Smith Murray: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Smith Murray: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9425] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I will answer some of Mr Jones’ comments by telling him that when I looked through Supplementary Order Paper 157 in the name of the Hon Lianne Dalziel I had a similar concern to his which I raised with the officials. But they pointed out to me quite rightly that clause 48A(2) refers only to refusals to hear a dispute under subclause 1(b)—that is the referee believes “that the dispute should be heard by a court of law;”. That is the only circumstance when the referee has to refer a dispute to a District Court and it seems to me to be quite appropriate that if the parties go to a disputes tribunal and the referee believes the dispute should be heard by a court of law he or she then refers it to a court of law. Obviously the parties can withdraw at any time. 
But I come back to my point in new clause 41B on Supplementary Order Paper 129 in my name. I know that when I first proposed that at the Justice and Electoral Committee albeit admittedly at the eleventh hour the advisers had some reservations about that and I would like to express my appreciation to the advisers and to the Minister as well for the very good working relationship we have had with regard to this bill. I have enjoyed working with them and I have enjoyed working with the Hon Lianne Dalziel. That has continued a very good relationship that we have had over the past year or so. I thank the advisers for their willingness to sit down and go through points with me humour me with regard to some of the questions I had consider some of the things I said and review their position. 
In that light I also mention to the Committee that I have tabled another amendment to clause 21(4)(b). In my view it does fulfil the intention of the select committee which was not clear in the bill as reported back and that is that the right of security holders to continue to have their priority right and not to consent to the registration of the retirement village and the subrogation of their rights below the rights of residents is limited to the security right that they had on 31 December 2002. The amendments have made it clearer that the security interests that continue to be secured relate to the sum that was secured on 31 December 2002 and not to any increase in that sum. The amendment that I have put forward would also limit it to the rights that the security holder had as at 31 December 2002 to avoid a situation where the security holder could increase those rights to the detriment of residents after this legislation comes into force. I thank the advisers for being prepared to consider that and be favourably disposed towards it. So I will be moving that amendment as well as the amendment in new clause 41B. 
I had concentrated before on the statutory supervisor’s role and another provision that statutory supervisors I spoke to were concerned about was in clause 77. They thought that provision would put too much of an onus on retirement villages to have to prepare two sets of accounts when in situations where there may be only one retirement village one set of accounts is quite adequate. Again I am pleased to see that the Minister has been prepared to adopt an amendment that would give more flexibility so that two sets of accounts are required only if the statutory supervisor or failing the statutory supervisor the person who is now named as the registrar of retirement villages deems that two sets of accounts need to be prepared. I think that that flexibility is a mark of this bill and is further enhanced by Supplementary Order Paper 157 so that there are greater discretions to try to minimise the costs. 
One area that I do have some continuing concerns with is in schedule 2. It concerns the change that has been made to the select committee’s recommendation so as to provide that an operator does not have to notify residents or consult residents if the operator is putting the village on the market. It seems to me that that is potentially problematic because very often the first that residents will know that something is afoot is when they are told by somebody else that the village is on the market because it has been advertised. I think it would be a backward step for any operator not to consult residents before doing that because it is likely to be quite destabilising for residents to suddenly find that their village is on the market.