It is a great pleasure to rise and add my contribution to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine Bill 2024. This week I have heard some great contributions on this bill in this place, and it is great to have the opportunity to add to this debate. This bill ultimately replaces the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine Act 1985, the VIFM act, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine’s enabling legislation. This bill will support the VIFM in maintaining its status as a world-leading forensic medical institute. The VIFM provides independent forensic medical and scientific services that support the justice system. It works with families of deceased victims of violence, police, the courts and other Australian and international jurisdictions.

Although I knew a little about the VIFM’s work, after doing some research for this bill and looking further deeply into their work, I have been amazed at the amount of incredible things that they do to support our community. While it is a statutory government agency with its core function to investigate the causes of death, the VIFM also operates as a department of forensic medicine in partnership with Monash University and houses the Donor Tissue Bank of Victoria, providing tissue for transplant. As I alluded to, there is a long list of things that they do that service our community, the scientific community as well, our justice system and indeed the Victorian community.

Some of those things are incredible. They assist with human identification services for all reportable deaths in Victoria. They provide clinical forensic medical services, which involve the examining and first-line treatment of victims of crime, alleged perpetrators and police detainees, including fitness for interview assessments. They assist with disaster victim identification services in emergencies and fatal events such as bushfires, which we have seen and which we know are part of our landscape here in Victoria. They do support families who are going through the coronial system, including assistance throughout a death investigation and genetic counselling services. They assist with toxicology analysis on behalf of Victoria Police, of samples collected from drivers who are suspected of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. They provide data intelligence to inform government policies, consultancy services, missing persons identification using DNA – and I will talk a little bit further about that in a moment – a tissue bank, and education and training services for forensic scientists.

The government did conduct a review into the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine Act to ensure the institute remained in a good position to continue its best practice forensic services. In addition to that review, the government has invested heavily into their services with a $100 million-plus investment into the VIFM since the 2021–22 state budget, which has allowed them to really build upon their capabilities, including through an MRI machine. Building upon that review, the bill introduces some principles to guide the VIFM’s work, a new governance structure and clarifications of its objectives and functions, as well as introducing a data-sharing and information-sharing framework.

Ultimately, as we do in this place with many acts that need to be reviewed or looked at, we are modernising the VIFM in its standard of public sector governance and service delivery. It will ensure that this facility remains well positioned as a world-class and best practice forensic service. So why are these reforms needed? The enabling legislation needed to be looked at as something that has not been changed for over 30 years, and the reforms, as I said, do modernise the VIFM to meet community expectations.

In looking at the research and looking at this bill, I learned that the VIFM was established in 1985 to provide those forensic and pathology scientific services to the State Coroner, but since that establishment we have obviously seen such significant scientific and medical advancements. Since 1985 our technology has certainly advanced. In 1985 in the UK there was a gentleman who made what was called the very first public call on a Vodafone mobile phone in the UK. The mobile phone was only just being introduced in 1985, and we certainly have seen changes in our technology since then. I note also from looking at the research and looking at the work that the VIFM did there was a senior scientist that had worked at the VIFM for three decades, and he described what the advancements looked like to him. He described how when they first started doing research it was like detecting something the size of a beachball in an Olympic-size pool, and nowadays it is like looking for a marble, they can now zoom down into such detail.

Today the VIFM is a world-class medical institute that supports the coronial, criminal and other legal processes, and I would like to highlight in the time I have got left some of the significant work and interesting cases that they have worked on. In the event of a death that does need to be investigated, they can conduct a routine screening test for 327 different illicit substances, prescription drugs and poisons. Bloods are usually taken, but hair strands and eye fluid can be forensically examined as well. Cases can be straightforward or they can be very complex. Some can be recent deaths, and others can be cold cases.

By chance, one of the cold cases that has been investigated is when in 2017 a snorkeller found some remains at Shallow Inlet, which is near Sandy Point near Wilsons Promontory. Those remains were handed over to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, who started to do an investigation. They knew that the remains belonged to a male aged in his 20s or 30s who was about 170 centimetres tall. They were able to get DNA, but it did not match any of the databases that they had. So they decided that their last chance was to then try and use forensic investigative genetic genealogy, or FIGG as they like to call it. That involves people uploading their own DNA to a database in a genealogy sense for family history – a family database. They ultimately found, after a lot of work and some good luck, that the remains were those of Christopher Luke Moore, who was a World War I veteran and a farmer who had gone missing there. They found a match with two of Christopher’s descendants, one from his mother’s side and one from his father’s side. They had uploaded their DNA to that genealogy database. It gave the VIFM researchers an opportunity to build upon that family tree, and the family were then able to know what happened to their relative. I think this is an example of the incredible work that they do there.

I think too, notably, that the principles of this bill and why it is so important are really to modernise the legislation but also to consider, as much as possible, how the work that they do needs to have respect for cultural beliefs and those impacted by events. Additionally, this bill does underscore the need to acknowledge the significant nature of events that the institute addresses and responds to and how they need to do that with sensitivity and empathy for those that have been affected. While the VIFM’s primary role is to serve the justice system, it often works by engaging people who have endured extremely difficult circumstances, and taking a respectful and considerate approach is integral to that part of the VIFM’s mission. This is about modernising the work that they do, a new governance structure and some clarification around their objectives and functions and information sharing, and I commend the bill to the house.