Coroners Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Coroners Amendment Bill. I move, That the Coroners Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m pleased to see this bill reach its third reading today, with constructive contributions from across the House. The issues that the bill seeks to address have been well canvassed. We all recognise that the coronial system is under pressure; the number of active coronial cases and the average time taken to conclude these cases has increased in recent years. Most significantly, grieving families and whānau are facing distress from the increasing length of time they spend waiting to receive coronial findings. This bill aims to reduce the distress while ensuring the public interest in reducing the chances of further deaths occurring in similar circumstances continues to be well served by the coronial system. To achieve this, the bill makes some targeted amendments to the Coroners Act. These are intended to reduce the time it takes for certain types of cases to move through the coronial process and free up more coroner’s time to work on reducing the number of active coronial cases.

The bill will establish the new judicial position of associate coroner, and associate coroners will be able to exercise all the functions, powers, and duties of a coroner except for deciding that an inquest is necessary or holding inquests. This will help to free up coroners so they can work on more complex cases. The bill will also clarify that coroners may record the cause of death as presumed natural causes, where appropriate. This provision only applies to a limited subcategory of cases, namely cases where an inquiry is not opened because the coroner is satisfied that the death can be presumed to be from natural causes. In such cases, the coroner’s decision is based on their assessment of the evidence. The coroner must also be satisfied that there is nothing in the evidence to suggest that further investigation by a coroner is required. This amendment is intended to enable families and whānau to receive a coroner’s findings sooner, where it is appropriate to do so. The bill also enables coroners to hold a coronial inquiry solely on the papers if they consider that an inquest is not required.

Finally, the bill will enable coroners to issue written findings with the cause of death only and not the broader circumstances where the coroner considers that there is no public interest in reducing the chances of further deaths occurring in similar circumstances. This amendment is an administrative change that will help to streamline the process to write up and publish findings. It does not reduce how thoroughly a death is required to be investigated prior to the findings being issued.

This is an important piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge, again, the contributions from the Justice Committee and their very helpful amendments to the bill. They certainly have improved and refined the language and the provisions of the legislation. I want to also extend my appreciation to all of the many submitters who provided input into the bill, especially through the select committee process. The Justice Committee did recommend several changes and, as I’ve mentioned, they have been largely adopted and they have helped to improve and enhance the bill. I want to thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office, the Office of the Clerk, the Ministry of Justice for their advice throughout, and to my predecessor, my colleague the Hon Aupito William Sio, who first brought this bill to the House.

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. Just as I conclude my speech at this third reading, I know the subject matter of this bill can be quite heavy, I know we are talking about deaths and various aspects, and so just as is customary in the Māori World, I’d like to just wrap up my contribution as we will go on to pass this legislation, just to say apiti hono, tātai hono; ko te hunga mate ki te hunga mate. Apiti hono, tātai hono; ko te hunga ora ki te hunga ora—so we bind together through ancestral links those that have passed on, the dead with the dead, and we bind together through ancestral links us here, the living with the living. With that, I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for a very thoughtful contribution. We’ve gone throughout the debate in the House tonight emphasising, of course, legal aspects. I think it’s rather nice that the Minister has introduced a spiritual aspect, to which I might continue with an emotional and also practical aspect when we, importantly, consider the real-life impact on those who are affected by sudden death such as the coroner would be investigating.

Of course, it’s right that we consider very carefully the wording of the bill and the technical aspects. But also it is worth acknowledging, as the Minister has effectively done, the true human cost to people when they lose a life suddenly—whether that ultimately is proven to be for natural or non-natural causes.

The emotional aspect, I suppose, is the closure that is eventually able to be obtained—at least to some extent; at least to the extent possible—when one grieves by the fact that the coroner will come up with some manner of finding, be it by a process that’s on the papers or otherwise.

Then the practical considerations, as others have mentioned, might relate to estate administration. They might also relate to the status of a person close to the deceased as a victim—in the victim support and resource sense of that phrase. It might be relevant to a life insurance claim or other relevant practical aspect. So they’re important reasons that we want the coronial process to go well, to go smoothly, and also to go quickly, or at least in a timely fashion. I don’t mean to suggest there would ever be undue haste, but of course at the moment our system is beset by difficulties very much at the opposite end of the spectrum.

