Coroners Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Coroners Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Coroners Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’m pleased to speak to this bill, which has returned to the House after a constructive select committee process. I thank the Justice Committee for its careful consideration of the bill, and I’d also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the previous Minister, the Hon Aupito William Sio, for his work on the bill to date.

Coroners are struggling to keep pace with the number of cases being accepted into the coronial jurisdiction. This has resulted in an increase in active caseload and an increase in the average time taken to conclude coronial investigations. This bill aims to reduce the distress caused to grieving families and whānau from the increasing length of time they spend waiting to receive coronial findings, while ensuring the public interest continues to be well served by the coronial system.

To achieve this, the bill will make some targeted amendments to the Coroners Act. These changes were discussed at length during the bill’s first reading. Broadly, they are intended to reduce the time it takes for certain cases to move through the coronial system, and free up coroners’ time to work on reducing the number of active coronial cases.

The Justice Committee received around 2,500 submissions on the bill, and I acknowledge those people who took the time to make a submission, particularly submitters who shared personal stories about their own experiences navigating the coronial system. It’s important that these voices are heard, and matters dealt with by the coronial jurisdiction are inherently sensitive and can be highly emotive—especially for families and whānau who have lost a loved one unexpectedly.

The Justice Committee recommended several changes to this bill, largely to clarify its policy intent and to ensure workability. I’ll speak to some of these now in the time remaining. Clause 10 of the bill, as introduced, would enable a coroner to record the cause of death as “unascertained natural causes” if the coroner considers that the death is likely to be from a natural cause and no further investigation is required. That is, the coroner does not consider an inquiry needs to be opened, so the case can be concluded.

Despite being a minor change—minor in the sense that it is clarifying current practice—almost all submitters had some degree of concern with clause 10 as introduced. For instance, submitters were concerned that the bill might enable less thorough investigation of deaths, especially deaths that do require a coroner to investigate further—such as unexpected, violent, or suspicious deaths.

To clarify, the ability for a coroner to record a cause of death as “unascertained natural causes” has always been intended to be limited to a subcategory of cases where an inquiry is not opened, because the evidence available to the coroner leads to a presumption of a natural-cause death, and the coroner deciding that further investigation is not required to discharge their duties under the Coroners Act.

The important point here is that the coroner’s decision is informed by the evidence available to them. “Evidence” in this context means information provided to the coroner by others regarding the death. This includes—but is not limited to—information from the police, the whānau, GPs, and pathologists. The establishment of the new clinical adviser role in the Ministry of Justice will further support coroners to make informed decisions.

Where the evidence available suggests to the coroner that further investigation may be required—for example, the GP has raised concerns, police have unresolved suspicions, or the death is of a type that may require further investigation such as a self-inflicted death—then it would be highly unlikely that a coroner could be satisfied that the death can be presumed to be from natural causes.

If the coroner is not satisfied, based on the available evidence, that the death is from natural causes, then the death would require further investigation. It’s fair to say that the intent of clause 10, and particularly the circumstances in which it could apply, were largely misunderstood by submitters. I’m pleased to see, as I’m sure submitters are too, that the Justice Committee has recommended changes to clarify this. This will provide families and whānau—and indeed coroners—assurance as to when clause 10 can be used appropriately and why.

I should also acknowledge another recommended change to clause 10, namely replacing the phrase “unascertained natural causes” with “presumed natural causes without investigation”. Many submitters felt that the phrase “unascertained natural causes” is inherently contradictory and confusing. Many asked how a cause of death can be both “unascertained” and “from natural causes”. The new classification—“presumed natural causes without investigation”—will better reflect the policy intent, especially when combined with the other changes recommended by the Justice Committee.

The Justice Committee recommended several other minor changes to the bill, particularly in relation to the associate coroner role. These included changing the title of the role from coronial associate to associate coroner, clarifying that associate coroners have the same judicial immunities as coroners, and ensuring that associate coroners are included in the Judicial Conduct Commissioner jurisdiction. These changes were suggested to better reflect the likeness between the role of a coroner and that of an associate coroner.

