Page 1737 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2016
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It is probably fair to say that the RVRA’s objections have caught the minister and his directorate by surprise. He has acknowledged that he cannot get consensus. It is also true that various stakeholders’ overwhelming desire is that the legislation be passed, albeit with amendments to or deletion of regulation 24A and related clauses.
The cynic in me thinks that the residents association is probably fortunate that this is an election year and the government is keen to minimise any ill will among any group it can at the present time, and so it is prepared to set aside the contentious aspects of this bill and seek amendments to its own legislation. I trust that the additional review process the minister is now proposing will be conducted in good faith and with a genuine desire to get resolution and clarity. It is important for both retirement village residents now and into the future, and also for operators, to know what rules they are working under.
The Canberra Liberals do not oppose the bill, but we express our sincere disappointment that the review process was not more effective and that closer attention was not paid to the nuances of interpretation. It is fortunate that potential flaws have been identified by the affected stakeholders themselves, but again it is disappointing that they were not foreshadowed by government officials. It is a regret that the legislation today is not in a form that has the support of the community at large. The government needs to understand that it cannot just dump decisions on the Canberra community. This is another such example.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Corrections, Minister for Education, Minister for Justice and Consumer Affairs and Minister for Road Safety) (11.33), in reply: I am pleased to speak in support of the Retirement Villages Amendment Bill 2016. During the last sittings, I presented the bill in this Assembly and tabled the report on the review. The bill proposes amendments to the act and to the Retirement Villages Regulation 2013 to clarify the distinction between retirement living and residential aged care. As I said during introduction of the bill, public consultation suggested there were misconceptions in the community about the differences between independent retirement living and residential aged care.
The bill makes it an offence for a retirement village operator to make an express or implied representation, whether orally or in writing, that the village is an approved provider of residential aged care or that residents of the village have priority access to residential aged care by an approved provider. This amendment builds on an existing offence in section 22 of the act which prohibits the operator making representations in promotional material that the village is an approved provider of residential aged care or that the residents have priority access to residential aged care.
The bill makes an important distinction for operators in the territory who are dual providers of independent retirement living and residential aged care. It is not an offence for an operator to merely explain or make a statement about how the services of the retirement village differ from residential care services or to make a simple statement of fact that a residential aged-care facility is associated with the village.
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