Wilkinson Kate: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
Wilkinson Kate: Coroners Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4669] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 Thank you for allowing me to take the call on Part 3 of the Coroners Bill. I want to say that at this stage there are some issues about what the Minister has said that I will dispute and that will become obvious during my address. 
This part of the bill as has been said deals principally with inquiries into causes and circumstances of death and the conducting of inquests. Basically the coroner has the control and the discretion whether to open inquiries to conduct inquiries to decide on making public any evidence etc. We have heard that the provision that seems to cause the most debate in this part is clause 61 in relation to restrictions on making public the details of suicides. Under the bill nobody can make public the particulars of a self-inflicted death without the consent and authority of the coroner although one can publish the name address and occupation of the person concerned and the fact that the coroner found the death to be self-inflicted. So it is not a blanket prohibition on publishing any details of the person. 
Bob Clarkson 
: What about the dead ones over there? 
KATE WILKINSON 
: Suicide is certainly not a joking matter and it has been called New Zealand’s sad little secret. 
Again I would dispute what the Minister has said because if we look at some of the research we see that according to the  
Dominion Post  
of 4 July 2006 each year about 500 New Zealanders commit suicide and the horrific number of 2500 actually attempt it. In the words of the  
Dominion Post 
 article: “It is time New Zealanders brought that secret into the open. It needs to be treated with at least the same degree of urgency and seriousness that is given to the road toll which kills 100 fewer people each year. The most recent suicide figures available—for 2003 with the delay the result of the time it takes cases to make their way through the coronial court system—paint a grim picture. That year 515 people died by suicide compared with 465 people the year before.” To me that indicates an increasing trend of suicide rather than—as the Minister has alluded—a decreasing trend. 
The report further states: “Three times as many men as women kill themselves. Maori are more likely to kill themselves than non-Maori. Those living in the most deprived areas are more likely to kill themselves than those living in wealthy areas. For women it is the young who are most likely to succeed in committing suicide with 15 to 24-year-olds having the highest rate. For men it is the 25 to 44-year-olds. Those figures”—ashamedly—“put New Zealand’s rate of suicide amongst the worst figures in the developed nations of the OECD.” 
The issue surrounding clause 61 really does concern the safe reporting of suicide by the media. The bill does not preclude that; it merely requires the coroner to make that decision. The bill is not necessarily denying honest open reporting of suicides but it puts a brake on the possibility of glamorising or sensationalising suicide and running the risk of copycat incidents. Again I think we have to be careful about copycat incidents. If we read the Press Council reports—and I appreciate that the Press Council might have a somewhat vested interest—we see that they state that any blanket statements about copycat suicide fail to address two major unresolved issues. 
The council says that blaming the messenger as the direct cause runs counter to the professional health view that suicide has many causes. The major presumption about the simplistic argument that suicide stories lead to suicide is the presumption that the tragic victims actually saw or read such a story and this can hardly be tested. Having said that I want to traverse some of the arguments of the media for which I have some sympathy. But then I also have sympathy for the friends and family of the suicide victim who will be always asking themselves whether there was anything they could have done to prevent the suicide. 
Like my colleague Mr Finlayson I would also like to quote from an editorial in the  
Press 
 whose editor I believe has put some considerable work into this issue. It states: “The justification for them”—the reports on suicides—“is thin and feeble. It is that open honest reporting of suicides would somehow ‘glamorise’ or ‘sensationalise’ them (words that have been used by health professionals in this debate) and thus make it acceptable to impressionable vulnerable people who might be inclined to indulge in copycat practice. The evidence for this is tenuous at best. The effect of the restrictions is in fact to perpetuate antiquated attitudes towards suicide as something shameful a matter to be kept darkly secret and one that New Zealanders can only handle when it is discussed in blandly general terms. These attitudes are not the case any longer in the wider community it is just that the legislation has not yet caught up. An odd anomaly of the restrictions is that they apply only to suicides that occur in New Zealand. Those that occur in other countries can be reported on in the usual straightforward way. No media outlet has any interest in ‘sensationalising’ suicide much less ‘glamorising’ it inadvertently or otherwise. To suggest that candour on the subject would in some way encourage it or make it more acceptable is ludicrous.”—this is according to the  
Press 
—“That is not so in other countries—Australia Canada the United States Britain—and would not be the case here.” 
The issue is a vexed and complex one. It is important and we are appreciative that such deaths—any deaths in fact—are not swept under the carpet that the families can find out what went wrong and that there is absolute transparency so families can have some sort of closure to such tragedies. It is a time of much emotion and the emotional needs of the families must be taken into account as well as the need to ensure proper justice proper transparency and proper processes. I do not think we can highlight enough the importance of the Coroners Bill in this respect. I do not know whether the issue of the reporting of suicide cases will ever be a straightforward one. I do not know whether it will ever be resolved. It is complex; it is vexed. We now have the coroner—who arguably may be the best person to do so—decide whether it is in the best interests of the public and the family that the details of a suicide are published. The coroner does have that discretion although the other argument is the freedom of the press. There may be no easy answer but the Coroners Bill which does put in place a comprehensive system of inquiry and inquest is perhaps an improvement on the old system.