Other minor changes included clarifying that any limitations placed on the role of an associate coroner by the Chief Coroner should be set out in coronial rules rather than binding practice notes, and clarifying the process for transferring a case from an associate coroner to a coroner when an inquest might be required.

Just to wrap up, it’s worth addressing the differing view of the National Party in the committee’s commentary. I agree that it is important for coroners to investigate both the cause of death and the broader circumstances of the death—for example, the events leading up to the death. The bill does not change this requirement. What the bill does do, however, is provide the coroner with discretion as to whether they include the broader circumstances in their written findings after their investigation. This discretion is based around whether the coroner considers there is a public interest in the broader circumstances. For example, would publishing the details about the circumstances of the death help reduce the likelihood of similar deaths in future?

If the coroner considers there is no public interest in the broader circumstances, which necessarily requires the coroner to look into the circumstances to some extent, then they will not be required to include these in their findings. Like all coronial decisions, this assessment is informed by the evidence provided to the coroner. This change is, essentially, an administrative one to help streamline the process to write up and publish findings. It does not alter the requirement that a death be investigated to the extent required by the Act.

This bill is part of a wider work programme currently under way to improve the coronial system. This includes appointing more permanent coroners, appointing clinical advisers to assist coroners, and better integrating tikanga Māori into coronial processes. The targeted amendments in this bill will facilitate better access to justice for families and whānau, while ensuring the public interest continues to be well served by the coronial system.

I am confident that, taken together, the changes recommended by the Justice Committee will further support the bill to achieve this. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I start by acknowledging the Minister for Courts, the Hon Rino Tirikatene, in his new role. He is known to be a member of integrity. He’s a former lawyer. I don’t wish to contradict myself, but he is nevertheless a man of integrity; he is respected across the House. I think in this role he’s receiving somewhat of a hospital pass. The court system is well known to be in dire straits, including in the coronial space. To the extent that the Government is making moves that may alleviate that with this bill, we will support it. We do support it, we supported it at first reading, we were a constructive participant at the select committee process, if I may say so, and are for the remainder of the passage of this bill, which will no doubt take place over a relatively short period of time being in urgency as we now are. But I would be remiss if I didn’t record our view on the place of the bill within the overall context of what’s happening in the coroner system, and the court system in general and also just highlight that one issue on which we differ from the Government’s view about what the bill can and should do.

So, as the Minister has acknowledged, and I think in his own words, as closely as I can paraphrase or recall, the coronial system is struggling to keep up with the number of cases that is going through it at the moment. It’s not the place within this debate—I’m sure you’d pull me out pretty quickly, Mr Speaker, if I were to rehearse some arguments for ways that resources can be freed up elsewhere to apply to the coronial system—but it is at least useful to some extent that what the bill is going to do to try and alleviate that pressure is to have a few more participants involved—not coroners exactly, but coronial associates, and the Minister’s mentioned the fact that we want that role to be aligned as nearly as possible with the role of a coroner proper. And he’s mentioned some of the ways in which the bill would do that.

The way that the bill achieves these things is actually relatively straightforward, although I think it’s worth noting that the National Party agreed with the Government members on the Justice Committee that clarification was needed on that question of unascertained natural causes. And, of course, we don’t want to have a situation where it’s suggested, or believed, that the coroner won’t be—well, where there’ll be ambiguity in the case of deaths, findings being ambiguous as to whether it was natural or not natural.

So, as the Minister has said, and if I can express it slightly differently—I think it’s a question of syntax—we are saying that there are deaths that we know are natural, notwithstanding that we haven’t ascertained and don’t need to ascertain the exact nature of the natural cause, rather than to say that the qualifiers unascertained and natural are somehow in conflict. I’ve probably made it less clear, not more, but for what it’s worth, you know, just to shortcut all that, we do agree with the position that the select committee as a whole took, and as the Minister has expressed it tonight.

