Jones Dail: Retirement Villages Bill — Second Reading 
Jones Dail: Retirement Villages Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7025] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: As the New Zealand First member on the Justice and Electoral Committee I would like to express the thanks of New Zealand First to the staff and the officials. From my previous experience on select committees all I can say is that the staff and the officials on this select committee worked harder than I have ever known officials and staff to work before. This was relatively straightforward legislation and now I think it is gold-plated legislation. We have covered just about every full stop comma and the like that one could possibly dream of. I know that members still wish to make further amendments to it and good on them. It was a very interesting exercise. We finally got something out of the select committee. Of course it was made more difficult by the fact that we had a snap election and it was necessary to go over things a second time. I would like to thank those submitters who had to come back to the select committee for a second time for the time and trouble they gave and the assistance they gave us in putting everything together. 
As far as Mr Smith’s example is concerned—obviously I do not know all the facts but I assume the other party’s lawyer will be looking at clause 6 where it states: “(3) For the avoidance of doubt the following are not retirement villages for the purposes of this Act: (b) residential units registered under the Unit Titles Act 1972”—and I understand that it was a Unit Titles Act residential unit he was talking about—“or owner-occupied cross-lease residential units that in either case do not provide services or facilities to their occupants beyond those commonly provided by—(i) similar residential units; or (ii) residential units occupied under tenancies to which the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 applies:”. 
I would be interested to know just how those units come within the category as regards the services and whether the lawyer for the owner decides that the best solution is to cancel the services contract and then the older people might be worse off than when they started. However I just say that in passing with just the slimmest knowledge of what is going on. 
As far as the legislation is concerned I and many other lawyers who are involved in property practice have some experience with the documentation relating to retirement villages. We quite often have people in their late 60s and early 70s who sell their home—and married couples; not just widows or widowers—who decide that the time has come for them to move on. 
 Often they do not make that decision until they are about 80 or 81 years of age. Then a lawyer—and there has been some criticism of lawyers here—has to try to explain complicated documents to people who have only one ambition at that particular time and that is to move out of their home and get into the retirement village. 
When a lawyer tries to explain the documents to people they accuse the lawyer of being a busybody who wants to spend far too much time on the documentation and who is going to charge them an exorbitant amount to try to tell them what the document says and what they are letting themselves into. In this day and age of conveyancing when lawyers are told they have to charge as little as possible but have all the liability if things go wrong they are placed in a very invidious position. Often the son the daughter or the son and the daughter-in-law come with the elderly people and the lawyer ends up telling them more than he or she tells the elderly people but the lawyer always has to realise that it is the elderly people who are the clients. Of course when things go wrong often the elderly people have forgotten they even went to see a lawyer let alone that they signed anything and the lawyer virtually has to point out the document to them 10 years later and say: “Look there’s your signature.” They say: “Who are you?”. They often cannot remember that they came to see a lawyer to sign the form. It is difficult but I think the Retirement Villages Bill is a very good idea. It is an excellent idea. New Zealand First supports it. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Well done. 
DAIL JONES 
: It is; it is an advantage to lawyers. This type of legislation is a protection for lawyers. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: They need protecting too. 
DAIL JONES 
: The lawyers need protection. We need it more than anybody else especially from other lawyers sometimes. The bill sets out a procedure that must be followed. The lawyer has to say to people: “Look you have to come and see a lawyer to get advice and I have to give you this advice. The law says so.” Of course many people will still not believe the lawyer even if the person is a lawyer and is supposed to know the law. That is just a fact of life. But the bill now sets it out so that there is a statutory way of going through the process. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: The disclosure document will help. 
DAIL JONES 
: Yes. It should be made clear at the beginning that we are talking about—if I could put it in a loose way a simple way—properties that people actually own and have a licence to occupy. We are not talking about rest homes where people just go to live and are cared for and they pay rent or the social welfare department makes a contribution and suchlike. We are talking about retirement villages where people have a form of ownership regardless of what it is called. So that should be borne in mind. 
I think it is important to make it clear that the changes made in the select committee included kaumatua flats as coming within retirement villages. We felt and we recommended in the select committee that kaumatua flats should be included in the definition of a retirement village and that the clause excluding them should be deleted. The bill as drafted contains a specific exemption for kaumatua flats which could have created a loophole for operators attempting to evade complying with the provisions of the bill. If kaumatua flats are specifically excluded we are aware of the possibility that some operators might avoid compliance by establishing a complex that in form and substance is a retirement village as defined in the bill but that also in form meets the definition of a kaumatua flat. So we felt it was important to make that change to make it clear to any people going into kaumatua flats that the key distinction is if they own it and if it is theirs then it is going to be a retirement village and those rules will apply. But if it is like a residence where people are paying rent and suchlike it is more likely that they are in a rest home. 
Of course the usual Maori type of kaumatua village that might be around a marae complex where the occupants do not own the property they are occupying can still be a kaumatua village in the ordinary way. The distinction is whether they own it. If they are merely renting it on the marae or about the marae then it can be a kaumatua flat in that area and this Retirement Villages Bill will not apply. 
As far as other aspects of the bill are concerned we have set out a code of residents rights and they are quite detailed. I should mention that we have also set out some residents’ obligations. Someone mentioned the instance of an elderly gentleman who moves into a village but perhaps he cannot get on with people. It is a two-way street. The select committee did recognise that people have to give and take and there is a code of obligations as well. 
We have set out a disputes resolution process and I think it is almost the best aspect of the bill. A low-level process is established where people can try to sort something out without getting too formal about it. Too often if we have the type of process in the bill as it was it starts to get too formal people get too carried away and then we always get someone who wants to do things by the book and all sorts of problems arise. There is a less formal way of doing it; there is a more formal way of doing it. If people really want to go to town they can appeal to the District Court or instead of doing it through the disputes panel they can go directly to the District Court as well. But one would hope that all these types of problems will be resolved by the lower-level procedure. 
This is a very big bill. I believe that it sets out a very good code for all of those people who are in a position to buy a property and move into a retirement village. I will be looking forward to its progress. New Zealand First supports the bill.