required coroners to have regard to cultural values or spiritual beliefs; practices that failed to take account of or which conflicted with different cultural values such as leaving the deceased unattended at a mortuary; the failure to inform the family when body parts were removed or samples taken; the absence of a specific provision requiring the return of organs or limbs removed during a post-mortem examination; and the consequent failure in some cases to return a specific body part with the body or to notify the family that a body part had not been returned; and the unnecessary delay in the return of a body and/or body parts. 
There is an irony that the 1988 Act was passed in order to address concerns that the 1951 Act was culturally insensitive particularly with regard to delays and the release of bodies. Clearly parts at least of the reasons for passing the 1988 Act have been unsuccessful and that reflects poorly on the drafting of the 1988 Act. 
The report of the Law Commission which was issued in August 2000 identified a number of concerns that it felt needed to be addressed. I am pleased to see that most of those have been picked up in the bill. The ones that the commission particularly identified were that coroners tended to be the poor relations of the judicial system and that had flow-on consequences obviously with the self-esteem of coroners through to their perception in the public’s eye. Coroners were paid pitifully and were often senior partners whose firms subsidised the State in allowing them to attend to coronial duties. Because of the variable quality of coroners the commission recommended that there should be legally qualified coroners and that the appointment process and criteria ought to be far more specific and that there needed to be ongoing training of coroners. It also recommended a chief coroner who would oversee the process and provide some degree of consistency and would have a duty to inquire into the implementation of recommendations that were made and endeavour to ensure that they were carried through and that there ought to be more diversity of cultural recognition in the appointment of coroners particularly Maori coroners. 
It also recommended that there should be a regionalisation of coronial districts and a reduction of the number of coroners and the appointment of full-time coroners and that salaries ought to be fixed by the Higher Salaries Commission. In that regard I know that clause 100 provides for the Remuneration Authority to make that decision. I guess it will achieve the same ends in terms of raising the standard of pay. The commission recommended that there be no change to the JP role and that is something that has not been implemented in the legislation. Indeed the role of JPs will expire. It recommended that there ought to be an annual report to Parliament. That again is something that is not in this bill. There should be greater involvement by family with regard to the retrieval of body parts and retention of body parts and the retrieval of the body. There should be prior notification by coroners where there will be some adverse comments concerning the dead person or indeed persons who were living so that there was some warning of that and opportunity to comment prior to it becoming public. 
The commission also recommended guidelines as to the publication of suicide details and a national database so that there could be consistency. As I said I am very pleased to see that most of those things have been picked up in this bill and this does appear to be quite a thorough attempt to overhaul the whole coronial process. 
However there are a number of issues that I can see we will have to deal with in the select committee and I am looking forward to that inquiry and the debate that we will have albeit it being relatively dry law as far as the public is concerned. The first one is that whole area of the reporting of details of suicides. Clause 61 does provide a prohibition in terms of that reporting and there has been quite a lot of debate in the media over the last few years as to the extent to which that should happen. Certainly the media—not surprisingly—are against the whole idea of a restriction on the reporting. No doubt they will be making fairly weighty submissions to us to try to free that up. We will have to look at some sort of balance there once we have addressed both sides of the question. 
I note in 1999 the Government released a document  
Suicide and the Media 
as part of the New Zealand youth suicide prevention strategy. I was pleased to see that Canterbury University embarked on some research in March this year to look at how the media had picked up on that and adopted it. No doubt that will also come before the committee and it will be interesting to see the extent to which there has been a voluntary picking up by the media of those suggestions. I note that England Wales and Australia do not have a ban on the reporting of suicides and that may be of some influence to us. 
Other areas include the specialisation of coroners and particularly their relationship with the air accident investigation authority and other similar authorities that have specific jurisdiction in terms of deaths. I know that the latter are a little apprehensive about the idea that coroners will have an overarching jurisdiction that will cover their patch. However at this stage my view is that we do need coroners to have the overall responsibility and that is something we will have to work through. Coroner appointments of lawyers with 5 years’ standing instead of 7 years’ standing in my view sends at this stage the wrong signal that we undervalue coroners. I cannot see any reason why they should be any different from all other judicial appointments because it appears to me that they are very similar to Family Court judges in the sensitivity that they have to apply. 
Just very briefly the whole idea of JPs being excluded and the need for an annual report from coroners I think is important. I picked up Judith Collins’ comment about full-time coroners and whether part-time coroners do provide advantage. There are a number of issues that we will need to deal with. Certainly I look forward to the debate and the discussion we will have in the select committee.