The only matter on which we weren’t in agreement was to do with this issue again, as acknowledged by the Minister, of whether it is in the public interest to have the circumstances of a death recorded and reported by a coroner. We understand and agree with the need to expedite the process in the system more generally, but we think this is looking in the wrong place to achieve such time and resource savings. We think that for the coroner in a single specific instance to decide whether the circumstances of a death are significant in the way that would meet a public interest threshold, then he or she would need to know whether there were other similar circumstances leading to other deaths elsewhere in the system before—maybe yet to come—and as handled by other coroners or coronial associates. So we don’t think that’s a judgment as to public interest that any individual coroner in any individual case can, or should, make. We will propose at the committee of the whole House stage a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect. We don’t suppose it will be supported by the committee. Nevertheless, we will continue to support the bill, but we did want to place on record our belief that that’s an unnecessary amendment to the coronial regime that this bill is making.

So with those pretty general remarks—but otherwise we are saying that we concur with the report of the select committee, we thank those who were involved in that process, and we continue at this, the second reading, to commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to begin by commending the current Minister for Courts, and the former Minister, on bringing this important legislation to the House. It’s an issue that this House has been petitioned on in the past. This bill, at its face, is very much about addressing the serious delays in the coronial system, but, at its heart, it is about being respectful of the grief process that many families go through, and we did hear from those families at the Justice Committee.

It’s also about community safety. I do remember in 2015 when three members of a Southland family passed away: eventually, their deaths were attributed to a faulty kettle which was actually in 66,000 Kiwi homes. It remained for sale until The Warehouse voluntarily withdrew them seven months after the event, but had The Warehouse waited for the coroner’s findings, the kettles would’ve been sold for another two years. So there are very important public safety reasons here at play as well for us making these changes.

The Minister himself has spoken to the recommended changes from select committee, so I won’t do that. However, I will commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I take a call on the Coroners Amendment Bill, which was referred to the select committee on 30 August 2022. My National Party colleagues who were members participating in that—the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Mark Mitchell, and Simon O’Connor—my colleague Chris Penk, and I are carrying the banner for the National Party as this bill is about to be passed from the second reading through to committee of the whole House and the third reading this evening.

It does have the support of the National Party, although there has been a minority view expressed within the Justice Committee report indicating what my colleague has spoken to. And I do acknowledge Minister Tirikatene in the House. It is indeed an honour to stand and speak before my former colleague from the Māori Affairs Committee and former chair. So congratulations, Minister, in carrying this through its passage and into the making of law this evening. The differing view that has been espoused by the National Party is in relation to the investigation of sudden deaths, including the circumstances of death. So, although I didn’t participate in the submissions and the discussion that happened at select committee, in my former life I did appear in the coronial court, I did appear at inquests, so I do have some lived experience as a practitioner, but also as a family member for persons who have gone through the process of the coronial court system and the impact that it does have in terms of delays.

I picked up a book during recess and I did a touch of reading. I haven’t gone through all of it. It’s written by Wallace Bain, who for 28 years gave service as a coroner and retired in early 2020. This book—there’s a relevant significant part—is called A Coroner Speaks for the Dead to Protect the Living. Really important; that’s the importance of the coroner’s court where we have persons who are grieving, bereaved family members, getting to the crux, getting to the heart of finding out what the causes of death were, suspicious or otherwise. And there’s an important part—speaking to the National Party’s particular view that’s taken. Mr Bain has stated that the Coroners Act, its first purpose is to establish (1) that a person has died; (2) the person’s identity; (3) when and where the person has died; (4) the causes of death; and (5) the circumstances of the death. This bill does address that in terms of the process and ensuring that there’s unnecessary delay associated with the overload on the whole of the court system, in particular the coroner’s court system.

