Coroners Amendment Bill

I move, That the Coroners Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The bill improves the coronial system by making it more efficient and more responsive to the needs of grieving families. The coroner’s role is to establish the cause and the circumstances of a death, and to identify any lessons that can be drawn to prevent similar future deaths. In that role, coroners have been said to speak for the dead, to protect the living.

Coroners work with families when they are traumatised and vulnerable, and they do so with professionalism and sensitivity, as part of a coronial system that operates throughout New Zealand 24 hours a day. Our Chief Coroner, 16 coroners, and those who support them are well-respected participants in our legal system. Having myself experienced the death of a loved one where the coronial system was involved, I know that no one wants official processes associated with these deaths taking any longer than they need to.

The bill makes a range of amendments to the Coroners Act 2006 to ensure that coronial processes are more efficient, that bodies are returned to families as soon as possible, and that inquiries and inquests proceed without delays and duplication. Around 5,700 deaths are reported to coroners every year. Coroners accept jurisdiction in around 3,200 of these deaths. This tells us that there is a degree of unnecessary reporting, and that there is uncertainty about reporting obligations amongst those who must report deaths. The bill clarifies the requirements for reporting deaths to coroners, such as deaths that occur during medical procedures. The bill provides that such deaths have to be reported only if they would not reasonably have been expected by a medical practitioner competent to perform the procedure who was familiar with the deceased’s medical condition before the procedure began. The bill also clarifies and reduces the need to report deaths where it is unlikely that a coronial investigation will contribute to determining the cause and circumstance. This includes where historic remains are discovered, or when a body is returned to New Zealand following an overseas investigation.

Once a death has been reported and a coroner has accepted jurisdiction, the usual step is for the coroner to direct a pathologist to perform a post-mortem. New Zealand has a very high rate of coronial post-mortems, at about 90 percent. By comparison, in Victoria, which is a jurisdiction to which we look for examples of good practice, the rate is only about 50 percent. Post-mortems are costly, raise cultural and religious issues for some families, and delay the release of bodies back to loved ones. That is why this bill enables preliminary inspections of bodies using medical-imaging technology to ensure that unnecessary post-mortems are avoided.

At this point, I would like to acknowledge the pathologists who support the coronial system by performing both post-mortems and, soon, preliminary inspections. Their work provides crucial scientific evidence to coroners, who in New Zealand are lawyers, not medical experts.

The bill also formally recognises forensic dentists, who play a crucial role in identifying bodies in mass casualty situations, as they did so commendably after the February 2011 Canterbury earthquake.

The Coroners Act currently requires coroners to investigate certain deaths regardless of the circumstances, including deaths that occur while the deceased was in official care or custody. Mandatory public inquests are held into such deaths, even if they were plainly due to natural causes and the facts would not have warranted an inquest. Most deaths in official care or custody, once investigated, turn out to have been from natural causes. The bill restores the discretion of coroners as independent judicial officers to decide whether such deaths require the cost and time of an inquest, or whether an inquiry on the papers is sufficient. Importantly, those with an interest in the death, including family members, will be able to ask the coroner to hold an inquest if one is necessary.

The bill provides that coroners should not investigate the deaths of New Zealand Defence Force personnel occurring overseas as a result of hostile action unless the Attorney-General directs them to. Coroners have not traditionally investigated such deaths. Quite apart from the potential for such investigations to stray into matters of both national security and tactical decision-making in the heat of battle, coroners are not well placed to inquire into military deaths on distant battlefields. Where investigations are needed they will occur. There will also be the option of using the court of inquiry process established by the Armed Forces Discipline Act. As I pointed out in my second reading speech, the requirement for the Attorney-General’s direction is modelled on the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act, which govern deaths in New Zealand of foreign service people.

Turning to the coroner’s recommendations, the bill does not require agencies that received them to respond to them, although I note that the evidence shows that most agencies already do so voluntarily. Such requirements are not common internationally, although some comparable jurisdictions require only Government agencies to respond. I do not consider that there is a good case for mandatory responses, especially as it is clear that agencies, both public and private, take coroner’s recommendations very seriously and respond to them if they can.

The bill also implements changes to make coroner’s recommendations more relevant, more closely linked to the evidence before the coroner, and better targeted at those with the ability and responsibility to implement them. The bill requires coroners to consult with the intended recipients of recommendations before finalising them, increasing the likelihood that the recommendations will be relevant, realistic, and implementable.

The bill deals with the difficult topic of suicides and their reporting in the media, including discussions by ordinary New Zealanders on social media. As we know, New Zealand has a tragically high rate of suicide, especially among our youth. Our country is also unique in restricting the publication of certain details of suicides in the media. This is based on the well-established evidence that certain kinds of media reporting of suicides can spur further suicides. I acknowledge concerns that the restrictions limit the right to freedom of expression that is enshrined in our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I believe that this is a justified limitation, especially in light of the overseas experience of the kind of media reporting that can occur in the absence of restrictions. My officials have highlighted a recent example of media reporting of a 13-year-old schoolgirl’s tragic suicide in the UK. The reporting was not sensational and it appeared in a respected British broadsheet, but none the less there were detailed descriptions of the circumstances and the method as well as a prominent photograph of the site where the suicide occurred, which itself left no doubt as to the method. This is the kind of reporting that serves no purpose, and which the bill seeks to limit.

The bill clarifies and eases the current restrictions by focusing on preventing reporting of details that are most likely to spur copycat behaviour, these being the method and anything that implies the method. Media will, however, no longer need to use euphemisms such as “no suspicious circumstances”. They will be able to describe a suspected suicide as such, if the facts support this, before the coroner has made any finding. These changes will help foster responsible discussion and reporting of suicides by both the traditional media and the wider community, before and after any coronial investigation.

The bill reflects the outcomes of the Ministry of Justice’s review of the Coroner’s Act, which was completed by my predecessor as the Minister for Courts, the Hon Chester Borrows. The review found that the principal Act and the major reforms that it instituted were generally working well, overall. I want to acknowledge the work of my predecessor, the Justice and Electoral Committee, those who made submissions to the review, and those who have worked on developing the bill. I certainly believe that it will improve our coronial system, and I thoroughly commend it to the House. [Interruption]

Order! It is a strong convention in this House that Ministers giving third reading speeches are entitled to read their speeches. [Interruption] This is not a debate on that.

