A funeral in Canberra, under the ACT’s own rules

The plan of this guide

1. AWhen a death goes to the ACT coronerThe Forensic Medicine Centre, the post-mortem examination, identification and release to a funeral home.
2. BHow an ACT inquest runs, from report to findingsFrom the first report to the coroner’s findings: who keeps the family informed, and when a hearing is required.
3. CBurial in Canberra’s public cemeteriesGungahlin, Hall and Woden: the kinds of grave, sharing one, and the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act 2020.
4. DCremation and ashes in the ACTApplying for a cremation, collecting the ashes, and where they can be placed or scattered.
5. ERegistering a death in the ACT, and its certificatesThe registration statement, death certificates, interim certificates, corrections and early pregnancy loss certificates.

Who does what in the ACT

These are the bodies the ACT’s official pages name, with what each does, as its own pages describe it.

ACT Policing Coroners team

A small group of ACT police who specialise in coronial matters and help the coroner investigate deaths.

ACT Coroners Court

The court whose coroners run inquests. In the ACT, every magistrate is a coroner.

Forensic Medicine Centre

Run by the ACT Courts and Tribunal; its pathologists carry out post-mortem examinations for the ACT Coroner.

Canberra Memorial Parks

Burial and cremation, interment and memorials ; run by the Cemeteries and Crematoria Authority, which answers to the ACT Government through the Minister for City and Government Services.

Access Canberra

Registers deaths under the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1997 , and issues death certificates through the Registry of Births, Relationships and Deaths.

ACT Revenue Office

Behind the ACT Funeral Assistance Program. It is meant for people living in the ACT whose finances leave them short of paying the whole of a funeral for someone in their immediate family. It is administered by the funeral providers listed on the office’s page, and the funeral director checks each applicant against the office’s criteria.

Where a funeral director fits

Canberra Memorial Parks’ answers to common questions begin with the first step after a death: a call from the family to a funeral director, who can then make the arrangements on the family’s behalf. The ACT’s own pages show the funeral home at several points along the way:

• when the coroner is involved, the coroner usually releases the person into the care of the family’s chosen funeral home one business day after the post-mortem examination;
• an interim death certificate becomes available once that funeral home has applied for it to the Registrar of Births, Relationships and Deaths;
• at Gungahlin Crematorium, the funeral director delivers the person to the crematorium, and the identity of their remains is guaranteed from then until the ashes are interred.

Registration itself does not depend on one: Access Canberra asks anyone registering a death without a funeral director to email BDMDeathsOnline@act.gov.au.