So we must do anything that we can to help. And in that spirit, the National Party has supported this legislation. The National Party has also actually, for the record, supported the various other measures and initiatives by this Government over the last 5½ years in the court space, whereby reform of existing court and tribunal structures has been suggested. We’ll continue in that spirit for the next six months. After that, we would welcome the reverse from the other side when they are perhaps in our shoes. But, in any case, that’s a political comment that need not be dwelt upon further.

So I’ve written to the Minister; I’ve assured him in writing of our ongoing bipartisan support for anything that will improve the situation of the court system. It’s something of a briefing to the incoming Minister—it’s not the official sense of that phrase, but for what it’s worth, I’ve been very happy to outline what we see as the problems. We’ll work together on the solutions. In the context of this bill, we’ve said that the underlying purpose is a worthy one—which is to add to the capacity for coronial duties to be undertaken.

Of course, the mechanism is by the coronial associate position being created. Another option would be to provide more coroners, perhaps by removing the cap on the number of coroners—and I don’t quite understand why that should exist elsewhere in legislation. But the fact that it’s elsewhere in legislation is, of course, meaning that we don’t need to delve further into it today.

But looking at the problem as a whole, there are a number of different solutions. This is at least one option. It’s a good option as far as it goes, and I’d be remiss not to at least mention in passing the discussion that we’ve had at the second reading and then committee of the whole House stage in relation to those circumstances of death. I just place on record that we would hope that there wouldn’t be any pattern of deaths—perhaps deaths of a certain nature or a particular category—that would go unremarked in the sense of having their circumstances fail to be reported. I don’t suggest for a moment that that would be the intent of the legislation, and I’m sure no individual coroner would wish that to be the case. But I do state for the record, again, our reservation about allowing a coroner—well, actually requiring the coroner—not to make such a report if they consider it in the interest of justice not to do so.

So, with that, in summary, we support the bill. We’ll support any measures that improve the lives of New Zealanders and those whom they leave behind bereaving, and commend this bill at this third and final reading.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to thank the Minister the Hon Rino Tirikatene for his time in the chair. I do take the point made by my colleague Chris Penk in his Supplementary Order Paper 327, but I believe the Minister is correct that coroners are in a sound position to be making that judgment in respect to that public interest test. The Justice Committee has a very full agenda, but I believe, for those of us who were there during the hearing of the petition, that it’s not a submission that we will forget lightly, nor are the submissions made on this bill. I believe that that is a powerful statement about the voices of individuals and the voices of community in impacting the legislation in this House, and I would very much like to commend this bill to the House.

I was remiss in my second reading speech, as fast as it was, to actually acknowledge the Minister, and not only because I haven’t actually had the chance, Minister Tirikatene. It has a wonderful ring about it to actually acknowledge you in taking on the role and in this role here, and to acknowledge too what my colleague Chris Penk had said about the speed—which is not a surprise, actually—with which you’ve picked up and articulated the issues here tonight. So thank you for that.

Look, as far as I understand it, we’re all in support of this bill. I think we can all see the need; there’s always the political element to this. We would, on this side of the House, rightly stress that we feel the court system in general is getting a bit out of control, but I’m going to try and be ultra-nice. It’s the—

💬 Vanushi Walters: Yes.

I know—I shock myself occasionally. Actually, there is pressure there, and this is a good example of not only the Government but the Parliament stepping in to try and make things better. At the heart of it, it was, ultimately, what the previous speaker, Vanushi Walters, just touched on, which is actually a heartfelt, passionate, but articulate and rationale petition which has moved us to this situation—moved us both rationally and emotionally, I would suggest. A big part of it is to create this new role of associate coroner.

The long and short of it for the people at home: there are more individuals with at least five years - plus of legal—I think it’s barrister, or barrister sole. Look, I’ll leave that to the lawyers, to someone who’s got decent legal experience—as I look across to Emily Henderson at this moment. But it’s someone with good legal experience who can kick in and assist in the coroner’s role, and that’s a positive thing. A number of families, certainly in my own family—and the Minister will know this through his own electorate work—not only struggle with the loss of a loved one, which can be a shock; they struggle, often, with not fully understanding the how and why and they want a quick resolution, and when it takes weeks, months, and, sadly, into years, that becomes a major, major issue. So this is a really positive step forward.

