1. Enshrine the Right of individuals, marae and non-profit community groups to handle the bodies of their deceased without registration or official oversight. The funeral industry must not have any avenues to monopolise any stage of the funeral process.

2. Extend the Health and Disability Code to explicitly include after-death care. Current standard practice delivers unprepared and vulnerable families into the arms of an industry known for predation. Bereaved families or whanau need to know their rights, their responsibilities and their options.

In addition, timely attendance after death should be provided as of right by involving nurses and nurse practitioners more in verifying and certifying deaths. Too often, especially in rural communities, families are expected to hire a funeral director to bring the body to the doctor or nurse practitioner. If a family can’t afford to do this, or don’t want to, they may have to wait up to three days for attendance.

Pacemaker removal needs to be sorted nationwide so families can avoid excessive charges around this simple procedure.

3. Reform the Medical Referee System. First, council-operated crematoriums must stop the practice of requiring families to arrange cremation sign-off themselves. This practice undermines the integrity of the medical referee system and is counter to Te Whatu Ora guidelines. It also confuses and disempowers family or whanau. The second step is to further automate the system and apply the second check to burial as well.

4. Unbundle and Watchdog Industry. Families should only have to pay for the items and services they want or need. The funeral industry needs regulating to protect the public. They also need to be watchdogged so they cannot, for example, continue to claim embalming is “essential”.

6. Standardise processes and requirements nationwide and communicate these clearly. At the moment each district has its own, seemingly arbitrary, requirements around cremation, burial, pick-ups from health sector facilities, coronial offices and coffins, shroud boards etc.

7. Require councils to become family-friendly. Councils must not discriminate against the general public and provide unbiased service to families for both cremation and burial and follow Te Whatu Ora guidelines around medical referee sign-off.

Public-facing information needs to be family-friendly and accurate.

Weekend and weekday fees need to be equalised and Monday service guaranteed for any death certified on a Friday or Saturday morning; choosing the day of our death is not normally possible.

8. Audit the Department of Internal Affairs which, like the Ministry of Health, has been captured by industry. Death registration needs to be made family-friendly including adequate instructions. The department’s End-of-Life Service website states funerals can be arranged without a funeral director. This is the case in some districts, but not all crematoriums cater to to family-led funerals, and some councils refuse to deal directly with families wanting to bury their dead. Inaccurate information can lead families into serious trouble and can result in bodies being abandoned.

9. Fix the WINZ funeral grant system WINZ funeral grant applications take too long to process. Families booking a cremation or burial themselves, or using a budget cremation company, need to be able to pay upfront. If they can’t do this, they are forced to either engage in high-priced services provided by traditional funeral homes or abandon the body.

Setting up a system allowing direct payment from WINZ to cemeteries, crematoriums and budget cremation firms is key.

Addressing these issues will save both clients and taxpayer money.

10. Audit morgues. Cease & reverse privatisation.

Policy is uneven nationwide and some families wishing to pick up their dead themselves are encountering resistance from operators.

Cease privatisation of coronial services and the centralisation of morgues. Privately operated services are less accountable to the public. Family deserve to be able to visit and view their dead without having to travel long distances.

12. Remove the need to engage lawyers for probate and EPOAs. With probate, the application process can and should be automated. Arranging an EPOA is a serious process, but, as shown by Australia, should not require a lawyer.

13. Enable individuals, families and communities. Once the above obstacles are removed, individuals, families and communities will be able to adopt more modest practices. This will mean a shift away from the idea of literally having to “pay” one’s respects. Government and councils can play a role in this transition.

14. Appoint a short-term commissioner of death to sort the innumerable issues the MoH missed in their official review of Death, Funerals, Burial and Cremation and which Death Without Debt and others are continually identifying. The entire funeral process, in all aspects, will require regular auditing for the foreseeable future given the resistance within the public service, most notably the Ministry of Health and Department of Internal Affairs to serving the public interest.

Background and Detail

Enshrine the right of families, community & marae to handle their dead

Just a few years ago, the Ministry of Health’s review team was seriously proposing only funeral directors should be able to handle dead bodies. Fortunately a coalition of funeral guides and marae forced the Ministry to drop that proposal.