I think Minister Adams is absolutely fair to reflect on the amount of work that has clearly gone into this bill. The select committee process was a place for robust debate and discussion. After that robust debate and discussion and our attempts at the Committee stage to make a number of amendments, we have, unfortunately, had to make the decision that, on balance, there are elements of this bill that we simply cannot support.

But there are elements—and I would include in that the purpose of the bill generally—that we do support. If we come back to the point at which the bill was first introduced, it set out—as the commentary of the Justice and Electoral Committee states—that the primary aim of the bill is to seek to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the coronial system by amending the Coroner’s Act 2006. I think that is a point that we could all agree on. At the moment there are significant delays in our coronial system. The Minister spoke today at the select committee Estimates hearing about the fact that there has been a 20 percent reduction in the time that these cases are taking, but even then there is a significant backlog. During the course of this debate, I met a family member of someone who is the subject of a coroner’s case, who had waited more than 1,000 days. That is not unusual. That length of time is absolutely devastating if you are a family member waiting for closure of a case, so when it comes to the substance of the purpose of this bill, we certainly supported it.

We would also use this opportunity to just state a few concerns. Although we want the backlog of coroner’s cases to be dealt with, we do have concerns that there has been talk of contracting out and bringing in external legal services in order to facilitate the processing of coroners’ reports. Our worry with that is that it is a legislated function that a coroner holds, and it does muddy the waters somewhat to be having external legal services processing those inquiries and inquests.

If I could come to the areas where we still have concerns that we consider significant enough, on balance, to not support this bill, the first—which we did not submit an amendment on but which did stand out to us—sits under new section 57A in clause 30. That sets out what a coroner is able to make recommendations around. This bill used the opportunity to narrow that function.

The point that I would make is that if this bill was really about just trying to make the system more efficient, it is not really at the point that a coroner is writing recommendations that we are seeing a lag in processing. The point at which a coroner is sitting down at a desk, as it were, perhaps with an administrator, to say “Look, these are the things that I finally deciphered from this report.”—that is not the thing that is leading to a thousand days before a report is issued. So to argue that to narrow the ability of a coroner to write a recommendation is necessarily going to save time or efficiency is, I think, a stretch. I think it instead impedes on a coroner’s ability to speak to the points that they consider valuable.

The specific recommendation that the Chief Coroner spoke to, which they were concerned was a narrowing of their ability, is in this new section 57A(3)(a), which states that a recommendation must “be clearly linked to the factors that contributed to the death to which the inquiry relates;”. We have used a few examples previously, but I was just reading about one of many forestry deaths that have tragically occurred in recent years. One determined cause of one of those deaths was that there were high winds in the area when a tree came down on a forestry worker. In that circumstance a coroner may only feel able to make recommendations that relate to the fact that this was an accident, obviously, caused by high winds that caused that tree to come down. But to what extent are they able to speak to the wider context of fatigue, long hours, the effects of the way that contracting works within the industry, and other factors that may have led to the potential distraction of that worker—the pressure they may have felt to continue to work in those environments? This clause potentially limits a coroner’s ability to make those wider recommendations. We thought that was problematic.

The second area we have concerns with—and I would have to say that this is a real sticking point for us—is not what was included, but what was not included in the bill: the lost opportunity, as it were. We have spoken about this at great length. Most people in New Zealand might be surprised to learn that when a coroner makes a recommendation, there is no obligation on anyone who might be the subject of that recommendation to reply, to respond, or to give a written view on that recommendation. Their view may be that it is a ridiculous recommendation and should not be implemented, but, actually, there is nothing to say that they need to say anything at all. That seems to be a crazy situation, in that we are funding, at great expense to the taxpayer, a coronial system that can write a recommendation and a report that can go absolutely nowhere—nowhere except, perhaps, to the family. It seems ridiculous, and I am not the only one to have made that declaration.

The Law Foundation recently funded a student from Victoria University to conduct a piece of work—as you can see, a sizable piece of work—on the very question of whether or not coroners’ recommendations should be responded to on a mandatory basis. What they found, and this is of interest, is that there were 607 coronial inquiries over a 5-year period. That resulted in 1,644 recommendations. There were 309 recipients of those recommendations over 5 years—309 recipients. Government organisations received the highest proportion of recommendations. That is interesting. Those whom we protected in this House by refusing to accept a Supplementary Order Paper that made responding—not implementing; responding—to recommendations mandatory are Government departments. Surely, given that this legislature is the one requesting and guiding coroners in the work they do—we are telling them how we want them to operate, how we want them to be more efficient, how we want their recommendations to be more punchy. But, on the flip side, we are saying that if you issue recommendations, we are not going to make our Government departments do anything with them, which seems nonsensical.

The report then goes on to describe that the most frequent set of recommendations included transport accidents, drowning, intentional self-harm, and complications of medical or surgical care. This House has an interest in transport accidents. Government departments have a direct role in the way that we regulate in the prevention of transport accidents, so it is relevant to us and we should want to know. Drowning—if it is a regulation that relates to the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act, we should want to know. Intentional self-harm—of course, when it comes to mental health provision, we should want to know. I note that the Auditor-General has today issued a report on the reporting and gathering of information around self-harm. Surely, amongst that, we should be saying: “What is happening to our reporting of recommendations?”. Complications of medical or surgical care—again, very relevant.

The report rightly summarises that the Government review—that is, this bill—presents an opportunity to initiate much-needed reforms: “A review that includes few proposals to enhance preventative functions may mean that coroners’ recommendations are a ‘lost opportunity’ to save New Zealanders’ lives.” That is exactly how we see it.

To briefly summarise our remaining concerns, what has been well traversed by my colleague Phil Goff includes the Defence Force provisions that were requested in this bill—the reversing of onus so that deaths in hostile action will no longer be the subject of a coroner’s inquest. That will occur only if the Attorney-General orders that it occur. Our view is that that should be flipped—it should default to the coroner, to add transparency for those families.

Those concerns, in and of themselves, were enough for us to say that although we absolutely support narrowing the number of cases that coroners are having to deal with in order to make them more efficient and to get more timely responses, the mechanisms that have been used in this bill went too far. They went too far, in our view, and there was a lost opportunity, as well.

On that basis, Labour has reluctantly decided that it cannot support this bill. We will be keeping a close eye on the changes, though. We do support the general intent, but we must be the ones who try to preserve transparency in our system and the ability for coroners to make the recommendations that they feel are necessary for our safety.

