During Parliamentary Budget Estimates on Wednesday 3 August 2022, I asked about funding for coronial inquests where the death involves the state or is a First Nations person.
You can read the answers below or in the official Queensland Parliament Record of Proceedings (Hansard).
Mr BERKMAN: I will put these questions to the director-general, if I might. I am interested in funding for coronial inquests. I appreciate the correspondence from the minister
recently on this. Director-General, is any funding specifically allocated for particular classes of inquest, for example where the state is directly involved if it is a death in custody or in the public health system or, for example, inquests where the decreased person is a First Nations person?
Mr Mackie: Thank you for the question, member. The standard answer to that is the Coroner’s office is funded with core funding every year. If there are significant inquests or inquiries that it must perform which might require it to go above what it can actually deal with over the course of a year, sometimes the government does allocate additional funding for those ones. If we look at the domestic and family violence inquests relating to Hannah Baxter et cetera, sometimes they are able to get additional funding to get them over the line if they go across financial years or otherwise.
Mr BERKMAN: Thank you. I have a very quick follow-up. This may be a question that would need to be taken on notice, but are you able to give us statistics around what proportion of inquests performed over, say, the last five years or since 2015, have involved those two broad categories: inquests where the state has been involved, or inquests that have related to the death of a First Nations person?
CHAIR: Attorney, do you want to take that on notice?
Ms FENTIMAN: Yes, we will take that on notice.