Mr Bain further goes on to say, “The second purpose is to make specified recommendations or comments that, in the coroner’s opinion, may, if drawn to public attention, reduce the chances of the occurrence of other deaths in circumstances similar to those in which the death occurred. It is in this area surrounding the circumstances of a death that a coroner and the coroner’s court provide a very significant role for society and are able to meet the ever increasing demands of our complex society as it cries out for the truth”—cries out for the truth—“surrounding the circumstances of death.” So that’s the whole heart and crux of the concern that is in the minority view by the National Party, which will be debated further under the Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House. So I thought it important to highlight that because that is a statement that has come from one of our longest-serving, most distinguished, and experienced coroners, Wallace Bain.

So, on that note, this coronial system is about ensuring that there is no prolonged suffering for the members, to ensure that it is in better heart, and that there are no ongoing coronial events associated with these delays, and making sure that the whole system gets pumping, is much healthier and upbeat in how it services our community. On that note, for the second reading, I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I too commend this bill to the House. We have a system that is groaning under the weight of the work that it has done. We have not enough coroners and we have too complex a procedure. This bill addresses both of those things. I commend the Minister for bringing it forward. I commend my friend the chair of the Justice Committee and the members of the Justice Committee for working it through, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to join colleagues from around the House in congratulating the Minister in his new role and for shepherding this bill through the House. This is a simple and practical bill and we support it. It solves problems of delay and stress on the coronial system for those who work in it, and families affected after a death of their love.

A lot of the issues have been canvassed around the House. I’m not on the Justice Committee, but I was reflecting on some of the words of the Minister in terms of what the select committee did—and I support it—where they were changing the wording around recording the cause of death as “unascertained natural causes where no further investigation or inquiry is necessary”. And I think the wording that he had—and, people in the Justice Committee, please correct me—is to change that wording to “natural causes without intent”. I was just reflecting on that because, you know, those words are very small. They are small changes in words, but I know—and maybe all of us know—that when someone passes or when groups of people pass, and you don’t know exactly what are the causes of their passing, as well, words become very important. And if you have words which are open to all sorts of other types of interpretation, that can just compound the grief and compound the intense pressure of the grieving process. So I do want to commend the select committee for finding other ways to say that, or other ways which would actually help to be focused on the families, be focused on those who have been left behind.

I want to acknowledge the comments that have been made about the coronial system, which is overworked and under pressure and under stress, and those very real delays in the coronial process and how that impacts upon people as well.

I do want to reflect and recall and mihi to Metiria Turei, who first brought the coronial inquiry when she was in Parliament, and it is good to see that the Minister and the previous Minister, as well, have been carrying this work with the expectation that this will help families, and help those of us who are left behind, through that grieving process, as well, but also trying to help the coronial system get better. And so, on that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the new Minister for the coronial courts. Rino Tirikatene, you’ve inherited a lot and it’s a pleasure to see you sitting here for this the second reading of what is a very important bill that the ACT Party intend to continue to support.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleagues in the Justice Committee, the officials that helped us navigate through some of the more—I don’t know—the wording—

💬 Teanau Tuiono: The wording.

—the wording of the bill, and also to the submitters. There were over 2,500 submissions, and we heard from 35 others who gave oral submissions as well. We worked through, with the Justice Committee and the officials, those areas that the submitters had raised with us, and we’ve gone on to change some of that wording within the bill as a result of their concerns. More and more, I hear from communities that they feel they aren’t listened to when they submit on bills, with their concerns. And I hope that the changes that we’ve made in this bill reiterates the importance of people actually submitting, giving public views on bills, so that we can make changes to make our legislation tighter and relevant to the communities it’s going to affect. So, again, I acknowledge the public’s input.

There’s quite a backlog within the coroner’s courts. It has grown over the years, especially as the number of coronial investigations has also grown. Once a coroner starts an investigation or an inquiry, then the delays, of course, become longer. This bill addresses those delays in the coroner’s court, delays that were first identified back in 2014. That was over nine years ago. ACT supported the Government’s changes last year, the ones that introduce room for appointment of more coroners to also help the system. At the time, we were sceptical that the ability to appoint only two more coroners wasn’t enough to address the issues. We were told that another significant change was coming, and here it is.

