Housing for the Aged Action Group welcomes the passing of new Retirement laws after a five year consultation period and many more years of advocacy from residents. The new laws include significant changes that will improve the day-to-day life of residents, such as a mandatory code of conduct for operators, standardized contracts for new residents, limits on renovation costs, fairer rules about allocating capital gain, and greater transparency and clarity about fees. 

Fiona York, Executive Officer, welcomed the introduction of standardized contracts to address the complexity and variety of contracts in retirement villages. 

“For many years we have been calling for an end to ambiguous and confusing contracts, which have made it difficult for people to compare villages or understand their real costs. and so we welcome this reform,” she stated. 

HAAG also welcomes the introduction of a mandatory Code of Conduct for retirement village operators, which sends a strong message to the industry. 

“We have seen shocking mistreatment of our clients in retirement villages by unscrupulous operators, caused by a lack of adequate consumer protections and regulation. The mandatory Code of Conduct has the potential to provide stronger consumer protection and a better experience for residents.”

However, we remain concerned about what happens to people when they leave their villages, as exit fees are not addressed.  

“It doesn’t go far enough in regulating exit fees that can incentivize villages to ‘churn’ or evict residents for increased profits, and trap unhappy residents in villages that no longer suit them. 

“The worst operators we see use eviction threats to harass residents to manipulate exit payments and extract windfall profits. This is a practice that should be stamped out, but we are concerned that the new laws will allow this to continue.”

The Minister of Consumer Affairs Nick Staikos MP spoke to the amendments, saying:

‘We will also be establishing a conciliation scheme to ensure that disputes between retirement village operators and residents can be resolved, and that dispute resolution service will be linked to the regulator. That is the key – it will be linked to the regulator. In so doing, I say as Minister for Consumer Affairs that I will take a zero-tolerance approach to any retirement village operators who are not complying with the mandatory code of practice. I have also asked the commissioner for residential tenancies and retirement villages to establish a lived-experience forum of retirement village residents so that retirement village residents can have an official channel into government advising on the implementation of these reforms and any further reforms.’

HAAG looks forward to a zero-tolerance approach to operators not complying with the mandatory code of practice, and a dispute resolution scheme linked to a stronger regulator.