Little Andrew: Coroners Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Coroners Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7403. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I take a call on this the Coroners Amendment Bill because of my experience in representing the families of dead workers in coronial inquiries. I just note by way of summary what a missed opportunity this is to do something long overdue but also very important to the powers of coroners and the conduct of coroners’ inquests. Coroners occupy a very special place in the panoply of judicial inquiries into deaths. For many families of loved ones who have died suddenly or in an otherwise unexplained way this is the opportunity to at least get to the bottom of what has happened and get some sort of truth.Coroner’s courts are almost entirely dependent on the investigation that the police conduct around the sudden or unexplained death. The bulk of the evidence that goes before coronial inquests comes from the police. But every now and again family members want to bring their own evidence or other parties to the inquest want to bring their own evidence and that is very important. But the reason they do that is they want the coroner not only to make a thoroughgoing inquiry and get to the truth of the matter behind the death but often to make some recommendations that will either help others—whether it is a workplace death in the same industry; or a traffic death to help other drivers; or a death that has been particularly distressing to help other families who may at some point in the future go through the same thing.But what has happened to this bill having been through the Justice and Electoral Committee is that the opportunity to give coroners and coroner’s courts the opportunity to come up with recommendations and make them powerful and binding—that opportunity has been passed up and that is extraordinarily disappointing. So when the previous speaker Jacqui Dean expresses her disappointment that Labour cannot find itself able to support this bill there is a very good reason and that is that for those for whom the coroner’s inquiry is the last port of call to understand what has happened to their loved one or their workmate or their friend denying a coroner the opportunity to make a binding recommendation to require follow-through on their recommendation—a recommendation that the coroner generally believes will either prevent future deaths of a similar nature or help others—is what is more disappointing. That is where the Government has failed. It could have made that change but it has not.I think the obvious question arises as to what the point is of allowing coroners—as it will under this bill if it is passed in its current form—to make some sort of recommendation if there is no power to require those to whom it is made to have to comply with it or at least account for whether or not they fulfilled it or have not fulfilled it and to explain why. When we look at clause 30 inserting new sections 57A and 57B we see that what has happened is the power to make recommendations has actually now been further restricted. The coroner has to meet this test that any recommendation has to be accompanied by an explanation of how the recommendation or comment if drawn to the public attention reduces the chances of further deaths occurring in similar circumstances. Well you cannot guarantee that. No one can be sure about that. A coroner may well come across a circumstance or a factor that is very important; it may not reduce deaths in that particular circumstance but it may reduce the possibility of deaths in comparable or similar or even other circumstances. Why should they be deprived of making a recommendation in that regard? That is why this starts to look like a kind of a clamping down on coroners who sometimes can make recommendations that are irritating to Governments. If that is the basis on which this power the power to make recommendations and comments has been restricted by this Government then it reflects very poorly on it.I think of one very important recent coroner’s inquiry and I refer to it because it meets the description I talked about before of the last port of call for people who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to explore and investigate the deaths of their loved ones. That is the coroner’s inquiry into the deaths of the eight people who survived the initial collapse of the CTV Building in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake but who died during the course of the rescue operation and before they could be rescued—because what is pretty apparent to those families is that the conduct of that recovery and rescue operation was a shambles and may well have been the cause of those deaths.The Government has refused to conduct a commission of inquiry into exactly what happened during the course of that rescue and recovery effort. It simply would not allow it to happen. It did not want to expose the authorities involved to that examination and that inquiry. The only recourse the families had was to the coroner’s inquest. The coroner did his level best and the coroner made some recommendations but of course they do not mean anything because there is no power to enforce them.There is no power under the current law to require any organisation to which or about which a recommendation is made to follow through or to comply with that recommendation. That glaring gap which we know is there now has not been repaired by this bill and it could have been. That is the disappointing thing. So I urge this House as we go through the remaining stages of this bill—we will get to the Committee stage and we will put up some Supplementary Order Papers—to think very carefully about having a coroner’s inquiry and a coroner’s court that can do the job that people demand of it: to get to the bottom of why particular deaths happen and to make effective and binding recommendations as a result.The coroner’s court is one of the oldest sorts of courts of judicial inquiries we have. It goes back to medieval times. It used to be a part of the church because the church wanted to be sure that the body that was going to be buried in the church cemetery had not arrived there as a consequence of evil purposes. It had to be established for death that could not be explained that the death could be explained and that it was right and proper that the person be interred in the local cemetery of the local village church. That is the origin of it.It has come of course in the modern world to acquire a more important significance and is now seen as part of our judicial system which is why it is judicial officers who conduct the inquiries. That is largely because we do want to get to the bottom of the facts and when there is conflicting information we want to make sure those conflicts are resolved—but also when there are recommendations or comments to be made that could prevent other deaths that those comments are then on the public record. That has been the case for a long time but where we have not succeeded is in ensuring that those recommendations are followed through and are made meaningful.I will just conclude by urging the House to make sure that as we continue the passage of this legislation we understand what it is that the loved ones of those who die in difficult circumstances want to know: that the background and the nature and the cause of the death is understood and that it can be prevented. In the case of suicides coroners need to be able to make recommendations particularly to authorities. They may be about better recording or reporting they may be to the local district health board about better treatment and they may be about the management of staff. Why should they not make those recommendations? Why should the authorities about whom coroners make those recommendations not be required to demonstrate to the public—and at the very least to the family whose loved one’s death has been inquired into—that those recommendations have been heard and have been either made good or very good reasons for why they cannot be followed through have been made clear to the public and the community?