I am sad to hear that the Labour Opposition will not be supporting this bill.

I want to acknowledge all of those families in New Zealand who have suffered a sudden death in the family, whether it be by accident or by some other means. I want to acknowledge the bravery of those families who were prepared to come to Parliament to give witness in front of our committee, which helped inform our deliberations. I want to acknowledge their grief and I want to confirm to them that despite what is going to be a split vote on this bill, which I do regret very much, Parliament has listened.

I believe that today we will be passing a bill that for future families of victims of a sudden death who are subject to a coronial investigation, that coronial investigation will be more timely and it will be more efficient. The families will be kept better informed. The coroner’s comments will be directed more closely towards the matter at hand. I would like to think that the measures that this Government is proposing and will soon pass into law will have a small but none the less positive impact on those families.

I want also to thank members of the select committee, including the Opposition members who now find themselves opposing this bill, for their generally thoughtful contributions to what we finally have before us. Indeed, there are points of difference between the parties. But I think that those points of difference, which seem to mainly centre on sudden deaths in custody, deaths of personnel in times of conflict, and something as simple as requiring a response to coronial recommendations, I do not see as the basis for opposing this bill—I really do not. What I see in this bill is a piece of legislation that, as I have outlined, will make a number of beneficial changes to the way grieving families are able to respond to the findings in an unexplained or sudden death.

I will go through the main provisions of the bill. As I also said, coroners’ recommendations will now be required to be specific to the case and the evidence that is before the coroner, and to be very clear about how they could or would reduce the likelihood of future deaths in similar circumstances. I do know, from people who have approached me and others, that often the family of the person who is deceased just simply does not want it to happen again. They want a little bit of comfort in knowing that through the inquest process, changes will be made and lessons will be learnt. The bill will give better tools to—and will require the Chief Coroner to—improve timeliness, such as the requirement to report and monitor progress in older cases.

The legislation will reduce duplication with other investigating agencies by giving the Chief Coroner the ability to direct that a coronial investigation is not required, and that is when we come to deaths in custody, for example, or deaths while on active duty. The bill will clarify which deaths are reported to the coroner and, in particular, the jurisdiction to investigate overseas deaths and deaths of New Zealand Defence Force members caught in enemy action. That was a sticking point for the Opposition, but we always have to remember that it is not in New Zealand’s interests to disclose matters of national security. I do not know whether that point has been well enough regarded by the Opposition.

There are also new recommendations to improve and simplify the legislative restrictions on suicide reporting in the media. That is a very important part of the bill. It has not been contentious, but it has, I believe, a wide-ranging impact on suicide reporting. We do not want copycat suicides in New Zealand, and so these restrictions will go some way, I hope—there are penalties, and greater penalties, for breaches of this, but I believe that the new restrictions on suicide reporting are a very important and good part of this bill.

I am very pleased that this bill will be coming into force very soon. The reason I am pleased about this is that it will provide comfort to those people who have been bereaved. Thank you.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tuatahi māku, ka tukuna atu ngā poroporoaki ki te hunga mate, rātou kua ngaro atu ki Te Pō, rātou kua kapohia ake ai e Te Ringa Kaha o Aituā, hai tūere, hai tūkikini, hei tūtāmaki. Nāna i kōwhaki ai te kauwae o tērā e tangi mai rā, o tērā e tangi ake rā, o tātau e tangi atu nei. Nō reira koutou e te hunga wairua haere!

Ka whakahokia mai ngā rārangi kōrero ki a tātou e te hunga ora, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātau katoa.

[And so, thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The first thing for me is to accord farewell tributes to those who have passed away, who are lost to the void, who have been snatched up by the Mighty Hand of Calamity to be a blind eel, a kind of pincer in a kind of convulsion. He was the one who plucked off the jaw of that one wailing in our direction, that one wailing after us, and that one wailing coming towards us. Therefore, to you, the spirits, depart!

I bring my remarks back to you, the living, so acknowledgments, salutations, and greetings to you collectively and to us all.]

I thought it appropriate to farewell the departed. The reason I say that is throughout this entire Coroners Amendment Bill we have heard some very horrific stories, some sad stories from families who have shared their experiences and remembered their loved ones during their time of sharing that with the Justice and Electoral Committee. Now that we have come to this final stage, the third reading, of the Coroners Amendment Bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for your indulgence in allowing us to put that part behind us and to now address the living.

It is in that vein that I turn now to the Coroners Amendment Bill—thank you for allowing me this contribution. My colleague Jacinda Ardern has already made clear the position of this side of the House—or certainly of the Labour Party—about the thoughtful consideration given to the Coroners Amendment Bill. At some points in time throughout the process we were very close to supporting the bill. In fact, if I recall correctly, we were going to support this bill. However, on balance and upon reflection we have decided not to. She has detailed quite clearly the reasons for that, and I wish to touch on a few of those and also respond to some of the comments made by the chair of the select committee, the member Jacqui Dean, who has just finished her contribution today.

Jacqui Dean mentioned that the Labour Party did not consider or regard well enough the amendment in this particular bill with regard to those of our armed services who pass away or who die, tragically, during service. I take my lead on this matter from the Hon Phil Goff, who I thought represented his particular proposed amendment really well throughout this bill. He was very clear in his discussions with the select committee and, indeed, in the debates in this House. He put the family at the forefront. He put the family at the centre of all considerations with regard to his proposed amendment and this particular bill. But he also was quite, I thought, balanced in his view of it, with regard to the ability for the Attorney-General to be able to withhold some of the information, to be able to direct parts of the investigation should the coroner have to step in and investigate the passing of our armed service people while in military combat or military action. I take my lead from him because, like I say, I thought he delivered a very well-balanced proposed amendment. He fought hard for it, and we are disappointed, on this side of the House, that it did not come up and make it above the bar to be considered in this particular bill.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern also spoke about the need for recommendations by the coronial system to be considered seriously and, at the very least, to be given an appropriate response—at the very least. Recently, approximately 3 weeks ago, an uncle of mine passed away, tragically, on a farm up in Mōtatau in the far north. I understand the coronial process has kicked into gear, and I wonder whether or not some of the recommendations that may come from this report, hopefully, will save others who find themselves on the farm and find themselves in those situations. But what can we tell the New Zealand public to reassure them that that coronial process is: one, robust; two, well considered, and, three, that recommendations that it makes will keep New Zealanders safer, make processes better, and hold people accountable?