I will say I would have liked to have seen that earlier Supplementary Order Paper brought in. I think it’s always in the public interest. For reasons to be explained that I don’t fully understand—I don’t think it’s anything to completely stop the bill by any means. But, actually, I think it is always in the public interest, if only for the sake of statistics, that we have a better understanding of why someone has passed, even if it is, let’s say, strictly an educated guess by the associate coroner. That is still better than simply saying the person is deceased, but it’s not in the public interest to say why, and, to illustrate it really, really simply, the length of time it requires an associate coroner to say it’s not in the public interest is about the same time they could write down what they believe to be the understanding.

Look, I have to say, even just from personal experience, as odd as it sounds, I helped an epidemiological team in Fiji, when I was there, go through the death records and work out reasons why people had passed or not. It could be a shock to some people that old age was noted by some people without coronial experience. An arthritic knee was also a reason for death, which is also a bit of a surprise to me. The fact that a shark ate someone—that was not a surprise. I thought that was one of the coronial highlights in Fiji; not for the person involved, of course, but in terms of a coronial document in epidemiology. But, on that, I continue to be happy to commend the bill to the House.

I want to take my final brief call on this bill to do as the Minister did, and as previous speakers have done, and mihi to the people who are at the heart of this matter, who are whānau of the deceased and who have struggled with the huge delays in the system. I want to mihi particularly to those who came before us at the select committee and thank you for your bravery, your courage, and your grace in bringing you difficult lived experience in the coronial court before us. We hope that what we are doing will help to alleviate the suffering of other whānau. Thank you for your service. I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. As has been acknowledged by many of those who’ve risen to speak tonight before me, this is a pretty simple and practical piece of legislation, in that it seeks to undertake, particularly as outlined by many colleagues, the new position of the coronial associate, who is able to take forward some of that more straightforward work in this space. It is also enabling coroners to hold coronial inquiries solely in the chambers, where appropriate and where a full inquest in court is not needed, and enabling, of course, written findings to be issued stating cause of death only and not necessarily the circumstances, where they consider that there is no public interest in making findings as to the broader circumstances, as well as enabling the recording of cause of death as “ascertained natural causes” when no further investigation or inquiry is necessary, which better reflects current practice. To that effect, of course, the Greens support this legislation, as people would have heard throughout the other speeches in the other stages of this bill tonight.

One of the core things, though, that I did want to touch on—because, of course, it’s not contained within this legislation. I was just talking to my colleague Nicole McKee, on the other side of the political spectrum. We found ourselves, actually, on Budget night last year, working through a process—and I also want to acknowledge our members from the National Party, who are also engaged in this process—in what it might look like to provide greater resourcing and increase in coronial numbers, particularly, potentially, the likes of a ratio of coroners to head a population, because, if I recall correctly, I believe that we’re increasing the numbers by two or—

💬 Chris Penk: Yeah.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —five or so? Two?

💬 Chris Penk: Two—the fulltime-equivalent.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: I’m being aided by the member Chris Penk—two. But that, of course, puts us in a situation where, per that Budget night legislation, we will continue having to amend the primary legislation as much as we want to continue increasing those numbers of coroners and therefore the resourcing for them. So, again, a bit of another practical opportunity to increase the efficacy and the resourcing of the system unfortunately missed. But none the less, I’m putting that point on the record, hoping that moving forward with the consensus that we’re finding in the Chamber tonight, there is an opportunity for us to do something like that moving forward, because this is something which touches the lives and, obviously—very obviously—the deaths of many New Zealanders.

To that effect, I wanted to acknowledge Corinda Taylor and the Life Matters Suicide Prevention Trust from down South, in Dunedin. I first had the privilege of meeting them several years ago, in one of my first years here in this place, when they brought a petition to Parliament asking for a fairer, more equitable, and more effective coronial system that didn’t leave, as another colleague was referencing before, many bereaved families—particularly, suicide-bereaved families—in a situation where they were waiting at times years and feeling as though they themselves were being treated as though they were under suspicion throughout those processes. So just putting that on the record that this is one step towards that justice.

Also, acknowledging the chronology and history of how we got to this place, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the process as undertaken in former iterations of this Parliament, such as in the 2018 tabled select committee inquiry at, I believe, the Māori Affairs Committee. This was initially instigated by our former co-leader Metiria Turei, then picked up by Marama Davidson, with the Government then going on to accept a number of the recommendations, particularly around supporting grieving whānau accessing and managing the deceased bodies of their loved ones.

