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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-11-17 Daily Xml
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FORENSIC SCIENCE SA

In reply to Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (30 June 2009) (Estimates Committee B).

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon—Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Veterans' Affairs): There are many issues that impact the time taken for the Coroner to finalise matters that come before him. One of these is the time for the delivery of the final post mortem reports from Forensic Science SA (FSSA) pathologists. At the end of July, 2009 there were 455 pathologist reports outstanding, the oldest of which was from a post mortem conducted 11 months ago. Most of the final post mortem reports are delivered to Coroner within three to six months of the post mortem examination.

FSSA generally assigns priority for completion of post mortem reports by chronological order. The exceptions to this rule are reports for court hearings, including homicide and some traffic matters. Reports on child deaths are given priority where possible. These priorities may be subject to the availability of other specialist reports from within FSSA and from SA Pathology.

FSSA has been working to reduce the time for delivery of all final reports and would pleased to further prioritise the reports if a mechanism for demonstrating hardship was available, being ever mindful that moving one case up in priority means moving others down.

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