I am reminded of a particular saying that says “The first time is a tragedy, the second time is a farce”. If we do not allow the recommendations by the coroners’ office to be taken seriously or, at the very least, as I have mentioned, be given a response, then I am afraid we may find, moving forward into the future, that the unexplained deaths—the tragic deaths—of Kiwis will be an absolute farce. My colleague mentioned the forestry sector, which has experienced its fair share of tragic incidents over the past few years. They were highlighted in particular to the Labour caucus, if I recall, a year ago when we received some of the families who were dealing with the loss of a loved one from the forestry sector. They felt their voices were not being heard. They felt these kinds of deaths could have been avoided. I think about the stories they told to us when I look at the Coroners Amendment Bill, which we are debating right now. We hope that in the future there will be an opportunity whereby the recommendations made by a coroner can be taken seriously and can, at the very least, have a response.

My colleague mentioned earlier that despite the amendments presented by the Labour Party—by Jacinda Ardern, by the Hon Phil Goff, and by Kelvin Davis—not being considered in this particular bill and being voted down, we will be continually looking at the coronial process to make sure that, well, one, it meets the intent that is described in this bill and, two, we will be keeping a close eye on it to make sure that if at any time in the future we have the opportunity to come back in here to make this particular piece of legislation more robust and make sure the coronial process is more robust, then we will be right at the forefront of that. We want to reassure the New Zealand public that despite our opposition to the bill at this particular point in time, in its third reading, we do take it seriously. We thought long and hard about it. We considered the bill and its detail for some time, and debated amongst ourselves about whether or not to support it, and, sadly, we feel that at this point in time we cannot support it.

Just to my point around the recommendations, which Jacinda Ardern mentioned briefly, in the particular study we considered, the New Zealand Coroners’ Recommendations 2007 to 2012—the results of those recommendations were over a 5-year period. There were 607 coronial inquiries that resulted in 1,644 recommendations. There were 309 recipients of coroners’ recommendations. Government organisations received the highest proportion of recommendations—the highest proportion. The evidence is right there that all of these recommendations, we believe, given the robust process the coroners go through, need to be considered seriously. They need to be considered seriously.

In conclusion, once again, we, reluctantly, cannot support this bill. We hope that the coroners’ office, going forward into the future, will receive the support and the capacity from this Government to fulfil its duties to the best of its abilities. Just in conclusion, can I echo the words of the chair of the select committee in thanking the families, the officials, and those who came in and made submissions on this particular bill. I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution just how hard it was for some of us to hear the evidence and the submissions from the families. Once again, on this side of the House, we, reluctantly, cannot support the bill.

Certainly, as we have gone through this Coroners Amendment Bill, it has been a very interesting process, and, as other speakers have already alluded to, a very challenging one. We have had to confront some issues that I guess we usually try to avoid often in life and, certainly, experiences we do not necessarily want to have to go through ourselves. I too want to just acknowledge the number of submitters who came and shared their personal stories with us in a public setting. That is a big thing to do, and I just want to again acknowledge their bravery and their commitment to wanting to see things improve. It was a privilege for us to be able to share that time with them and also to hear from them with regard to those issues they wanted to raise.

This is a bill that is designed to improve people’s interaction with the coronial service. It is also designed to introduce and bring in some more pragmatic approaches for the coronial service to be able to deliver a better service to the people who interact with it and also, basically, to deliver a better result for all of New Zealand. First—and I think it is a critical part of this—is the desire through this bill to be able to reduce the length of time that people wait for an outcome from a coroner’s report. For families who are grieving and who are wanting to bring closure, having that as an outstanding matter can just make the grieving process that much more difficult. Waiting 400 or 700 days for that report to come out really just is not acceptable if we are wanting to deliver a service that is going to have a level of sympathy and empathy for those people who are suffering and who have been through the difficulty of experiencing the sudden loss of a loved one. If we can, through what we are doing as legislators, improve that for them, then it is absolutely beholden on us to do that, and so I support that.

There is a practicality in this bill, also, about making it not mandatory for there to be coronial inquests into certain matters. For example, if somebody dies of obviously natural causes—perhaps they have had a long-term illness that has led to their death—while they are incarcerated, if there is nothing pointing to a suspicious death it seems absurd that at the moment a coroner is mandated and has to do a full inquest rather than just an inquiry. So this is a practical step that has been taken. Of course, there is nothing to stop a coroner from actually doing an inquest. If they have got concerns, then they can still follow through with that.

Just in response to what we have heard with regard to the now non-mandatory inquest for service people who die in the service of their country overseas, if the Auditor-General perceives that there is a need to have a coroner’s inquest or inquiry, then the Auditor-General can still do that. We are not prohibiting the coroners from being involved at all in those overseas deaths of service people, but we are actually ensuring that it is not mandatory—it does not have to happen. The bill does not prevent it from happening, and so I believe that the concerns that the Labour Party members have raised can be addressed. If the Auditor-General believes that the family does need to have that coronial input, not just the service inquiry, then he or she—whoever is holding that office—can make that happen.

In summary, this is a balanced bill, it is a pragmatic bill, and I hope that it will go some way to alleviating the suffering of New Zealanders who have suffered the sudden loss of a loved one, going forward. It is a pleasure to endorse it to the House.

Like others, I am pleased to be speaking to this bill for the final time, in this third reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill. I was feeling that this bill had been around a long time. I actually looked and, indeed, it has been around for quite some time. It was introduced in August 2014, so almost 2 years ago. I acknowledge, of course, there was an election that intervened, but the bill has been with us a while and it will be good to see it progress and to finally pass.

Having said that, the Greens are supporting this legislation, but I would acknowledge the concerns that have been expressed by the Labour speakers. For us, it was also something of a line call. We fell down on the side of saying “Well, this bill does a number of very good things and for that reason we’ll support it.”, but, certainly, it is far from complete. I am sure we will have no problems supporting the changes that Labour will make next year when, from Government, we are all in a position to do that.

Part of the purpose of this bill is to streamline, to make more efficient, some of the coronial processes and procedures. That is a good thing, clearly, and we hope it will achieve some of that to reduce the workload. But, to speak on behalf of the coroners, I do think the workload will not be sufficiently relieved, and I do think that there is a case to be made to increase the number of coroners and to increase the level of support for those judicial officers.

