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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3395 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The government has other obligations and, indeed, we would argue that the members of the Assembly have other obligations as well in this debate. The government has always expressed clearly its concern about the implications of an inquiry under the Inquiries Act for the proper conduct of the coronial function exercised by the coroner.

There are three deaths which, it has been alleged, are related to systemic failings and problems with ACT Disability Services. The coroner is in the process-as members who attended the round table meeting yesterday would be aware-of beginning the inquiry into each of those three deaths. Members will be aware that such inquiries are commenced by a police investigation, which in turn leads to a full process of hearing evidence by the coroner-in most cases at least-the formulation of findings, and the tabling of a report.

The coronial process is a very old process. It has been used probably thousands of times in the ACT, and the coroner who has been commissioned by the Chief Coroner to conduct these particular inquiries, Mr Michael Somes, is a very experienced coroner sitting on the ACT Magistrates Court.

The government consulted with the Chief Coroner about the implications of having an Inquiries Act inquiry for the coronial process, and the information he gave to the government, and which he repeated at the round table yesterday, was that he saw a real potential for an Inquiries Act inquiry to cut across the work that the coroner would perform. He believed that there would be a conflict potentially between the work that the coroner would do and the work that the inquiry would do under the Inquiries Act.

Let us remember that the inquiry under the Inquiries Act is not an ordinary inquiry of the kind that might be conducted by a designated public servant or by an Assembly committee, for example, or by some other process where somebody is asked to review a particular area. This is not the same kind of inquiry.

An inquiry under the Inquiries Act has at least a semijudicial, if not a fully judicial, status. It is conducted with extensive powers. These are powers that allow the inquiry to call evidence before the inquiry and, indeed, to compel people in certain circumstances to provide evidence before that inquiry.

That is a matter that clearly puts it at a level above other sorts of inquiries. It is also, therefore, of the same nature as an inquiry under the Coroners Act. The Chief Coroner, who made it clear that he had no concern about the idea of there being some investigation of the issues that has been referred to in Mr Wood's motion, made it clear that the decision about whether to conduct an inquiry under the Inquiries Act was not for him to make.

Nonetheless, he made it crystal clear both in a letter, and verbally to members of the Assembly who attended that round table meeting, that there was grave danger in conducting an inquiry that would cut across a coronial inquiry that was already under way.

I ask members to imagine what the situation would be if there were to be a matter into which we were seeking an inquiry, and we commenced an inquiry into a particular matter in such a way as to frustrate the work of a coroner in another matter. How would

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