Henare Peeni: Coroners Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Peeni: Coroners Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 07 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11757. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Thank you for this opportunity. I rise in support of my colleague Jacinda Ardern who has just resumed her seat. She has already mentioned that we have a number of Supplementary Order Papers at this particular stage of the bill and we will be talking about them as we go through the amending bill part by part.Part 1—and I want to flesh out a little bit more around that particular select committee hearing. I was a member on the Justice and Electoral Committee which listened to the harrowing tales from whānau who were affected by the tragedy that Jacinda Ardern has just mentioned. The ability to communicate with authorities was difficult. The ability to care for their loved ones at such a desperate time was really quite difficult. To hear those stories to be honest pulled at the heartstrings and drew a bit of a tear for some of the members on the committee because they were hard to hear; they were hard to listen to. But I guess this is the importance of this bill. We need to make sure that we get this right.I do want to make a very brief mention of the inquiry established by the Māori Affairs Committee to look at the way that the Coroners Amendment Bill—and indeed just the overall practice of dealing with and managing tūpāpaku is an important thing for Māori whānau. I think as New Zealand grows we find there is a blend of tikanga Māori customs and probably more Western customs if you like—more Christian customs. So I just wanted to make quick mention of that because I understand that that inquiry is well under way and submissions will be heard soon.Part 1 is around the Chief Coroner’s functions. The Chief Coroner’s main function as in new section 7(1) set out in clause 6 is to “contribute to the integrity and effectiveness of the coronial system provided for by this Act.” My colleague Jacinda Ardern has already mentioned some of those challenges that will be faced that we believe will come out of this particular amendment bill. Some of those are around capacity;some of those are around making sure that there are clear processes in place so that there is a clear and coherent register. We are actually empowering coroners to make sure that they are able to do their job as intended by that particular clause to “contribute to the integrity and effectiveness of the coronial system provided for by this Act.”It says in section 7(1) in clause 6: “(b) overseeing coroners’ investigations by—(i) managing the workloads of coroners;”. I happen to know a couple of coroners who have already mentioned to me on several occasions how stretched they are. There was a particular recent case—a tragedy in my whānau last week. A whānau member passed away tragically on a farm on a Sunday. Sadly just because of the sheer workload and of course the process of the coroner the tūpāpaku or my relative was not released back to the whānau until late Monday evening which made things quite difficult for the whānau. But I think that probably the most difficult thing in that whole process is that whānau are just left out to flounder;they do not know what is going on. They are unable to communicate meaningfully with anyone to make sure that their loved one in the care and possession of the coroner is actually cared for according to our customs—cared for in the way that we would expect anybody to care for those who have departed.The reason I talk about that workload is that further on in section 7(2) the Chief Coroner has the following additional functions that arguably are there to support the Chief Coroner’s main function. It says: “(a) to establish and to help maintain relationships between coroners and other persons carrying out functions or duties within the coronial system:”. I understand that part. That is pretty clear with me. However I think—and we will discuss this later on in the amendment bill—a bit later on it actually defines who some of those people can be and their role in the particular coronial process. It says here: “(b) to help to inform and to achieve consistency in coronial decision making and other coronial conduct (for example by issuing practice notes): (c) to perform the functions of a Head of Bench under the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004 in relation to the exercise by coroners … (d) to help to avoid unnecessary duplication in investigations into deaths by liaising and encouraging co-ordination”.I think that is an important part because throughout the submissions we heard how there seemed to be a breakdown in communication far too often between authorities such as the police the coroner themselves and the hospital or the doctor involved in the particular case in respect of whether or not the point of contact with the whānau was actually the right one or whether or not there were numerous stories being told to different people or the same story being told to different people. We know how often a breakdown in communication occurs when despite hearing the same story people retell it in a different way.So I understand all that and from the outset the provisions look pretty practical. They look like they will be a good way to make sure that the experience families have with the coroner is a good one considering the difficult times. However it gets back to that issue I mentioned earlier around resourcing and capacity actually making sure that we empower coroners to do the right job without forcing more roles and more responsibilities on to them and not supporting them to achieve their function. I think that should be of huge concern to us.Paragraph (e) says: “to set up and maintain a register”—it goes back to what Jacinda Ardern was saying—“which must be publicly available of coroners’ recommendations and comments (or summaries of those recommendations and comments) made after 1 July 2016:” We understand the need for a register. I think that is a pretty good thing; it is common sense and it is pragmatic. It allows people to follow what is going on because unless you have the unfortunate circumstance of losing somebody you would not know what the coroner does and you would not know how the process works or how the system is set up. So I think it is actually quite important that you have a register there.However more importantly it talks about the recommendations and the comments and making sure that they are in a register;you will find that in Supplementary Order Papers 145 and 146 by members on this side of the Committee.And as we debate this bill further throughout the evening you will find that actually we are going to get on to the recommendations from the coroners. It reminds me of the Waitangi Tribunal: coroners do a fantastic job they work considerably hard given they are under-resourced in my opinion they come up with great recommendations and they seem to just fall into the nothingness or into the abyss into the information highway that leaves everybody else behind and nobody actually sees or understands what these recommendations mean and how important they are to a particular industry.We heard some submissions throughout the select committee hearing about the forestry industry and we know the appalling record of health and safety in the forestry industry. Members on this side of the Chamber heard about and spoke to some of the whānau of victims from the forestry industry and we were really really concerned. Well how do we fix this? Are some recommendations or pragmatic steps put in place able to fix this? But it means nothing if once again like the Waitangi Tribunal it is a lion with no teeth.I know my time is coming up short. Clause 7:“In section 9 replace the definition of chief coroner with: chief coroner means the person appointed under section 105 and includes either of the following people while he or she is authorised to act for the chief coroner under section 105A(1) section 105A or 106: (a) the deputy chief coroner: (b) the acting chief coroner”. Given some of the discussions from the coroner who came in front of the select committee I think it is important to have roles of delegation because they talked about how stretched they were. They talked about how it was difficult to actually feel that you could go and have a bit of a break and get the break that you need to make sure that you do your job properly given just the huge workload. In their absence it is important that we have those particular roles delegated.Just in closing my contribution on this particular part we will see that some of the Supplementary Order Papers coming in will make I think some real pragmatic changes to this bill and we will be looking forward to moving on to the next parts.