Page 3298 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 1994
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CORONERS (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1993
Debate resumed from 16 December 1993, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.37): Madam Speaker, I am pleased to indicate my party's support for the Coroners (Amendment) Bill (No. 2). Members will recall the debate earlier this morning about the report of the Legal Affairs Committee on this Bill. On behalf of the committee, I indicate that we are pleased with the general support that the Government has given to the thrust of the recommendations and its intention to put forward an amendment, which has been circulated, which will improve that element of the legislation that deals with the making available of evidence to members of the families of those who have died, to allow them to see what the process is producing and what it means to them.
Madam Speaker, as has been indicated, this Bill implements, at least in part, the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. There are some references in the legislation to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. The committee made a recommendation concerning the width of application of the provisions in this legislation to that community. However, it is probably a mistake to see this simply as being about Aboriginal people in custody. It is much broader than that. The legislation is about coronial processes. I think it is true to say, despite our recommendation, that the legislation applies recommendations from the royal commission to all people in the ACT who have contact with this process. For example, it deals with the way in which the coroner will conduct an inquest or an inquiry into a death in custody, and it makes little distinction between an Aboriginal person and a non-Aboriginal person who might be unfortunate enough to be in that position. The only significant difference between those two communities is that, in the case of an Aboriginal person, the Aboriginal Legal Service is also to be informed of the proceedings so that that organisation may, if necessary, take some role in that inquiry or have some input into dealing with the recommendations that arise from that inquiry.
There is a capacity to have the Attorney-General deal with the recommendations and findings of those sorts of inquiries. He or she then has the power to implement those and make recommendations to the Government about improvements to the proceedings where, for example, people are held in custody in our gaols or holding cells. Generally there is a capacity there to deal swiftly with problems that emerge. As I indicated on a previous occasion, the ACT has been fortunate in not having any recorded cases of Aboriginal persons dying in custody. That is a very proud record, which we should be guarding jealously. I think that the adoption, in broad terms, of the recommendations of the royal commission goes a very long way down the path of making sure that we will be in that position.
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