Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Wednesday 30 November 2005

CORONERS AMENDMENT BILL

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr Deputy President, I want to repeat a little bit of what the member for Murchison has said. This amendment goes some way to satisfying the concerns of those people out there in the unions in relation to industrial manslaughter, and there is quite a lot of discussion on that at the present time. In this situation where a workplace death occurs and a death is not because of natural causes a coroner will have the right to inquire into that death. In my view that is a sound and good position because with a coroner inquiring into a death in those circumstances they should be able to determine the reasons and the causes as to how that death came about.
The best example that I can come up with is the death of the young person from the member for Rosevears' area recently at Killafaddy at Blue Ribbon where the young person was killed when the forklift that he was using slipped off the track it was on, rolled over and crushed him. We know now from evidence that has come forward since that death that there were a number of other circumstances surrounding that. As I understand it, he was not licensed and there were a number of other issues that have come out, that he was not equipped and did not have the experience to use this forklift. Had this legislation been in place at that time then very clearly that would have necessitated an inquest under this bill. A coroner examining into that matter carrying out an inquest would have, I suggest, found out all of those circumstances during that inquest and would have made some very strong findings on it.
That is what coroners are about, making a determination on the causes of death and then at the end of the day making very strong recommendations to the responsible people or to departments or whomever it might be. When recommendations are made by coroners, because they are very, very powerful people in their own right in the work that they perform, one would be a very foolish person not to carry out those recommendations.
I welcome the legislation. It is good legislation in my view. Coroners ought to have had this right to carry out those inquests prior to this, but now that we have it in place then it certainly strengthens the position of people who are working in organisations and departments. There will be more responsibility and onus on these people to ensure that the places that they provide for their people to work in are safe. If they are not safe then they now run the risk, if there is a death there, of an inquest being carried out in relation to that death.

Ms Thorp - Next step, industrial manslaughter.

Mr DEAN - Industrial manslaughter, you are right. As I said, I welcome the legislation and I will certainly be supporting it and I would suggest that every other member in this Chamber will be supporting your legislation.

Return To Main Page.

Return To Speeches.