Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many people live in retirement villages, and they're happy living in their retirement village. However, I'm sure every member in this place has heard from residents who do not have that experience. Few people wish to be identified because, sadly, they fear intimidation. I heard from one retirement village resident who had written thousands of pages to me and who was feeling trapped and bullied, and others are concerned about operators changing rules unilaterally—rules such as deciding that alcohol cannot be served anymore at resident social functions, disallowing parking of more than one vehicle even when it's a four-car driveway or refusing to continue to put bins out for frail residents. One person was encouraged by an operator to submit a silent bid to a retirement village auction, and that lacks transparency. We need some federal oversight on retirement villages. We don't have it. It was originally under federal legislation back in the eighties. They then, at the time, decided to push it out to the states.

What we're seeing right across Australia is a patchwork of rules and lax regulation for residents in retirement villages. We see that there is an unfair balance between the retirement village operator and the resident. We see unfair contracts, contracts of 60-plus pages with algebraic formulas in them to tell residents how much the retirement village will be taking out of the sale of the unit that they have a right to occupy. That is all it is: a right to occupy. It is bricks and mortar, but it is not owned by the resident.

That's why I tabled a motion 18 months ago asking the Commonwealth to work on this, to look at national reform, and asking the Assistant Treasurer to look at this as a financial product so that it has the protection of ASIC and the ACCC. At the moment, it doesn't, and there is a wide disparity across Australia with respect to how retirement village operators operate in their retirement villages. We know that more and more baby boomers are moving into retirement villages. I want those people who are moving into retirement villages and those who are living in there to have confidence, to have comfort and to have a fair contract between them and the retirement village in which they occupy a place that they call their home.

I call on this government. We need an inquiry into this. I urge the minister: if you genuinely care about consumer issues, you will take this on with gusto.