Coronial Investigations

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:57): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Attorney-General confirm when the Coroner's inquest into the death Graziella Daillér, a victim of domestic violence and murder, will be undertaken, let alone completed?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:57): Thank you, deputy leader, for the question. The position of the Coroner in this state is the Coroner acts in an independent fashion. The Coroner has jurisdiction to investigate such matters as the Coroner considers to be of interest or necessity for the Coroner to investigate. I have taken the view, and I think the view I have taken, is consistent with your view as attorney, that it is not for the attorney of the day to start telling the Coroner which matters the Coroner should be investigating and which matters the Coroner should not be investigating because to do so would be a matter which if not explicitly, certainly by implication, would to some degree interfere with the independence of his office.

My view is that decisions of this sort are matters which are properly decisions for the Coroner or the Deputy Coroner, or the two of them in concert as the case might be, and they are best placed to look at all of the conflicting demands upon their time to investigate matters to determine which of those matters need investigation and which of those matters do not. Members may or may not be aware that under the Coroners Act, a great many deaths as a matter of law are referred to the Coroner. So, any unexplained death, any death which arises from a fire, or deaths in prison, or a whole range of other things wind up on the Coroner's desk.

If the Coroner were to investigate each and every one of those deaths, the Coroner would be, I am confident, sitting under a massive backlog of work which would reach out into the decades, not to mention the amount of work that SAPOL would be required to undertake in order to make the appropriate preparations for the Coroner's Court to be able to properly canvass and explore those deaths in the sort of detail that the Coroner is expected to cover them.

It is entirely appropriate that the Coroner makes resource determinations based on what the Coroner considers to be matters of most significance, and I am of the view that that is where the decision should lie. It should not be a matter for executive government to interfere with one way or the other.