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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-25 Daily Xml
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STATUTES AMENDMENT (DEATH CERTIFICATES) BILL

Introduction and First Reading

Mr HANNA (Mitchell) (10:36): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1996 and the Cremation Act 2000. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Mr HANNA (Mitchell) (10:36): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I bring before the house a tragic story of a woman who died in the Brighton Aged Care Nursing Home in July 2007. The nursing home concerned was owned by doctors Jagdish and Madhu Saraf, and one of them signed the death certificate in relation to the woman who died. I am told that Sturt CIB had concerns about the manner in which the deceased met her death. The fact that the doctor had signed the death certificate allowed for a quick disposal of the deceased's body, and thus it was difficult for police to pursue any inquiries they may have wished to make about the nature of the death. The death certificate suggested cardiac arrest, but staff at the nursing home had made some observations which raised queries that gave rise to that concern by police.

There is a basic principle here that if it is within the power of someone to sign a death certificate it should be at arm's length, in the sense that if there is any suggestion of wrongdoing in relation to the death there must be an independent view of that death. The bill is straightforward. I must say that, apart from reading about this story in the Independent Weekly and making my own inquiries about it, I noticed that the Minister for the Ageing in the federal Labor government, Justine Elliott, said, in response to the issue:

Australian State and Territory laws should be changed to prohibit doctors with financial interests in nursing homes from signing both the death and cremation certificates of their own residents.

It was indeed a cremation in this case which prevented police from pursuing the inquiries that perhaps they should have made. I do not intend to cast any aspersions in relation to the doctors concerned. Obviously, as a matter of financial investment, they have taken an interest in that nursing home, and there is nothing wrong with that, in itself. However, the principle that there must be an independent view of deaths which occur in such institutions, I think, is plainly desirable and I would expect everyone in the house to support it.

The bill is quite short and clear and it is designed to do no more or less than prevent a doctor with a pecuniary interest in a hospital, nursing home or aged care facility from writing the death certificate for a person who dies in such a facility—in fact, a facility owned by the doctor concerned.

I commend the bill to the house. Members can read it for themselves. It requires an amendment to the Cremation Act because it is the cremation permit that is perhaps the most important point of the bill. We do not want to see bodies of loved ones cremated before appropriate police investigations, should there be any suspicion whatsoever in relation to the manner of death.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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