Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, the Greens support this Justice and Related Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill. There are important amendments in it, particularly in relation to the Coroners Act.
The cases that have been noted by the Attorney‑General are two matters I have been personally connected with and have had some role in advocating on behalf of the people concerned. I want to speak to Jason and Amanda Westbrook. If they are not watching today, they will be reading the Hansard closely. I have not met Jason and Amanda myself but I am familiar with the story of their daughter Eden, and cognisant of their fight to have access to information so that they can understand exactly what happened around her death. They have been stymied to date by the rules, which have prevented them gaining access to critical information they feel is required to help advance a case of having an inquest into Eden’s death.
It is important that families are given every opportunity to have questions answered and thorough investigations done when they do not believe questions have been sufficiently answered, and, in certain circumstances, justice for things that have been done advertently or inadvertently, and where criminal matters have occurred and there is an argument for having a proper investigation.
The coroner has an incredibly important job. As well as speaking to the Westbrooks, I also speak to the people who hold the roles of coroners in Tasmania. It is such an important role. People who are touched by a death in circumstances that require an investigation – it is a very precious and special role that the Coroners Office holds. Those people work very hard and very well.
It is also true to say that the Coroners Act 1995 contains sections which are, by any measure, now considered very outdated and paternalistic. That is why we are here today, because what is in the act has prevented families – senior next of kin, as defined within the legislation – from getting access to the actual detail of the actual records that have been held or collected by the coroner’s office or used by the coroner’s office in their investigations. In the case of the Westbrooks and also in the case of Janet Rice and her wife, Penny, who died, it has been incredibly painful for her to get access to the record and to see it herself.
Greens MLC Cassy O’Connor and me both separately advocated in parts of the journey of former Greens senator Janet Rice when she was trying to get access to records of her beautiful, loved partner Penny Whetton, who died suddenly. I came into her journey when she was struggling with ‑ Janet Rice is a woman who is a highly intelligent, highly capable person, a former senator in the Australian government. She simply wanted to have access herself to the records that the coroner had so that she could understand whether the condition the coroner found was the cause of death was in fact something that might have a genetic component that could have been passed down to Penny’s children.
You would think that would just be an automatic trigger for the Coroners Office to immediately release the information so that Janet could have a look at it, have a discussion with her GP and make a decision herself about whether there was something that, in terms of a medical condition, needed to be discussed with other people in the family.
Instead, what she found was that it took four months for the coroner to release the records to her GP. Then when she visited the GP, she was told by the GP that she could still not see the records, that the GP had had to destroy them – receive them from the Coroners Office, read them, interpret them, summarise them and then destroy them so that the wife, Janet, was not able to see the documents relating to her former wife, Penny. That was just unbelievable.
In the 2020s, to say that to a person with her capabilities, to have something inserted through legislation and have that determination of the coroner, who was doing it under what was to them a sort of a standard operating procedure, but also what was required under the law at the time, was, in her words, ‘completely baffling.’ She could not understand it and neither could the GP. They could not believe the sort of nonsense that an external administrative body would make a decision about what the GP’s patient was capable of viewing and interpreting and dealing with, and it was a source of great sadness and grief for Janet. She was very open in making her story available to the ABC so that other people would not have to experience what she had, and she has been a great and quiet advocate in the background. I am sure it is one of the reasons that we are here today.
The Greens did attempt to work to get changes from the former attorney-general, Elise Archer, and unfortunately met some resistance in that area because there was an initial rejection from the state government of our attempt to include rights for the next of kin. Ms Archer did commit to continuing to discuss the matter, and here we are today.
I do not know the backstory about how the current Attorney-General has got it to this point, but I am guessing it is probably an accumulation of public pressure and I suspect that the Westbrooks may well, in their concern to have a proper investigation, have added some extra weight to the view of the community that it is no longer, at this time in history, appropriate to have matters of what will affect a next of kin decided for you – about whether a matter is too serious for you to look at, too devastating for you to read, too difficult for you to comprehend.
These are the sorts of things that, in the 1980s, people with AIDS were so active in overturning, and that was the tight hold of the medical professional in not providing people with HIV and AIDs their own records and in making decisions about treatment on their behalf without consulting them. So much work went into changing the relationship between the doctor and the patients, about openness and removing that barrier of withholding information that medical practitioners previously had, and we are finally seeing this flowing through to the Coroners Office, which is a very welcome day.