That increase of coroners was the first step in addressing the coronial delays. This bill now allows for associate coroners to help with the administrative workloads, and we’re happy to support these changes that continue to address and relieve the pressure on both the coroner’s courts and also the families.

When a coroner looks into a case, they can make recommendations, and those recommendations are often an attempt to identify and bring to the attention of officials and the public areas of concern that may need addressing. Concerns remain until determinations are made, and, at times, the weight has been known to be over half a decade or more. Recommendations are important. If an investigation or inquiry is held, then those recommendations are released in an effort to stop dangerous practices from happening again. So the sooner the coroner can investigate and conclude, the sooner the families have relief, and any potential recommendations can then be made public.

This doesn’t mean we rushed through coronial hearings—not at all. It means they get processed in a timely and respectful way towards the families. If we can do that, we can give families closure while working on decreasing the backlog. This bill will allow associate coroners to be established within the coronial system. They would be given similar powers, functions, and duties of a coroner. What they won’t be able to do is hold an inquest; nor will they be able to decide that an inquest is necessary. In return, the coroners will be able to spend more time on complex cases or investigating, on questioning, or on determining causes of death.

We heard from submitters who are concerned about clause 10 of this bill, where the proposal was to add a section that would allow a coroner to record the death as being from “unascertained natural causes”. Officials assured us that this determination would only be made where they were satisfied that the death was the result of natural causes based on evidence that they had already collected and that no further investigation would therefore need to be required. Many of the submitters were worried that this particular clause would result in less thorough inquiries into some deaths. The officials assured us that the use of this clause is intended to be for circumstances where there is evidence already available that would point to a person’s natural death. For example, an elderly person aged in their nineties with known heart conditions who then, say, drops dead on the bowling green unexpectedly—they can have the coroner declare that their death was from natural causes because they had evidence to show that was the likely cause.

However, the concerns from the community were noted and, as such, we changed the wording of clause 10 to reflect the submissions and discussions that we had on it. We’re therefore changing the wording from “unascertained natural causes” to “presumed natural causes without investigation”. The coroner will need to be satisfied that all the evidence he has in front of him shows that the likelihood that a person has died from natural causes is enough for him to declare that the death is of natural causes and that the coroner doesn’t need any further investigation or evidence to make that determination. ACT have agreed to this change in the bill as we believe it is better wording to be used.

However, we have the same concerns as our colleagues in the National Party that one person alone—namely, the coroner—shouldn’t be left to make such a decision as it’s ultimately shortcutting the process which could be detrimental to public interest. Hence, ACT will be supporting our colleague’s Supplementary Order Paper 327 in the next stage of this bill.

We are amending section 77 of the Act to ensure that the coroner considers the views of interested parties as well as relevant factors and information that has been presented by those parties when holding an inquiry on the papers, so to speak, rather than as an inquest. Any interested party can express their view that an inquest is warranted and present evidence for this, and that evidence must be considered.

We outlined in the bill that an associate coroner cannot determine if an inquest should be held and that if on the papers they believe there should be an inquest, then they are to refer that to the Chief Coroner. But, in the interests of time, we can’t expect the Chief Coroner to look at every single case like this in a timely manner, where an interested party considers that an inquest is required, so we’ve made an amendment that when the Chief Coroner receives advice from the associate coroner that an inquest is recommended, the case can then be assigned to another coroner for timely consideration.

Amendments have been made to give the associate coroners the same immunities that coroners have. That’s a bit of a no-brainer. If we’re expecting them to undertake so many of the same duties and functions of a coroner, we should make sure they have access to the same types of powers. In saying that, they will also be subject to the same complaints and removal regime that the coroners currently face. Therefore, the bill has been amended to also reflect that.

