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You have to be available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and be able to collect a dead body within one hour. Those are some of the terms of an ACT government request for tender to collect and deliver the hundreds of bodies the ACT Coroner must examine annually. Applicants must be a member of a specified funeral directors association or meet the same accreditation, but there are some differences from the service delivered by a standard hearse. Vehicles – which can't be marked with the business's name – must block any external vision into the body storage area. They must be capable of transporting multiple bodies, which must never be stacked on top of one another. Bodies are taken from the place of death to the Forensic Medicine Centre in Phillip. Deliveries can also be made from an ACT or regional hospital to a funeral parlour or other place required by the coroner, the tender papers say. The successful contractor will also be required to clean the place of death to a "reasonable sanitary condition". The coroner conducts investigations into reportable deaths, such as deaths from accidents, unknown circumstances or which are suspicious. There were 281 reported deaths in the ACT in 2015-16, and 290 the year before. Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker, asked about the last three years, said there had been no substantiated complaints against the current transport contractor, who could not be named. "I advise that the obligation to keep a complaints register is new to the current tender process and did not exist in the previous contract," she said. The unique contract has been held by the contractor since at least 1999. Reflecting their role as servants of the coroner, contractors are forbidden from giving their business name or contact details to family or friends of the deceased, and must say they are appointed by the territory for the coronial services only, with no requirement to later manage the funeral. The new contract will be for three years, with scope for up to two one-year extensions. Applications closed on July 14.

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