Those of us on the Justice and Electoral Committee, who have followed this bill all the way through, have had, in a sense, a privileged position. We have had a very close, firsthand look at the work of the coroners in their office without having to be in the very unfortunate situation of being close to a tragedy—the reason, normally, people would get to know what the coroners do.

We have discovered, in my view anyway, that the coroners’ workload is unreasonable. I have seen their roster and it is brutal. It is a 24/7 call on their time and expertise. It is a very difficult task. It is a judicial role, but, nevertheless, they are also required to be grief counsellors and psychologists as well as practitioners of the law. So I do think there is a very strong argument, and we regret the fact this current Budget does not actually recognise that and assist the coroners in clearing some of the backlog of cases that does exist. We are told that there has been about a 20 percent reduction in that backlog. I think that really is not sufficient, and we would like to see more provision to enable them to do their job even better than they do. They are people of considerable integrity, and I think we should support them better.

One of the more fraught parts of the select committee process was entering into the issues around suicides, the reporting of suicides, and the provisions of this bill that do deal with that. The Auditor-General’s report that has come out just today notes that in 2013 suicide was the third-leading cause of premature death in New Zealand, after heart disease and lung cancer. No doubt the numbers have changed marginally in the last few years, but it just highlights the tragedy and prevalence of suicide in New Zealand. It is something I am sure across the House we would all seek to redress—youth suicide in particular. Sadly, we are seeing more instances of suicide in the rural areas as the reality of the rural downturn kicks in and for some people, they do not see a way out except, sadly, through that.

I think it is incumbent on us to do everything we can to reduce the incidence of suicide, and one of those things is around the reporting of it. I think this bill has come down in the right place. It enables sober and sensible reporting of incidents when it is presumed that a death has been caused by suicide. It does not allow anyone, without the coroner’s approval, to say anything about the method or the location, when that might indicate what the method was, and I think that is appropriate. The bill puts in place a process where a coroner might allow for an exemption to allow that detail to be released to the public through the media, but only after there has been a panel established including a person with expertise in suicide prevention, a person with expertise in tikanga Māori, and a person with expertise in the media and its processes. I think it creates some fairly robust means to balance out the undoubted commitment we all have to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, but it also puts some reasonable constraints in place.

We had a fairly robust, dare I call it, submission from an organisation called the media freedom committee, speaking on behalf of the media. The thrust of that submission was that the media should be allowed to report—that it should be left to their discretion and good judgment—and, frankly, I do not think that that submission got much traction with the members of the committee. There are too many instances when the media undoubtedly would be tempted to overstep the boundaries of good taste and of protecting other people who might be moved to emulate or copycat suicide. I think we found about the right balance. We acknowledge all the arguments that in this day and age with social media and the internet, sadly, some of this information will get out in a way that it ought not to, but we just do what we can do to manage at least the mainstream media. I do think we have got to a good place with that.

I think it is important that we do talk about suicides. Suppressing information and conversation in the wider populace—particularly with our young people, who are most vulnerable—and suppressing debate is not the solution. We need to have an informed debate, but a carefully managed debate—a carefully presented debate. I actually went along to a couple of—what is the organisation? Riders Against Teenage Suicide is a group of people active in Northland. I must acknowledge Arthur Harawira, who suffered the ultimate tragedy as a parent of losing a son to suicide, and yet is still able and strong enough to stand in front of audiences of young people, talking about what the cost to his family was, and to him personally, of losing that young man. I think that is an admirable formula, if you like: the context is such that we can address young people, and explain to them why they ought never to consider that that is a choice they should ever make. But it needs to be a very careful, managed, and structured conversation, and the media is not the place to do that.

One of our initial objections to this bill was that in the current situation, when deaths occur in custody—particularly deaths in prisons—it must trigger a full inquest and that is mandatory. There is now discretion for the coroners to choose, in some instances, not to undertake a full inquest. There must still be an inquiry, but not a full inquest, and we think that balance is about right. I have personally been persuaded by personal conversations with coroners and by the submission from the Chief Coroner, which said in this present-day reality of more people getting older in our prisons, there are situations when deaths in prisons are entirely predictable, given the ill health of inmates, and the like. So I do think that we can put a level of trust in the coroners to make those calls.

Personally, I do not have confidence in the culture of the Department of Corrections to be transparent and to be open and honest about deaths in custody. So I think we have hit a good spot with the current language, or the new language of the bill as it is now presented in its final form: talking about deaths of the medically unexpected, or when a medical officer would not have expected a person to pass away based on their previous history; the medical notes; and the like. Obviously, it is something we will need to continue to monitor, but for the moment we think there is adequate protection to ensure there is a very rigorous application of inquiry and, if necessary, inquest when deaths do occur in custody. There have been too many examples, sadly, when people have died in custody in prison, and it has been the result of negligence, inadequate health-care, and inadequate monitoring. Preventable deaths have occurred in custody. We have got to be very sure, when they do occur, that there is a spotlight shone on them and that we seek to ensure that those circumstances do not recur.

The final point that I would like to make is that the new bill puts in place some provisions in situations when a body is returned to the family, but some body parts or samples are retained by the coroner—or the pathologist, more accurately. It is a requirement, effectively, that families need to be informed of that and that they can request that those parts be returned to them at the appropriate time. That is important not least of all to Māoridom but to people more generally.

With those few comments, we do continue to support this bill.

New Zealand First has always supported this bill. We recognise that the Coroners Act has needed revision for quite a long time, and we think that overall this bill makes a pretty good job of doing that. I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee also, which I think did a very good job in refining the bill and bringing it back to the House in the state that it is now in.

In essence, what the legislation needs to do is to balance some public and private interests, especially to avoid unnecessary inquests, on the one hand, but to ensure full transparency on the other. That is really what the coronial system is all about. It needs to balance the freedom of the media to report deaths and their circumstances against sensationalising those sorts of circumstances, because they can, of course, encourage other suicides. It is actually relatively easy to do that, even though it may be unintended, so there needs to be a balance there.

There also needs to be a balance in terms of inquiry into deaths in State custody, because that is a particularly important area for coronial jurisdiction because of the possibility of abuse of people in State custody. But, on the other hand, the balance needs to be against pointless inquiries where they are really not needed. So I do think it is appropriate that the Chief Coroner should have the discretion that they will now have to decide whether an inquiry is needed or not.

The last area that I want to mention, where I think this balance is particularly important, is the need for a balance between an independent inquiry for deaths of defence personnel—especially where the deceased was killed in a hostile action—on the one hand, and, on the other, the need for national security considerations to be taken into account and for national security to be protected. That is another very difficult area where the balance is needed.

