A resident in the ACT has launched a petition for the territory to be the first Australian jurisdiction to establish a dedicated ombudsman for retirement villages.
The petition by John Beagle, a resident at Lendlease’s The Grove Retirement Village in Ngunnawal, calls for the ACT Legislative Assembly to set up the position, as currently residents must go through the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal with complaints, then to the Supreme Court if that fails.
“This is a complex, time-consuming and potentially very expensive process, so much so there have only been three complaints to ACAT since 2012,” he said.
According to John, other jurisdictions around the country such as NSW and Victoria have similar laws regarding retirement village complaints, and the process has limited the number of complaints there as well.
“It is apparent that elderly residents have very little faith in those bodies or don’t have the physical, mental, emotional or technological ability to pursue an issue.
“These small numbers (erroneously) are taken as a signal that there are few problems in the sector overall,” he said.
The petition has 34 signatures at time of writing, and as reported in Riotact, has been sponsored by Michael Pettersson, MLA for Yerrabi.
Image: Canberra from Mount Ainslie by Jason Tong/CC BY 2.0
