Page 3270 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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residents’ existing premises. A resident’s right to occupy their retirement village can only be terminated by the ACAT, unless a resident voluntarily vacates. This is an important new protection, given that residents often choose to live in retirement villages for the security of lifetime tenure. A person should only be required to leave a village in exceptional circumstances, and no resident should be worse off because of a closure of the village.
Under this bill, the ACAT has power to make a range of orders in relation to retirement village disputes. This provides not only a significant new consumer protection for residents, but also an important recourse for operators. Currently, under the code, neither residents nor operators have access to the ACAT. Of course, resolution in the ACAT should normally be seen as a final resort once dispute resolution within a retirement village or alternative forms of dispute resolution have been exhausted.
This bill provides a robust legislative framework for the regulation of retirement villages. It builds on the existing principles and consumer protections for residents set out in the code of practice and introduces some new important concepts. The bill has received broad support from both industry and resident representatives, although it is likely that transitional regulations will be necessary to ensure the scheme is as consistent as possible with the New South Wales scheme.
The government is pleased to lend its support to this bill. My congratulations go to Mary Porter for her advocacy and for her strong ongoing interest in protecting the rights of Canberrans, older Canberrans, who choose to make their home in retirement villages.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (9.20): Retirement villages are an important source of housing choice for seniors in the ACT. In the ACT there are 28 retirement villages, with a total of 1,429 units housing 2,300 seniors. It should not be a surprise that these villages are a vital infrastructure for our seniors and more so that they are an effective means for seniors to access social support, improved lifestyle and security of tenure. In this regard, when considering Ms Porter’s bill today, we need to balance the imperatives between residents’ interests and ensuring that operators have a business environment that allows them to plan their businesses with a reasonable degree of certainty.
On average 5.25 per cent of seniors in Australia live in retirement villages, with an expected increase to 7.5 to eight per cent in the next 15 years. Our demographics do not deviate from this trend and, as such, we need to be mindful of fostering an environment that is conducive to future investments in this sector. In this regard, I note that this is Ms Porter’s second attempt at introducing her Retirement Villages Bill. Can I say that, whilst we still have some concerns with this bill, it is a significant improvement on the disastrous piece of legislation that was first put forward.
I note that in the first bill Ms Porter had cut and pasted bits and pieces of legislation from other jurisdictions, which rendered her tabled bill unworkable. It was legislation that was inconsistent and could not function as a whole. In fact, this bill was so badly criticised by industry that Simon Corbell wrote to the Chief Minister warning that,
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