So I think that this bill actually does achieve—largely achieves—those balances, and that is why New Zealand First is going to continue to support it. Nevertheless, we are disappointed with a couple of things. There were two amendments that we feel should have been adopted and incorporated into the bill. I am a little bit sad that the Government has not done that and has not given good reasons for not doing so.

The first related to a proposed new section 57C in clause 30 and the question of whether it should be mandatory for Government agencies to respond to coronial recommendations. There is not much point in having a system that spends a lot of money and effort in producing those recommendations if they can simply be ignored or brushed off by Government agencies. To be fair, most of them do not do that, but on the other hand it is perfectly clear that on some occasions that is exactly what happens. So the proposal had been to require a response and to make it mandatory within 60 days, and we in New Zealand First feel that that would have been the right way to go. It is disappointing that that has not been adopted. I cannot see what the harm would have been in requiring that. It would have achieved something positive and worthwhile.

The second proposed amendment concerned deaths in hostile action. The position currently is that coronial jurisdiction covers deaths for Defence Force personnel regardless of circumstances, and that is in addition to court of inquiry processes. That process itself has a safeguard in that it is subject to external legal review panel considerations, and that would be conducted by a Queen’s Counsel. So that is the current situation. This bill would change that so that coronial jurisdiction will continue where death does not happen during hostile action, and new section 59A(2) and (3) would instead operate to protect the national interest by preventing an inquiry where the coroner determines the death is caused exclusively by hostilities during a hostile action and not otherwise.

The current section allows coronial inquiry into death during hostile action too, but only if the Attorney-General directs it, and that is stated the wrong way round. Instead, the section should allow such an inquiry unless the Attorney-General takes action to prevent it. It may seem like a fine point, but it is actually quite important, in particular because new section 59A(4A) would still apply, even if what is in the current legislation continues, by putting coronial authority and transparency first, and new section 59A(4A) provides for the criteria that the Attorney-General has to consider.

I want to quote those criteria because I think they are important: “(a) whether the investigation or inquiry is likely to identify the cause and circumstances of the death; and (b) whether the investigation or inquiry could reveal information that may prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand; and (c) whether the investigation or inquiry is likely to examine military tactics; and (d) whether a court of inquiry has been, or will be, assembled …”, and so on. So those are the sorts of criteria that would have to be considered and, therefore, I feel that it would have been better for what is in the current legislation to continue or for the amendment that had been proposed by Phil Goff to be adopted, because those considerations would apply.

The amendment would have better reflected the balance I spoke of by putting the primary need for coronial inquiry as the primary consideration, and to have the need for national security considerations to, effectively, be secondary because they can be taken into account only if those criteria that I listed were met. So that would have been the better way to proceed, and it is a bit disappointing that the Government did not, in fact, adopt the proposal for amendment that had been put forward. It is a disappointment, but it would not itself be enough for New Zealand First to vote against the bill.

The only other thing I did want to mention was that other area of significant difficulties—and I have already mentioned them at the beginning of my speech—concerning the reporting of suicides. I do believe that new section 71 does achieve the right balance because it says that if a death is self-inflicted, or if it may have been, the method or the place where the death occurred—if that place suggested the method—or a description of the death as a suicide may not be published. But there is a balance there in that the Chief Coroner may grant an exemption if satisfied that in doing so, it would not present an undue risk that other people would attempt copycat behaviour, and that any risk that people would attempt copycat behaviour is outweighed by other considerations that make it desirable in the public interest to allow the publication. So I think there we have a good demonstration of the balance that I spoke of, and so we in New Zealand First do think that in that very important area, section 71 is appropriate.

Finally, overall, we in New Zealand First do think that the bill is a significant improvement over the current Act, that it does achieve the balances that I spoke of, and that it will work better for a robust coronial system. So we will be voting in favour of it.

This has been a good bill and, I have got to say, the process that we went through on the Justice and Electoral Committee on this bill was also a good process, and Jacqui Dean, the chair, did a great job. It was a real pleasure, actually, to work with the Government members and also the Opposition members. Denis O’Rourke, the speaker who has just resumed his seat, has played a very constructive role in relation to this bill and also another knotty issue that we are working through on the committee at the moment, as well. I think we have come to a good space on this bill. We have got into a good position and we have made some useful amendments, which have come through the select committee process.

I want to briefly talk about suicide reporting, which is, obviously, covered by the bill and is a topic that I took a particular interest in. It was something I had been interested in before I came into Parliament. I think everyone has acknowledged that the current law under the current Coroners Act 2006 around what the media can and cannot report or say about suspected or actual suicides is deficient. You see that the law is widely flouted, and, actually, just yesterday a news media organisation ran a story that was definitely a breach of the law because it described in the headline that a particular incident was a suspected suicide. Well, that is a breach of the law. You are not allowed to do that. It will be legal once we have passed this bill and the legislation comes into force, but it is not legal at the moment. That is just a small example of how the current law is ignored.

It is a very vexed issue because the pure libertarian view is that everything should be able to be published. There are some people who make that argument—that you should be able to publish anything you like about suicide. There is another school of thought—and I have heard people express this view as well—which is that there should be absolutely no reporting on any type of suicide in New Zealand, and that the risks are just so great from that reporting. It is a very, very tricky issue, and, actually, I think the Government did a good thing in 2013 by getting the Law Commission to do a first-principles review of this and actually go away and look at the evidence. The experts at the Law Commission did that, and I think the recommendations that they came up with, which have largely—and particularly in this instance, wholly—been endorsed by the Government and made their way into this amendment bill, are good ones.

The conclusion that they reached after studying the international evidence from overseas is that some forms of reporting are strongly associated with the risk of further suicides. That is why after we have passed this bill into force you will not be able to publish the method of death, or the place where that death took place, if publishing the place would suggest the method of death—I am sure people can think about how that might come about. This is because the international evidence suggests that the publication of those details is very risky in potentially perpetuating further suicides—copycat suicides. The evidence tends to suggest that.

