New Zealand coronial system leads world
New Zealand’s coronial system is world leading, with a high level of foreign interest in its development, according to the Chief Coroner, District Court Judge Neil MacLean.
An article published in the New Zealand Law Society’s LawTalk magazine says there is relatively little understanding of the extent of the changes involved in the new system which was introduced by the Coroners Act 2006.
“It’s often not appreciated that it’s really a world first – we’ve gone to a full, full-time, professional, lawyer-qualified, small bench of coroners with a Chief Coroner,” Judge MacLean says. “No other country in the world has done that or gone that far.”
LawTalk says Judge MacLean sees the 2006 Act as producing “quantum change” in the whole coronial system.
“We’re only three years down the track; we’re by no means all the way there yet. There’s a lot of work to be done further rationalising the system, improving the data capture, getting our findings and recommendations out to the public in a more user friendly form,” he says.
“Judge MacLean says New Zealand’s coroners are an independent judiciary that mines down and ‘tells it like it is: this is what happened here, this is why it happened and after investigating, here’s some considered thoughts on how we might prevent this happening again’,” the article says.
Judge MacLean says there is considerable interest overseas in the new system.
“Judge MacLean says ‘the Japanese, Singapore, Australia, England are quite intrigued by what we’ve done and our reform process’.”
LawTalk says the high level of interest has been shown by the number of overseas registrants from Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan for the Asia Pacific Coroners Society Conference which will be held in Auckland from 22-25 November.
“They’re moving in the same general direction as us but none of them have gone as far as New Zealand in most respects,” Judge MacLean says.