cultural practices are followed. I am happy to support this bill to
the select committee and I
commend to it the House. This is now a split
select committee and I commend to it the House. This is now a split call,
It is a privilege... At the
recommendation of the Maori
Affairs select committee, this bill amends
section 26 of the Coroners Act
2006 to provide the explicit
requirement that coroners consider tikanga Maori
and other
and other cultures when determining who can view, touch or remain near a
dead body in the custody of the
coroner. Why is
dead body in the custody of the
I want to talk about a bit of background because in New Zealand
the majority of deaths
are actually certified by a doctor and then
the body remains in the custody
of the family. In about
body remains in the custody of the
happens if the death is unexpected or sudden or if the doctor is
unable to determine the
cause of death, then it gets referred by the police
to the coroner. Then the coroner
makes an assessment about whether he
into this further. If they do decide to look into the death, they need
to confirm the identity of the person
who has passed
away and also establish the cause of death. In
doing so, what they also need
to consider is whether a
doing so, what they also need to
necessary to identify why the person died. While this is quite
a routine process from the police
from a coronial point of view, from
a whanau point of view it is
a particularly devastating
particularly devastating process because it comes completely out of
the blue and at a
very, very difficult time. One of the ahs that
particularly concerning that featured in a lot of
submissions to the select committee was in the case
of sudden, unexpected death in
infancy or SUDI. It is sudden
and unexpected by a baby that is
otherwise well. Often
these babies peak in the first few months of
life, although babies can pass away
up to one year. There is a whole lot
of known risk factors but
the essential fact of the death is that
it is unexpected. Usually
what happens is baby goes to bed and
then is found by parents or caregivers at
a later point and has passed
away. Between 2008 and 2016, of the
495 babies who did die from SUDI, 303 of
those were Maori babies. Because
of the sudden nature of these deaths
they are all referred to the
coroners. For these families,
it is actually not routine, it is a
completely devastating process
to wake up and find your
baby's passed away, to not understand what's
happened and then to turn
up and have the police coming into your
home and conducting what they think
is a routine investigation but
asking some questions which
are particularly
particularly traumatising for families. In that
context for families not to be able to stay with
the baby's body right through
the process can make a
bad situation worse. I just want to read some of
the comments from the
Maori SIDS prevention group, one of the
groups that presented a submission
to the select committee. They were talking
about their
about their experiences with families in this situation. What
they said is many families
are often completely unaware or unable
to comprehend what has happened to
their pipi. Additionally many
of these whanau are younger
parents who feel they have
already been judged as a result of them simply
being younger parents. They
went on to say,
younger parents. They went on to
significantly younger parents the system must ensure these parents and
whanau are provided with
even more support and advice than
is readily available and is accessible
and appropriate so that should
they have to deal with this
unfortunate situation whether it be from
SUDI or from
situation whether it be from SUDI or
a duty of care for families in this situation. What this bill does is it
amends section 26 of the act
to require the coroner to,
when determining whether someone
should stay with the body, to
consider tikanga Maori and the expectations
of other cultures. Currently the act
doesn't require the coroner to
take these factors into account but they
do have the discretion to do so.
Current practice is
that coroners do work with whanau to
work out what the best practice is. What
this bill, however, does, in the context
of an increasingly
multicultural society an from a treaty perspective
is it codifies best practice and I
therefore recommend
therefore recommend this bill to the House. Madam Speaker, I rise
to take a brief call on this first reading
of the Coroners (Access to Body
of Dead Person) Amendment Bill. This
bill requires lively
engagement and debate on what is a deadly serious
piece of proposed legislation. This
bill, should it continue to sustain
a life and passage
into law will require more than Royal assent. It
will require many Government cents
and dollars and
responsible sentiment and