In some ways the new law will be a liberalisation, but it will also be a toughening-up. The penalties for breaches of the law have been raised, but we are going to allow the media to report that something is a suspected suicide. If something is a suspected suicide, that will be allowed to be published, but it is only in the event that the coroner finds that something is a suicide after the investigation has happened that the media will be able to say that. I think that is appropriate. After a death happens, if it is a suspected suicide, the media can say that. This will avoid the media having to use the sorts of code words and euphemisms that they use at the moment, which everyone in the know knows about and some people do not. We will end that farcical situation. But if you are in the media, you will be able to call something a suicide only if the coroner says that, and, as I say, you will not be able to publish the method of death, or the place, where publishing the place would suggest the method, unless the coroner grants an exemption.

I think this strikes the right balance. What we are trying to do is encourage responsible reporting. It is important to have a conversation about suicide, I think, in New Zealand. We want responsible reporting, but we do not want irresponsible reporting, and that is what the bill seeks to prevent. I thought long and hard about this issue on the committee, and I did quite a lot of reading about it. I think we have struck the right balance, and it is good that this bill is going to become law. I commend it to the House.

The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak in this, the debate on the third reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill, for the Green Party. The Green Party, as previously stated by my colleague David Clendon, will be supporting this bill.

I would like to spend the time in my contribution, firstly, as with other members, acknowledging the people who shared their personal experiences with the Justice and Electoral Committee. Grief is a very significant thing to share, and I think when people make that effort and the effort is in the hopes of helping produce good public policy we should acknowledge them for that effort. I would like to talk mostly on the points about deaths within prison and youth suicide reporting, and to acknowledge the work of the select committee in making the improvements to the bill specifically relating to deaths in prison.

My understanding of the bill as it was first introduced is that it would have meant that the coroner could demand an inquiry for a death in prison only if the coroner was satisfied that there had been some negligence or misconduct, which really presupposes the outcome of the inquiry at the beginning of the process. It was really good to see that the committee has worked through that problem and shifted the presumption to the other way round. Now the coroner is enabled to use their judgment to decide whether they could have reasonably expected the death, given the knowledge that they have of that person’s health status and health records.

Initially, obviously, we had concerns about the change. My colleague Dave Clendon spoke with several coroners, it is my understanding, and they spoke to him about the changing demographics in our prisons and the fact that we have an increasingly ageing population in our prisons, so as a result people are more likely to be dying of natural causes. That should not take up the resources of the coroner, whose time should not be spent on inquiring into natural deaths. It does for me raise a question that is a bit of a sad indictment on us as a society, though, I do have to acknowledge. The thought of somebody dying of age-related diseases while in prison, or dying of cancer while in prison, when we have known that that is going to happen does seem to me to be an extra level of punishment that is not necessary in terms of ensuring the security of our society.

The other point I would like to speak on, which has been widely canvassed, is the consideration of the reporting of youth suicide. I know that there has been a call from a lot of parents, as well as the media, about wanting more liberalisation. There is a sense that at times we are stifling an acknowledgment of how big a problem this is in our society. When we do have one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world, and very high rates of suicide generally, I can understand that feeling from people who want this to be dealt with publicly. However, I have worked in youth health and have a background of seeing that impact on young people where suicides are covered in our media, in a fictional sense as well as being reported—and I know that that has actually directly contributed to an exacerbation of some young people’s mental health issues, to a point where they have attempted suicide on the basis of that trigger.

I even think of my experience as a young person, spending many years feeling suicidal. Part of that was as a result of how commonly it was talked about, and it was only when I became an adult working in the area that I realised that, actually, feeling suicidal was not normal. That is not a situation we would ever want to see encouraged in our society, so the restrictions to reporting on—recognising that suicide could be a cause but not naming the place if it could identify the method or naming the method seems a sensible place to land on. Thank you.

I call Poto Williams—5 minutes.

I want to confine my contribution at this time to the impacts of this piece of legislation on family, or the role that family would actually like to play with regard to coronial inquests and inquiries into deaths of loved ones. The reason I put family at the centre of my contribution is that I believe that the coroner’s role has three prime responsibilities. One of the prime reasons that we would want the coroner’s work to continue is in order to find cause of death, so that we may put in place measures that could prevent future deaths of that nature. The second reason would be so that if the death is as a result of a crime, adequate information and evidence is produced in order for that crime to be prosecuted appropriately and accordingly. The third reason, and, for me, one of the prime reasons, is so that the family of the deceased person feels that the manner in which that person lost their life has been adequately investigated and that due measures are put in place to prevent it happening to any other family.

There are parts of this piece of legislation that speak specifically to the role of families in the process. I speak specifically, as I did during the Committee stage, on the handling of deceased bodies and what may happen when an investigation happens to that body and some of the parts, particularly tissue, are not returned to family. There are huge cultural implications around the treatment of deceased persons. In my own culture, it would be unusual for a dead body of our loved one, when they are deceased, to be on their own at any point in time. We go to great pains to ensure that a family member is with that body at all times until they are interred. So for families who submitted, like the Still family, whose daughter was killed as a result of the Wairarapa balloon crash, to anguish over not being able to see their daughter’s body and not being able to be in touch with her tūpāpaku—that is, in our culture, hugely distressing, and their distress came through in their submission.

It would be one thing that we would really encourage future examinations of the coroner’s process to really hold in high regard—that families at this time are in distress. There is no doubt that the process has improved over time, but there is also no doubt that there are improvements still to be made. The examination of this piece of legislation has led to the Māori Affairs Committee launching an inquiry into the handling of tūpāpaku, because it is an important cultural aspect. It is an important cultural part of our lives—the rituals and the rites that must occur when someone has died. So in that regard I want to encourage that the coroner’s process does take family wishes into full regard.

When the body is not returned to the family completely whole there is also an implication from that. The family should be notified when and if that process can occur, to ensure that the body can be interred completely. Sometimes that cannot occur, so the family must be consulted fully as to how they would like the treatment of the body to occur.

Just in conclusion, I do want to touch on the amendments in the name of Phil Goff, because, again, I feel it is really important that the role of families of members of the Defence Force, when their loved ones are killed overseas, should be considered in the process. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to stand in support of the Coroners Amendment Bill. This bill will support coroners in their important and difficult roles by making their system more efficient. That, in turn, supports grieving families and is another example of this Government delivering Better Public Services.

The Justice and Electoral Committee has considered this bill and during the process it received a number of submissions, the most significant, of course, being from the Law Commission, which made 17 recommendations. Of those 17 recommendations, 14 were accepted in full and three were accepted generally around reporting standards—so, all in all, a very constructive process.