I commend this bill to the House, but I’ve got to say there’s more mahi to do. So I’m hoping that with the consensus, as I said before, that we’ve found in the House tonight, we can pick up once again those debates and discussions that we had on Budget night at the beginning of last year, and continue to improve the system and the processes for all moving forward. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand in this third and final reading of the Coroners Amendment Bill, again in support of this bill going through. At the beginning of the second reading, I acknowledged the new Minister for Courts, the Hon Rino Tirikatene, and I’d like to, in this third reading, acknowledge the former Minister for Courts the Hon Aupito William Sio, because he did quite a bit of work, work that has been needed for a very long time. So I’d like to start off by acknowledging his efforts in this space that got this bill under way.

We’re going to have not only additional coroners—the two—but now associate coroners to help take the workload. I did once upon a time in my youth—it was many, many years ago, but my very first full-time job ever after leaving school was working in a law firm called East Brewster, in Rotorua. It was the late Paul East’s father who had established that business with Roger Brewster, and Roger Brewster was the coroner in Rotorua. As a young 17-, 18-, 19-year-old, I was under his guidance and was his secretary pulling together a lot of the coronial work. Some of it was really quite disturbing. It was so disturbing that when I turned 20, I used to wonder why I’d go home and cry at night, and I realised it was the type of work that I was doing. I can only imagine what some of those families were feeling.

What I felt at the time was the pressure of so many different cases. But to now think back that at least we got through those cases in a reasonable time, and to know that there are families out there that have been waiting so many years, it must be absolutely devastating for them. So to be able to put this bill through, to help them get through their personal situations, can only be good—good for the families, good for the justice system, and good for the service that we try to offer those families as well.

By supporting this bill, we are assisting in reducing the amount of time that those families have to wait, and that means that they can move on. By making changes, we also expect that there will be not such long delays in being able to have families close off certain things while they’re going through the coronial process, and that’s where I spoke earlier of the certificates of interim findings and how important it is. We’ve heard how families have asked coroners to give them a certificate, but the coroner’s been away, the coroner has moved somewhere else for a couple of months, or the coroner will come back to them and just simply doesn’t have time. The new clauses that we’ve put into this bill means that the Chief Coroner can appoint another coroner to give that certificate of interim finding for those families while the coroner that’s been assigned the case is busy doing something else.

Again, I’m going to reflect on a personal experience here. It wasn’t violent, but my stepfather passed away suddenly in a marae kitchen, and that meant that he had to go through the coronial process. My mother, as you can understandably accept, was very, very upset about what had happened and at having to go through the process, but, at the same time, she was getting letters from IRD demanding that he was overdue for payments for child support. My mother kept trying to contact the IRD to tell them that he had passed, but because she couldn’t produce a death certificate, they kept sending these letters over and over again. It was very distressing for my mother. She eventually replied, sending them to the plot that he was buried in, but we had to, effectively, wait to be able to get these interim findings to be able to put that at rest, and I again reflect that that was only a short period of time compared to what some families are waiting for now.

These certificates are essential to help families close bank accounts, to start insurance processes, and potentially to even stop agencies like the IRD from courses of action because there was no proof that could be provided that a person is deceased. There is assurance now that the associate coroners will have the same immunities as coroners, while, at the same time, they will also have the same responsibilities as a coroner and be answerable in the same way.

We’ve amended a clause that allowed a coroner to record some deaths that eventually show a person’s passing was from natural causes. It is not to be recorded as an unascertained natural cause, because that’s like an oxymoron in itself, but, rather, presumed natural causes without investigation. At this time, I reiterate to submitters that where further investigations are required, they will happen, and that this clause is only to be used where the evidence available already points to a natural death.

I’d like to take the opportunity once again to thank my Justice Committee colleagues, the officials who walked us really well through the complexities of this bill, and the 2,500 submitters who took the time to write in to us with their views, wanting to be heard. We have heard them. May those that are sitting within the system have speed so that they can go through and finish off the passing of their families and move on themselves. ACT commends this bill to the House.

Thank you. At this third and final reading, it is consensus in the House for this bill to be passed into law. When I have previously spoken in the House both on this bill and the Coroners (Coronial Cap) Amendment Bill back in 2022, I reiterated that justice delayed is justice denied. So, with the passage of this bill, hopefully, justice will no further be denied to the families of the bereaved—the bereaved and the deceased who are the subjects of the coronial court. In closing, as when I opened with the second reading of this bill, to quote Wallace Bain, a coroner speaks for the dead to protect the living.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.