Worth Richard: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:2972] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 This is important legislation by any standard. I stand on behalf of the National Party to make comments in respect of Part 1. In terms of the typical structure adopted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office this part contains a number of general provisions of an overview nature. 
For me the starting point is certainly the purpose of the Act which is to help to prevent deaths and it is stated to promote justice through the investigation and identification of the causes and circumstances of sudden or unexplained deaths. As was made clear at the second reading the office of the coroner has a substantial and significant history. In fact the office of the coroner was established in 1194 with a primary responsibility related to protecting the fiscal position of the Crown. Those are issues that perhaps need not detain us here. 
In this part we see not only the purpose of the Act but also the identified role of the coroners which is set out in clause 4. The role is not singularly isolated in the way that the purpose of the Act might suggest because the coroner has a range of roles. These can in part be serially described as: receiving a report of a death from the New Zealand Police; making a judgment by way of decision as to whether to direct a post-mortem and if one is directed determining whether to authorise certain people other than the pathologist to attend; issues relating to the release of the body; decisions as to whether to open an inquiry and if an inquiry is to be conducted the conduct of the inquiry; and finally issues relating to report and recommendation. 
It is interesting to see what is happening in other countries—in particular what is happening in the United Kingdom. In that jurisdiction we are seeing almost parallel provisions to what we see in this legislation—a tightening up in terms of the professionalism required of coroners which is affirmation I think that legal qualifications which are so much admired these days in the community are an intrinsic and important part of the process. 
That is not to say that this legislation is not to be criticised. It represents the best efforts of the Government propped up by a strong Justice and Electoral Committee which has made a number of changes. Indeed there are more changes; sadly as is so often the case we see here at the last moment a raft of changes because the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker who is with us tonight has detected a number of errors that his officials have made. I often think it is a pity that the Minister does not carefully review legislation at the outset and pick up the errors that his officials have made. Instead he apparently prefers to leave it to the end when with eagle eye he can cast his eye across the bill to determine what he perceives to be appropriate gaps to fill. Certainly it is the case in respect of Supplementary Order Paper 32 that there are some gaps to fill. 
In later opportunities that may be available to talk about the detail of the bill there are specific aspects that I will seek to target. I indicate in advance that some of the significant issues relating to this legislation quite clearly deal with the circumstance whereby body parts are taken and held for the purposes of investigation. There is a subtlety in the legislation between bodily samples and body parts. I will not deal with that in any greater detail other than to say that quite clearly when a corpse has been interred or cremated it is a sadness for the family some weeks later to receive vials of material in the post that contain particular specimens of the deceased. As is so often the case when the period of grieving is over the family must confront the task of knowing what to do with those vials of extraneous material be they body samples or body parts. That is an issue that the select committee sought to address and did.