Finally, an important part of this bill is for the families out there. We heard you when you told us—sorry, I’m just speaking to the families. We heard the families when they told us that coroners are often unavailable to assist families to tidy up a deceased person’s affairs—accessing and closing bank accounts, dealing with life insurance agencies. Generally getting one’s affairs in order cannot happen without either a death certificate or a certificate of interim findings. When coroners are so busy, they struggle to complete these really important documents for the families. An amendment has been made which will allow another coroner to issue the certificate for the families instead of those families having to wait on the availability of their assigned coroner.

We hope that these agreed amendments assist not only the coronial courts to catch up but gives families some certainty that they won’t be facing year upon year of waiting for hearings, for outcomes, and for closure. And, in that respect, ACT supports this bill.

First, I’d like to acknowledge all the families who have interfaced with suicide: it has affected so many New Zealand families, including my own. I’d also like to acknowledge Corinda Taylor and the work of my predecessor Clare Curran in this space.

What this bill doesn’t do is it doesn’t change an inquisitorial system that has somehow become adversarial—and it doesn’t change the levels of legal support. But the bill goes a long way to increasing access to justice for families in terms of the four changes around coronial associates, natural causes, the discretion regarding inquests, and the focus on cause rather than circumstances. So I acknowledge Corinda Taylor and Life Matters Suicide Prevention Trust; I hope that you can take some comfort in the fact that your work in this area has made a huge difference. I commend this bill to the House.

Can I actually echo what the member Ingrid Leary has said: Corinda’s actually been a very strong advocate over many years on a number of issues, including this one. I’m very happy to support this bill, and in order to show some, I don’t know, amity to the House so that a coroner’s report doesn’t say that people were bored to death, I’ll end my speech there.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and like the other contributions in the House this evening, I would like to support this bill, the Coroners Amendment Bill. I know that the Justice Committee is a very thorough select committee in this House—and from across the House, as well—and can I acknowledge the members.

The Coroners Amendment Bill will amend the Coroners Act 2006 to facilitate better access to justice for families and whānau interacting with the coronial system. We support this bill, and I commend it to the House.

Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. It’s always a privilege to speak in the House. Tonight, I speak on the Coroners Amendment Bill. Like other speakers have, I acknowledge the leadership of the new Minister, the Hon Rino Tirikatene, who has taken over this bill from the Hon Aupito William Sio and is shepherding it through the House.

I acknowledge that the Justice Committee has made a few changes. I have just recently joined the committee so I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the important work that coroners do, as they are one of the final people who actually see the tūpāpaku before the family has an opportunity to say their goodbyes. On that note, I’d like to commend the Coroners Amendment Bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak, briefly, on the Coroners Amendment Bill. The National Party supports this bill. This will, we believe, help to achieve reduced waiting times, which is a step in the right direction. However, some caution is needed, as making public recommendations is a vital role of the coronial system and we do not believe shortcuts should be made in this area. Recruiting suitable candidates with the required level of experience and an interest in specialising will likely be difficult, due to a limited pool of qualified candidates. It’s certainly something we’re seeing right across our country at the moment—is this shortage of available workers, no matter what industry, and this is, unfortunately, one of those. It’s important that we also have good health data, and we don’t want to see those compromised with more findings of unascertained natural causes, as that data is used to inform our decision making in health programmes and is currently considered of high quality, and we want to see that continue. So, with that, I will take my seat, but say that we do support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I support this bill because it reduces the time it takes for cases to move through the coronial process, and it frees up coroners’ time to work on reducing the number of active cases. May I finish the contributions in this House tonight on this reading of the bill by thanking the petitioners to the Justice Committee for speaking with us about the issues within the coronial system. You have made a difference. We have heard your call for change. This bill goes some way to doing that. May I also thank the Minister Rino Tirikatene and his predecessor, the Hon Aupito William Sio, for taking up the challenge to improve the process. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The Coroners Amendment Bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Coroners Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 to 3