Coroners falling behind … Long queue for inquests … Coroners under-resourced … New legislation secretly prepared even before the report of the statutory review is publicly available … Full-blooded reforms thwarted … Updated information to hand
According to the Productivity Commission, in 2015-16 NSW’s recurrent expenditure on coroners’ work was $5.8 million – half as much as Victoria and significantly less than Queensland and WA.
On average, the NSW coronial system allocates half as many staff hours to cases as the Northern Territory. The Productivity Commission finds that in Victoria the average number of appearances until a matter is complete is one-and-a-half times.
The comparable figure in New South Wales is 6.8 times. Attorney General Mark Speakman did not accept that this is “reflective of under-resourcing of the coronial jurisdiction”. He said that NSW gets through coronial cases faster than elsewhere – could that be because they are now doing so few inquests?
The AG offered an explanation on the expenditure comparison to a Legislative Council estimates committee on Tuesday (Sept. 4):
“The data about expenditure is not comparable because Victoria and Queensland have stand-alone coronial jurisdictions and all that the New South Wales cost data picks-up in that report is the cost of the Coroner and the Deputy Coroner. It does not pick-up a pro-rata cost for regional magistrates.”
Hugh Dillon, NSW’s former deputy state coroner, insists the largest state is doing coronial work “on the cheap”.
It has the second slowest clearance rates in the nation, leaving thousands of family members waiting extended periods for explanations and maybe some understanding of what happened to the deceased.
Dillon describes the coronial system as “verging on dysfunction”.
It means that the Coroner’s “Court” doesn’t have the capacity to do research or policy work on the underlying patters in untimely deaths, accompanied by robust policy proposals.
There has been a statutory review of the NSW Coroners Act by the Justice Department.
On June 19 the shadow attorney general Paul Lynch asked attorney general Mark Speakman on notice about its progress, when the review will be tabled and what amendments are proposed.
After four years, the Justice Department report has been completed but is being held back from public consumption, which suggests that there’s not much of a good news story to be found there.
At the same time there was a question about a study of the deaths from natural causes reported by the coroner, undertaken by Associate Professor Rebecca Scott Bray of the University of Sydney.
Speakman was just as tight-lipped, saying it was not commissioned by his department or the state Coroner’s Court and so he is not aware of the expected completion date.
Even though inquiries, research, reports and recommendations are in the wind, a draft Bill already has been prepared within the department, jumping the gun on wider input about the reforms believed to be necessary.
It suggests that significant new developments have been stifled at birth with responses and proposals from professionals and interested parties being locked out.
Dillon believes any new legislation ought to provide for more training.
As Justinian reported previously, the NSW Coroner’s Court is a misnomer – it isn’t an independent court at all, but a branch of the Local Court.
The coroners themselves are appointed from the pool of magistrates and the Chief Magistrate, Graeme Henson, is also anxious that the Coroner’s Court stays under his wing and not be spun-off into an independent orbit.
Magistrates, generally, are practised in the adversarial system and most don’t have advanced experience in the fields of anatomy, pathology, toxicology and psychiatry, essential components of inquests.
Country magistrates get a crash course over just two-three days before they start the job, along with a 1.5 hour talk at the country magistrates’ conference each year.
Country coroners balance that role on a part-time basis against their primary work as magistrates.
As a result most things – from the active case management procedures of an inquisitorial forum, to understanding medical diagnoses such a “massive postpartum intracerebral haemorrhage of a spontaneous hypertensive origin” – are learned on the job.
In Sydney there are only five full-time coroners. By contrast, there are nine in Victoria and eight in Queensland. New Zealand, with fewer reported deaths than Australia, has 18.
The attorney general at the Sept. 4 estimates hearing was lukewarm about a stand-alone coronial jurisdiction for NSW:
“You do not necessarily need specialised courts in particular jurisdictions. You can have, like in the domestic violence space, specialised lists rather than specialised courts. On one view you could treat the coronial jurisdiction like that as well; it has the name of Coroner’s Court and separate procedures but it is almost like a list within the Local Court …
I think to some extent while there are advantages and disadvantages of a separate coronial jurisdiction, it might be a matter of form over substance and the real question is resourcing …”
Now seems a perfect moment for change. A new complex out at sunny Lidcombe is set to host the Coroner’s Court from early next year and it would be a step in the right direction if it operated and was resourced independently.
The Commonwealth government has done some work on establishing the monetary value of lives saved. According to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet a “statistical life” is valued at $4.2 million – slightly higher than the $3.5 million in the study conducted by Peter Abelson for the Office of Best Practice Regulation within the Department of Finance.
In view of these financial calculations, the usefulness of a better equipped coroners’ jurisdiction, which can access trends and identify death traps, seems a no-brainer.
See:
Hugh Dillon’s letter to the Auditor General
Hugh Dillon’s paper to the Law Society specialist accreditation conference