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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3396 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

members of the Assembly regard it if we thwarted the due process that the coroner needs to embark upon? What would members say about the government in those circumstances? We can all imagine.

Yet this is the situation that arises here, but in reverse. The government has indicated that it is prepared for an inquiry: it is quite prepared to face the implications of an inquiry, with the good and the bad that comes out of such a process. It is prepared to support and to fund the necessary work of any inquiry, but it wishes to make sure that the other process laid down under law are not in any way thwarted or frustrated.

We have, in those circumstances, to take the advice and consider the views of the person whose responsibility it is to conduct such coronial inquiries. The Chief Coroner of the ACT, who also happens to be the Chief Magistrate, has made the position extremely clear. I will give you an example of the problem that might arise in those circumstances. An inquiry is conducted in such a way as to cause certain witnesses to be called to give evidence. Those witnesses, as I understand it, may be compelled to give that evidence.

The same witnesses could be compelled to give evidence to the coroner. The coroner may be coming to those witnesses after the inquirer has come to those witnesses. Is the coroner coming second to that evidence obliged to take notice of what has been already said in the earlier Inquiries Act inquiry? What if the evidence has been in some way corrupted by earlier having been elicited by the inquiry under the Inquiries Act?

Let me make it absolutely clear: there is the potential for the coroner's work to be thwarted, frustrated or corrupted by a concurrent inquiry under another process. This is not the first time the Assembly has faced this situation. Members will recall that, immediately after the implosion of the Royal Canberra Hospital, the government considered that the issues given rise to by that incident were of such gravity that there ought to be an immediate and full board of inquiry under the Inquiries Act. Indeed, the government moved to appoint a person to conduct that inquiry soon after the implosion on 13 July 1997.

Members will also recall that, shortly after that process began, the Chief Coroner, consistent with his views on this occasion, said to the government and to the person on the board of inquiry, that the potential for the inquiry to cut across the coronial process, which had arisen as a result of the death of Katie Bender, was significant and that the Inquiries Act inquiry should not proceed.

I want to read from a letter that the board of inquiry-Major General Neville Smethurst-sent to the then Chief Minister on 26 August 1997, in which he made reference to the views of the Chief Coroner and the Chief Magistrate on the question of a board of inquiry and a coronial process in conflict.

Mr Cahill had written to Major General Smethurst earlier and I quote from the letter:

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