Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you Mr Speaker. I start by acknowledging the Minister for Courts the Hon Rino Tirikatene in his new role. He is known to be a member of integrity. He's a former lawyer. I don't wish to contradict myself but he is nevertheless a man of integrity; he is respected across the House. I think in this role he's receiving somewhat of a hospital pass. The court system is well known to be in dire straits including in the coronial space. To the extent that the Government is making moves that may alleviate that with this bill we will support it. We do support it we supported it at first reading we were a constructive participant at the select committee process if I may say so and are for the remainder of the passage of this bill which will no doubt take place over a relatively short period of time being in urgency as we now are. But I would be remiss if I didn't record our view on the place of the bill within the overall context of what's happening in the coroner system and the court system in general and also just highlight that one issue on which we differ from the Government's view about what the bill can and should do. So as the Minister has acknowledged and I think in his own words as closely as I can paraphrase or recall the coronial system is struggling to keep up with the number of cases that is going through it at the moment. It's not the place within this debate—I'm sure you'd pull me out pretty quickly Mr Speaker if I were to rehearse some arguments for ways that resources can be freed up elsewhere to apply to the coronial system—but it is at least useful to some extent that what the bill is going to do to try and alleviate that pressure is to have a few more participants involved—not coroners exactly but coronial associates and the Minister's mentioned the fact that we want that role to be aligned as nearly as possible with the role of a coroner proper. And he's mentioned some of the ways in which the bill would do that.The way that the bill achieves these things is actually relatively straightforward although I think it's worth noting that the National Party agreed with the Government members on the Justice Committee that clarification was needed on that question of unascertained natural causes. And of course we don't want to have a situation where it's suggested or believed that the coroner won't be—well where there'll be ambiguity in the case of deaths findings being ambiguous as to whether it was natural or not natural.So as the Minister has said and if I can express it slightly differently—I think it's a question of syntax—we are saying that there are deaths that we know are natural notwithstanding that we haven't ascertained and don't need to ascertain the exact nature of the natural cause rather than to say that the qualifiers unascertained and natural are somehow in conflict. I've probably made it less clear not more but for what it's worth you know just to shortcut all that we do agree with the position that the select committee as a whole took and as the Minister has expressed it tonight. The only matter on which we weren't in agreement was to do with this issue again as acknowledged by the Minister of whether it is in the public interest to have the circumstances of a death recorded and reported by a coroner. We understand and agree with the need to expedite the process in the system more generally but we think this is looking in the wrong place to achieve such time and resource savings. We think that for the coroner in a single specific instance to decide whether the circumstances of a death are significant in the way that would meet a public interest threshold then he or she would need to know whether there were other similar circumstances leading to other deaths elsewhere in the system before—maybe yet to come—and as handled by other coroners or coronial associates. So we don't think that's a judgment as to public interest that any individual coroner in any individual case can or should make. We will propose at the committee of the whole House stage a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect. We don't suppose it will be supported by the committee. Nevertheless we will continue to support the bill but we did want to place on record our belief that that's an unnecessary amendment to the coronial regime that this bill is making. So with those pretty general remarks—but otherwise we are saying that we concur with the report of the select committee we thank those who were involved in that process and we continue at this the second reading to commend the bill to the House.