Amendments to the Coroners Act

Legislative changes to the Coroners Act proposed in a Bill introduced into State Parliament are designed to enhance the role of the State Coroner in preventing avoidable deaths and improve the operation of the coronial system in Victoria.

Proposed amendments would enable coroners to make recommendations to Government Ministers and public authorities on any matter connected with a death or fire that was investigated, on matters of public health or safety, and to play an important role in preventing similar tragedies in the future. At the moment, coroners are only able to make recommendations to the Attorney General.

The amendments, requested by the State Coroner, also removed the obligation on a coroner to make a finding about the identity of a person contributing to the death of another person.

"A finding that as a matter of fact a person contributed to the death of another person could be understood as a finding that the person is in some way legally responsible for the death," Attorney General, Jan Wade, said.

"This may lead to such persons suffering from unwarranted feelings of guilt. For instance, the current obligation under the act means that if a person commits suicide by leaping in front of a train, the coroner is obliged to find that the train driver was contributing cause of the death, though there may have been nothing the train driver could have done to avoid it.

"The removal of this obligation however does not preclude a coroner from making a finding of contribution in appropriate cases under existing provisions of the Act," Mrs Wade said.

Currently an inquest may only be re-opened by order of the Supreme Court. The amendments will allow a coroner to re-open an inquest in certain circumstances of new facts or evidence, or a mistake in the record of findings. This will help to avoid the cost and delay of a Supreme Court hearing.

(News Release, Office of the Attorney-General, March 25, 1999)