It is obvious that if a medical condition might have been potentially inherited by the descendants of a person who has died, the relatives should know that information and they should be able to read it and understand it and have a GP make a decision about how they guide them through that process. Can we have some clarification? I want to understand, along with Ms Haddad, the opposition shadow, who has already asked the question, about senior next of kin and how far that stretches.
I think we understand family members, but it is reasonable to ask how far beyond that it goes. Also, I would like to understand why we would withhold the information from going out more broadly. Why would that be? I could understand in certain circumstances, particularly with the potential of a trial, information should be conditioned. Obviously, the amendment still provides for the fact that if there is any possibility of a case being prejudiced, if it was going to prejudice the fair trial of a person or if it would be contrary to the administration of justice, national security or personal security, that matters could be redacted or withheld. But I would still like to understand just how far that extends, and then it comes to the matter of an appeal. One of the most madding things about the work that I did on behalf of Janet Rice with the Coroners Office was going around in circles and hitting walls. It was difficult going around that process, hitting walls and the time spans in between.
It was difficult because I suppose most of us do not understand, this is after a death when the family is grieving. People want pretty simple answers, and it was certainly the feeling that it was the rules that were standing in the way of this person being able to easily get access to records that should be their right.
When it comes to the Workers’ Rehabilitation and Compensation Act amendments that allow for nurse practitioners to issue workers compensation certificates in accordance with a certificate protocol that has been approved by the secretary of the department of Health and the WorkCover Board, the Greens strongly welcome the removal of any barriers to nurse practitioners being able to fully work within their capabilities.
They are such an important plank in the community, and the role they play in general practice in the community and with emergency responders is so important. We are seeing the power of that. I can mention what we see at the Cygnet Family Practice and the expansion thanks to the nurse practitioner role there, Kerrie Duggan, her excellent work. The expansion of an after-hours emergency response available service in a rural area that is otherwise totally cut off, essentially, for most people is truly life changing for many people in the community.
We support and welcome anything that can be done to remove administrative roadblocks to allow nurse practitioners and emergency responders, paramedics, being able to expand their scope of practice, expand their capabilities and harmonise our legislation with other states so that we are all working to best practice.
Other states have better models in that regard in respect to enabling paramedics and other emergency responders to expand their scope of practice. Given the health situation in Tasmania, given the incredible burden of need relative to the services that are provided, it is so important that we work with those unions and professional bodies that represent health professionals such as nurse practitioners, paramedics, emergency responders and look to quickly remove any administrative barriers that still remain in legislation, and I believe that some still do.
We do support the changes to the TASCAT act which allows lawyers who themselves are the subject of disciplinary proceedings to continue to appear before TASCAT as a legal representative. That is an obvious and sensible situation to correct; so far it has not provided justice for that person to be able to represent themselves in that situation.
In relation to the greater recognition of Aboriginal people in the Coroners Act, we are all familiar with the terrible situation that happened where remains of a member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community were delivered from the Coroners Office to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in a paper bag. That is such a terrible and shameful thing that caused all Tasmanians who heard about it to be truly shocked at how things could have become so wrong. The lack of understanding and sensitivity in that situation was appalling. I know that a lot of work was discussed by the Attorney‑General in relation to work with the Coroners Office to assure that Aboriginal community and indeed wider Tasmanians that something like that would never happen again.
There is work that needs to be done, in terms of training to support people in the Coroners Office to understand their obligations and the cultural sensitivity about carrying out an investigation and preparing a report. I note that the Community Legal Centre in their submission made the obvious point that there needs to be more resourcing for Aboriginal coronial investigations within the Coroners Office, and also more support for the relationship with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and other Aboriginal organisations, to make sure that the communication and the information flow is very excellent.
The coroner is required to notify an Aboriginal organisation when human remains are Aboriginal remains. But, there is that delay that has caused concern and been a problem in other situations, where there is a question mark about whether it has been established that a particular remain body part is Aboriginal or not.
I certainly heard people from the Aboriginal community say, ‘Given the age of the bone, how could it be anything other than that an Aboriginal person? Tasmania was colonised just 240 years ago, 230 years ago. How could it have been anything other than an Aboriginal person?’ There needs to be a conversation about the level of evidence required to determine whether it is plausible that it is an Aboriginal person, so that in the very first instance, wherever possible, Aboriginal community organisations, appropriate bodies are involved in the coronial investigation, or at least kept abreast of how an investigation is occurring.
That is all I wanted to say on this bill. I believe I have asked the questions. I look forward to hearing your answers, Attorney‑General. We are happy to support the bill.