The funeral industry must have not have any avenues to monopolise any part of the funeral process. The right of individuals, marae and non-profit community groups to handle the body of their deceased without registration or official oversight must be enshrined in law.

Extend the Health & Disability Code to explicitly include after-death care

Myths sown by the funeral industry abound: “You must have a coffin”. “Only funeral directors can transport a body”. “Embalming is essential”. “The paperwork process is complicated” etc.

Proper after-death duty of care helps protect families from commercial exploitation by providing them with the information needed to make informed decisions.

Death Without Debt has had after-death duty-of-care successfully trialled by doctors. It takes just a couple of minutes and needs to become required standard practice.

Timely attendance for expected deaths allows families to go ahead with organising the funeral process without delay.

Particularly in rural districts the expectation by health practitioners is often that family should hire a funeral director to bring the body to them. If it is a weekend or public holiday, this can entail a long trip as health practitioners often live in a different locale from their work. Hearse hire is expensive. The going rate for even a short trip is around $400. Furthermore, hearse hire often involves formally engaging a funeral director and paying for a complete package, including steep “professional” service fees.

Medical centres need to be required to utilise nurses as necessary to confirm expected deaths. Once the death is confirmed, doctors and/or nurse practitioners can write the cause of death certificate from their office or home.

Pacemakers. Standard pacemakers need to be removed prior to cremation to protect cremation equipment. The process is quick and simple. The health sector should be offering this service so the public are not dependent on funeral homes to have the task done.

There are now several types of pacemakers and other implants also. Clarity and communication is required so everybody is clear which need to be removed and who is authorised to do so.

Reform the Medical Referee System

Cremation requires a second, specially designated, doctor to sign off the first, attending, doctor’s (or nurse practitioner’s) paperwork. This second doctor also reviews the family permission form. The original rationale was that a check on the deceased’s identity, cause of death, and the family’s OK was important before the evidence went up in smoke.

The second doctor carrying out this check is called a medical referee. They are supposed to be insulated from any potential influence from other doctors and members of the public.

80% of New Zealanders now end up cremated. The capture of the medical referee system and the mystique created around it has been central in providing the funeral industry with a captive market and allowed them to elevate themselves and so charge astronomically high fees. These are usually itemised as “professional services”. Actually, medical referee paperwork is basic and takes mere minutes.

Death Without Death propose a two-step process to address this situation:

First: Council-operated crematorium must stop the practice of getting families to arrange cremation sign-off themselves. This practice undermines the integrity of the medical referee system, is counter to Te Whatu Ora guidelines. It also confuses and disempowers whanau and so acts as an obstacle to autonomy.

Second: Further automate the system and apply it to burial as well. DWD proposed this new, automated system to the Health Select Committee in 2024.

NZ should follow the UK example and require cause of death paperwork to be checked for both cremation (80% of disposals) and burial (20%). This will produce better health data (which leads to better practice) and protect the public against medical malpractice.

It should be noted embalming also removes much pathological evidence. This is another reason to for a second check on all deaths.

The medical referee process should also be further automated so there are no avenues for industry to monopolise or profit from it. This would require only minor tweaks of the existing “Death Documents” system.

For simplicity medical referees should be paid a standard fee nationwide by government to prevent over-charging and double-dipping.

Audit government information and systems. Bring consistency to the funeral process district to district.

Death Registration

Registering a death is the equivalent of registering a birth and the form must be lodged with the Department of Internal Affairs’ (DIA) department of Births, Deaths and Marriages within three days of the body being cremated, buried or otherwise disposed of.

The DIA long made it exceedingly difficult for the public to obtain death registration forms and admitted to Death Without Debt this attempt to block family-led funerals was deliberate. It took four years of sustained voluntary work to force staff to get the department to make the form publicly available on their website. However, no sooner was this achieved than the department requiring the public to post, not email, the form in. The requirement the form must arrive at the DIA’s Birth, Deaths and Marriages within three days of the cremation or burial remains.

Six years ago the department were also alerted to the need to instruct people what to do if all the information requested on the form is not available. They have not responded.

