Franks Stephen: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Retirement Villages Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9426] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I have an amendment I should speak to lest I not get the opportunity later even though it comes late in the bill and there are other matters I would rather address. The amendment I have put forward is one that is mentioned by the Justice and Electoral Committee in its report. It was one that the committee had drafted as a proposal. The words I have put forward are those that the parliamentary counsel had proposed at least in terms of the substantive paragraphs that would require the Minister to take into account two considerations when looking at a code. The considerations are essentially the barriers to entry that can be created by a code that suits the big end of town—the sorts of operators who will end up having the time and resources to put into the negotiations with the Minister that this bill envisages. This bill codifies industry capture. 
Earlier the National Party quite properly pointed out there are waiting lists for entry to these villages at the moment. We know that the increasing prices represent a desire to be in them. The best way of dealing with waiting lists in any kind of business is to increase supply and lower costs. The committee recognised that the code would be the focus of the 60 percent of the industry that is covered by the professionals the big companies or those who can easily afford to cover compliance costs. The smaller entrants the new entrants the charities and the iwi groups those who are not sophisticated and experienced in this area will be most adversely affected if the code becomes cumbersome or overly prescriptive or if it stipulates an excessive manning or “womanning” level at night excessive nursing levels security fences and many other things—all the other things that add to costs and drive out new entrants. Therefore the committee at that stage considered that the bill should record that the Minister ought to weigh against the representations from the big end of town the concerns that would exclude the builder who decides to run a spec and have a crack at it. It is that type of builder who keeps pricing pressure on the big operators. It is the prospect of those kinds of new entrants that will ultimately control whether there are excess profits at the other end of town. 
Unfortunately the officials recommended strongly against that. The reasoning I thought was absolutely unbelievable. I did not expect to see advice as bluntly in the pocket of the industry as the advice that the committee was given. The officials urged against including a requirement that the Minister think about barriers to entry—and I will read the words: “To effectively constrain the Minister to approve only a code of practice that does not act as a barrier to persons of modest means gaining access to accommodation in retirement villages is not appropriate. This is because in spite of the broad pricing variations in the retirement village market people of modest means are already excluded. It is not the purpose of the retirement villages legislation to widen the range of retirement living options for people of modest means.” 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: This is the Labour Government? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: This is the Labour Government. We have just heard in a very fine speech from the National Party that only 1 percent of people polled in retirement villages do not like them and want to complain. The Government says openly that it is not passing this bill in order to expand the range of retirement options for people of modest means. The officials’ conclusion was that it should not be a requirement for the Minister to take into account the effect of code requirements on a group of people for whom retirement village living is not currently or in the foreseeable future an affordable option. 
The whole purpose of considering a code against the prospect of industry capture was because there is a continuum. At the bottom end there may be retirement villages that offer the very bare minimum but that bare minimum may be far better than where prospective residents are now living. For example it is highly unlikely that at present they will have any security or any on-call care. The risk of gold-plating the code was something the committee was alive to. The committee tried to respond to it and to our absolute astonishment the Minister’s officials told us that it was not something we should take into account and it certainly was not something the Minister was planning to take into account. 
I ask this Committee and I ask the Minister who may well have been very busy and not aware of what was being said on her behalf to take that issue into account.