Bishop Chris: Coroners Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Coroners Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1793. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National):It is a pleasure to take a call on this very important bill. It is my first contribution on a justice matter in the House. Can I say it is a very exciting time although quite a sobering piece of legislation. But it is a very important piece of legislation and it is good to see from listening to the debate which I have been doing that it largely has the widespread support of the House I think at first reading because it is important that we discuss the matters at select committee contained within it. I want to limit my remarks a little bit to the suicide reporting measures contained in the bill. This has obviously been a vexed issue in New Zealand society—the issue of the appropriate limits that are placed on the news media in reporting on suicides or self-inflicted deaths. It has obviously been a vexed issue in New Zealand for many years. In some ways the two extremes in the debate can be summed up as this. One side says “Publish everything.” I guess that is the pure libertarian view—that there should be no restrictions placed on the reporting by the news media of suicide or of self-inflicted deaths and that we should have total freedom of speech. Allied to that are arguments about the educative or therapeutic nature of that reporting. Then of course there is a very strong counterargument to that which is that the harm that arises from the reporting of suicides through contagion effect and through copycat suicides outweighs the freedom of speech for media to report that.Working through those two conflicting arguments is obviously difficult and challenging but necessary and I think it was appropriate that the Minister of Justice and the Government referred this issue to the Law Commission because the Law Commission in my view is the appropriate body to work through a sensitive and difficult issue where there are two competing viewpoints and come to some sort of recommendation. I think it is the right body. It is interesting just to note that New Zealand is actually the only jurisdiction—or one of the only jurisdictions in the world—that uses legislative force to prohibit the reporting of suicides. Every other country that the Law Commission could find uses a mixture of education and voluntary guidelines. I for one find that interesting but I do not necessarily think it means it is wrong. It just means that New Zealand uses a slightly different mechanism to say other countries.I think there is widespread acknowledgment that the status quo is not working and that the current measures in the Coroners Act 2006 have been proven to need improvement. The Law Commission in its report outlines a range of failings and a range of things that have gone wrong with that Act. It pointed to the uncertainty in the current law—uncertainty that puzzles or at least confuses in some ways the news media and the general public about what exactly is allowed to be reported. It pointed to the fact that the current law is not actually observed in some cases. The Law Commission study suggests that around 20 percent of the time the law is at least not complied with in some way. That is even in clear breaches of the law.It also pointed to the unevenness of the law so that overseas suicides are allowed to be reported—the example pointed to in the Law Commission report is Marilyn Monroe—but New Zealand - based suicides have a prohibition placed on them. The Law Commission also pointed out that the law has not kept pace with social media. This is another classic example of technology running a little bit ahead of the law—something that we are grappling with in a number of different circumstances. So the Law Commission wisely in my view recommended some changes to the Coroners Act which have been included in this Coroners Amendment Bill.I would like to talk a little bit about the free speech elements of this bill because section 4 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects freedom of speech or freedom of expression and that obviously applies to the news media. But it is trite also to observe that freedom of speech is not an absolute right. I am as I think I said in my maiden speech a strong believer in the importance of freedom of speech. As Justice Anderson as he then was in Hosking v Runting said: “Freedom of expression is the first and last trench in the protection of liberty.” I think that quote for me has always summed up what freedom of speech is all about which is liberty. But it obviously has its limits and this is the issue that we are grappling with today.I went and looked up the legal advice that was provided to the Attorney-General under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Members will be aware of course that the Attorney-General is under obligation under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to report to the House when he finds that a measure is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It was thought for a while that just a prima facie inconsistency in a piece of legislation would require the report to the House by the Attorney-General but I think starting from the outset of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act successive Attorneys-General have taken the view that it requires a report to the House when in the legal advice—or at least in his or her view—not only is there a prima facie inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but where it is an unjustifiable inconsistency and that justification process is actually at the heart of the Act. So we have not had a report in this case from the Attorney-General which suggests obviously that in his mind it is a justifiable limit on section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but I went and looked up the actual legal advice. Since 2003 all the legal advice that goes from either the Crown Law Office or the Ministry of Justice to the Attorney-General has been placed online.I have to say just noting it for the House’s record that I was a little bit disappointed in the analysis in the legal opinion provided to the Attorney-General. In my view it was quite a cursory analysis and it did not fully engage in that very important justification process that the Attorney-General is required to undertake. That justification analysis is in some ways actually contained in the actual Law Commission report which in some ways is the genesis of this legislation. So it was slightly disappointing to see a very cursory—I would not go so far as to say glib but somewhat cursory—analysis within the legal advice. The officials simply said that they have found this to be a justified measure and there is not a huge amount of analysis or substantive detailing of why that is.That is a little bit disappointing but if members go to the Law Commission report they will find some substantive analysis as to why the measures the Law Commission is recommending are a justified limit on freedom of speech. There the Law Commission goes through whether or not this is a significant and important objective and whether or not the limit that is placed on the freedom of expression is a rational and proportional limit. Those words are very familiar to me from my law school days doing New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis. I think they come from the Moonen test later revised to R v Hansen—things that I thought I would not have to think about again but now I fortuitously find myself in this very privileged position.I think it is obvious that trying to prevent harm from suicide reporting is a significant objective and it is an important objective and the question then is whether or not the limits that are proposed in this legislation which are very narrow limits are rational and proportional. The evidence that the Law Commission points to suggests that that is the case. The Law Commission points to the fact that “The evidence is irrefutable that some forms of reporting are strongly associated with a risk of further suicides.” and it points to the fact that “There is some evidence of a causal link between some forms of reporting and subsequent suicide …”. There is a huge amount of detail in the Law Commission report and in the appendices which I commend to members. In my view the recommendations from the Law Commission that are enacted in this legislation are appropriate and they are wise and the select committee is the appropriate place to consider any further refinements to those proposals if they are required. I commend this bill to the House.