Public-Facing Information

The information on DIA’s End of life service website is sub-standard. It states, for example, that funerals can be arranged without a funeral director. However this is not always true because in some districts the funeral industry’s monopoly is absolute. The DIA’s claim is therefore misleading with the result families are being led into trouble and, potentially, left unable to dispose of a body.

The DIA needs to be required to ensure all public-facing information is accurate and tailor their systems equally to both the funeral industry and the public.

WINZ funeral grants: To save money on a funeral you need money up front yet WINZ’s system for processing funeral grants applications is currently too slow to save clients – and the taxpayer – money. The result is families often have no choice but to engage in services costing many thousands of dollars more – or abandon the body.

WINZ can reduce costs for both taxpayers and clients by speeding up processing time on funeral grant applications and by setting up direct payments from WINZ to cemeteries, crematoriums and budget cremation firms.

Coffin requirements: People are being persuaded, sometimes forced, to spend money when they don’t have to. Coffin requirements differ between funeral homes and from council to council, often without any obvious rationale. Shroud boards and stretchers (which are less expensive) are allowed in some cases, but not others.

Councils and private crematorium operators must be required to justify their requirements beyond just pointing to “Resource consents” and requirements need to be standardised district to district as far as possible and communicated clearly.

Coroner and Hospital Morgues: Policy is uneven nationwide. Some families wishing to pick up their dead themselves are encountering resistance from operators.

Audit hospital morgues and coronial practices to ensure family-led funeral parties are treated without prejudice and information given is accurate and impartial.

Cease privatisation of coronial services and the centralisation of morgues. Family deserve to be able to visit and view their dead without having to travel long distances to centralised coronial morgues. A privatised coronial system is, obviously, less responsive to the public’s needs.

Require councils become family friendly

Council surcharges for family-led parties need to go. Punctual, responsible families are no more trouble to staff than funeral directors.

If there is concern about staff-family interactions, councils should follow the lead of Rotorua and employ a liaison.

Unbundle and watchdog industry

Death provides the funeral industry with what is known in legal language as a distressed market. The manipulation of families into paying for services they don’t want or need is commonplace.

Misleading advice, such as the claim embalming is “essential”, should be prosecuted. Lies of omission also need to be policed. An example of this is neglecting to inform a family that the task of transporting a body may be done by the family itself.

Simplify the Process of Applying for Probate

The information required to apply is, in almost all cases, simple. However applying for probate without a lawyer is difficult because applicants must compile their own application form from multiple, bewildering options written in confusing legal language.

Communications from probate offices are also often incomprehensible due to legalese.

The process can easily be simplified as shown by Kiwilaw (kiwilaw.co.nz) who have automated it. If this small private firm has been able to simplify the process, why hasn’t the High Court?

Remove the requirement to hire a lawyer to appoint Enduring Power of Attorney

Australia have done so. Why has NZ not followed?

Appoint a short-term commissioner of death

Above we recounted the four years it took Death Without Debt volunteers to persuade public servants within the DIA to make the death registration form publicly available on the department’s website. This kind of institutional stonewalling is everywhere and means it is unreasonable to expect unpaid volunteers from community advocacy groups to get our public servants moving on the myriad issues requiring attention.

Finish the Official Review of Death, Funerals, Burial and Cremation

The Ministry of Health’s review team failed to conduct even basic user-experience analysis of the funeral process and continues to avoid asking why the funeral industry enjoys a captive market. Even under Ministerial directive, review staff failed to engage in good faith with public advocacy groups.

As a result the Ministry is on track to deliver sub-standard legislation.

The review began in 2011, an incredible 16 years ago and now, thanks to the procrastination of successive governments, it languishes on the back burner over at the Ministry of Health.

The next government needs to acknowledge the Ministry’s epic failures, their continuing lack of integrity on this issue and take a hands on approach. If the public interest is to be served groups working on behalf of the public, such as Death Without Debt and Community Law, will need to be involved at every stage of the process. It must be stressed, this issue is too important to be left to a Ministry who have made it abundantly clear they cannot be trusted.

The Health and Economic Development Select Committees will need to be involved throughout.