Franks Stephen: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9439] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 The benefits of this bill will become evident to a number of people quite promptly. There will be an improvement in disclosure I am quite sure. There will be some improvement in the standardisation. There will be someone whose business it is to try to ensure that codes are comparable and I have no doubt at all that there will be a broader consensus developed within the industry on the way in which a standard agreement goes and what the variants on it might be. 
It may also be the case that there will be individual complainants who will find the new disputes procedure very helpful. There may be operators who wonder why they did not have a formal disputes procedure in place before because they find it works with common sense. There may well be people who find they will get a more prompt courteous and fully cooperative treatment from the operators when they try to sell out because there is now a more clear sanction where operators are dragging their heels and not advancing the exit of a resident who wants to go. 
I believe there will be intending residents who will benefit from the certification by having their lawyers realise that describing the patterns of rights and responsibilities in an occupation right agreement is a technical matter. There will be lawyers who have thought they could do it in the past who in future will say: “This is a matter for specialists. This is an area that now requires a formal certification. You had better go off and get someone else to do it or go to the specialist in our firm.” and that may all be sensible and beneficial. It may well be that there are people who are saved from making a mistake by the cooling-off period if they sign up then talk to their families realise that it does not suit and pull out within the stipulated 15-day period. All of these things are helpful or potentially helpful. 
It is possible that the proposed increases in ongoing disclosure with the right to be informed or the consultation requirements will help. It may be that the registrar of retirement villages—this new quango that is being established without any prior examination or any justification for it in terms of a policy background—will do something to stop some fraudulent or foolish statutory supervisor disputes panel operator or other participant in the future. 
All of these things are possible but I say to members that all these things come at a cost. Most of them could have been achieved without the size of cost that this bill will impose on the elderly of this country. Most of them could have been achieved by standardising descriptions and by providing a code that required operators to clearly identify when they were departing from it so that the intelligence of elderly people was not insulted. People would still be left with a choice whether they wanted the gold-plated regime that a politician might think they ought to want and they would still be left with the possibility of patronising a scheme proposed by the local amateur. Ultimately all the regulation in the world does hardly anything in terms of increasing human happiness in these areas compared with anxious promoters and operators who are trying to grow their businesses in a competitive market. They need to keep thinking of better ways to satisfy the customers. They need to keep thinking of better ways to find a niche of new groups who they can help into this kind of collective living. 
Unlike the Greens I believe this kind of monoculture—as they described it—is if it is chosen exactly what people like living in. If elderly people want to live with others of their kind of their age and of their range of interests it should not be confined as the officials set out to confine it to the top 4 percent in assets and income of our elderly. It should be available to just about anyone because quite frankly the retirement village concept should be cheaper to live in when all costs are taken into account than the current arrangements for many people who are trying to keep up houses that are too big for them and trying to maintain themselves often using public services with visiting nurses and others who have to come and look after them or at least look over their shoulders. 
 Retirement village living should not be confined simply to those who have more than modest means. I think that the most disgraceful part of this bill was the Minister’s mockery of the idea that when she approves the code she should have to take account of the desirability of removing barriers to entry and ensuring that the code does not become a set of drawbridges to be pulled up in order to keep out everyone other than the rich. 
The disclosure requirements did not need to be mandatory. The code of residents’ rights does not need to be the product of those who are already the insiders in the industry. There are many elderly who by themselves or with advisers are fully competent to decide whether they want to go into a village that does not necessarily have all the bells and whistles that someone will decide ought to be in a code of residents’ rights. This bill says that there will clearly be two classes: those who can afford the gold-plated version and those standing outside the security gate who are in their own homes probably with no security no comfortable neighbours and no ensured services simply because they cannot bridge that difference between say the $150000 and $160000 or between the $100 a fortnight and $130 a fortnight that might be the effect of this bill. It might well be that we see this bill in hindsight as the bill that tailed off and capped the rate of growth of retirement villages. 
It is sad to be forced into the position of voting against a bill that has so many fine objectives so much thought and so many provisions that could have been admirable but I have to vote against it essentially to record that this Parliament should not proceed to legislate on matters it knows virtually nothing about. It should not be legislating to hand a rule-writing power to the insiders in the top half of the industry. It should not be empowering or requiring a Minister to respond to political pressure when we have a market here that is far more likely to satisfy the needs of New Zealanders than any amount of top-down prescription. 
When I look at what this might have been and what we have ended up with I am reminded of why ACT and people like myself come to Parliament. I have seen the way regulations are used for purposes opposite to those intended. I know that the officials and the Minister were contemptuous of the idea that older people were best serviced by having a whole range of people trying to get into this industry—seeing a quick buck and trying to get in—because it is that kind of pressure that makes sure the incumbents cannot exploit super profit. 
It is that kind of pressure— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Oh leave the officials alone. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I say to the Minister that it is either she or the officials. A 10-page Supplementary Order Paper coming out with a whole lot of provisions that the select committee had already looked at says that either the Minister suddenly changed her mind or the officials had not given the bill proper concern during the really dragged-out consideration we had. The officials took a view that they were not there as the committee’s officials which is proper. They were the Minister’s officials and they were unable to explain quite a few of the things they were doing. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: That’s right. Blame me. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I say that you should have appeared— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Not me. The Minister should have appeared. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: With respect the Minister should have appeared and not left it to the officials. 
This bill takes choices away from old people. It patronises old people. The retiring elderly are the only class of adult New Zealanders who cannot choose what kind of property rights they want to buy.