One of the main provisions of the bill is to reduce duplication with other agencies, and this will be done by giving the Chief Coroner the ability to direct that a coronial investigation not be required. The Act currently lists 13 different authorities with investigative responsibilities, such as the Transport Accident Investigation Commission and a royal commission of inquiry, so it is obvious that there are overlaps possible in some cases. Under the current legislation the relationship between coroners and other investigative authorities has not always been clear, and that has led to uncertainty about their respective roles.

The Chief Coroner, after the passing of this bill, will have an oversight role, and that will allow him to direct that an inquiry not be opened or may not resume, or that it be a postponed or adjourned inquiry. On average, cases involving an inquest or hearing take over 400 days, or over 700 days if the coroner is required to wait for another investigation to be completed. This is far too long for grieving families, so providing the ability to reduce this duplication will go a long way towards supporting those families and providing closure.

This is a very pragmatic bill, and I am very happy to commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on this, the third reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill. I am going to outline why the Labour Party is not supporting this piece of legislation.

After going on the coroners’ website and looking at what coroners do, I really want to start by taking time to mihi to our coroners. They do an incredibly important job. What they do is they help to determine when, where, how, and why a death has happened in Aotearoa New Zealand. What they also try to do is work out whether anything can be done differently that might prevent similar deaths in the future, so I want to emphasise that. They want to identify whether there is anything that we could have done to have prevented a death. In fact, I think that is one of the most significant roles of the coroner, in addition to ensuring that families have the information and know what has happened to their loved ones.

It is very much about an individual good, I suppose you would call it—the understanding of individuals’ families of what has happened to their loved one—but coroners also have a responsibility in terms of our collective or public good. Those reasons, essentially, are why coroners make recommendations. So I would like to highlight the Supplementary Order Papers of my colleague Jacinda Ardern, which were actually rejected in the Committee stage of the debate in this House. They were Supplementary Order Paper 145 and Supplementary Order Paper 146. Essentially, what they said was that persons or organisations or Government agencies must respond to coroners’ recommendations.

Where did that come from? Actually, the Law Commission wanted to support it too. I want to note some particular University of Otago research by Dr Jennifer Moore and Professor Mark Henaghan. Dr Moore actually has a public health degree as well as a law degree. Her piece of research focused on the effectiveness of New Zealand’s coroner’s court. Her rationale was that the coroners’ work is extremely important and the recommendations save lives and guide policy. What she did was investigate coroners’ cases and recommendations—remember that this Act started in 2006—and her research was from 2007 to 2012. When she attempted to ascertain what happened to those recommendations, she was actually mystified—“mystified” is probably the best word—because what she found was that the coroner’s court does not report annual law reports. She found that intriguing, and so she spent months travelling around the country going to different courts and gathering data herself.

What she found in that 5-year period was that there were 607 cases and 1,644 recommendations that involved 309 parties, and of those 309 parties, 121 were Government organisations. What did she do? She contacted them. Of those 309 parties, she contacted 200 of them, and of those contacted, 79 agreed to be interviewed and a further 42 completed a questionnaire. Essentially, the key finding of her piece of research was that a mandatory response regime should be put in place to ensure that organisations responded to coronial recommendations—sounds pretty simple—and what Dr Moore has continued to do is to engage with coroners and to work with them, because one of the other findings of the research was that some of the recommendations were not targeted enough. They were not specific enough about who should actually do something to prevent deaths in the future. That has become an ongoing piece of work that she is engaged with. In fact, the coroners themselves said that sometimes they made recommendations in a vacuum. So this two-way process that she wanted to create, and that my colleague Jacinda Ardern suggested, has been rejected by this House, and that is a sad thing.

The other part of the process that we have gone through that I want to highlight is the proposed amendment of my colleague the Hon Phil Goff. Essentially, what his proposed amendment would have done was continue the presumption that coroners would investigate military deaths unless the Attorney-General directed the coroner not to, as opposed to what this legislation will create in the future, which is that coroners cannot investigate military deaths unless they are directed to by the Attorney-General.

The rationale for coroners continuing to investigate military deaths was actually highlighted in a Stuff article that was titled “Secret death panel planned”. Within that particular article, former army medic Sarah Erb, who was the partner of Corporal Luke Tamatea, was quoted. Corporal Luke Tamatea was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2012. I want to highlight Corporal Tamatea’s situation, because in that instance there was a coronial inquiry, and there was also a court of inquiry because it was a military death. What we know from what Corporal Tamatea’s whānau have said is that because of the coronial report—the whānau actually received a copy of that report. Having read that report, they got the answers that they were looking for.

There was a particular emphasis in this article about Corporal Tamatea’s mother receiving the answers that she needed in order to get some closure because her son died not in Aotearoa but in Afghanistan in the line of duty, and she was mamae because she did not know what happened to her son. I think all of us would agree that it is incredibly important for families to be able to understand what has happened to their loved ones so that they can answer all the questions they may have, and then they can actually process that and have closure, mourn, and grieve, and then get on with their lives. I think a number of us would agree that unless you get closure, it is very difficult to move on because you have a whole lot of unanswered questions.

I want to contrast that, however, with the court of inquiry and the record of proceedings. There was also involvement of the military, because in any military death there is a court of inquiry, and I spoke about this in the Committee stage. I wanted to look at putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper, actually, but because the governance of military deaths—courts of inquiry—are actually enabled through the Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971, I could not. One of the things that I wanted to ensure was that family members have access to the record of proceedings when there is a court of inquiry because of a military death.

The reason I want to particularly focus on this is that I asked at the Committee stage for the Minister in the chair to confirm that if there is a military death and if the only inquiry into that death is a military court of inquiry, families have automatic access to the record of proceedings. No Minister got up to refute my assertion and, in fact, I want to highlight that the chair of our select committee, Jacqui Dean, was in the Chamber at that time, and she said that I was wrong. So I am taking her on her word. I want it recorded in Hansard that it is the expectation of this House that if a military court of inquiry is the only inquiry undertaken, the family has automatic access to that record of proceeding so that whānau can have those questions answered, they can get the closure that they need, and that they can move on with their lives. Other than that, I hope that I have clearly outlined why Labour is not supporting this legislation.

Finally, I really enjoy my membership of the Justice and Electoral Committee, I think we have incredibly robust discussions, but we do so because we are talking about law, and we are talking about matters of principle and matters of policy. So I hope that the people of Aotearoa New Zealand understand now why the Labour Party does not support the Coroner’s Amendment Bill. Thank you.