Like all amendments bills viewed by the government as 'hot potatoes' - ones containing changes that need to be rammed through the parliament - the Retirement Villages Amendment Bill kept getting pushed back until the very end of the parliamentary sitting for 2008.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning of the last week of parliament for that year, members of the Legislative Council, the Upper House of the NSW Parliament, at last had their chance to have their say.
The Rev Dr Gordon Moyes had spent a huge amount of time discussing the bill with affected parties. So too had the Liberal shadow minister for Fair Trading, Catherine Cusack.
Neither of them were aware of the significance of the proposed removal of the 'joint venture' clause from the definitions section of the Act.
Of how this would adversely affect public housing tenants living in 'joint venture' retirement villages, ones where the Dept Housing was involved in a 'joint venture' with other parties, by removing their legal protection from discrimination and harassment there.
This is what the Rev Gordon Moyes had to say:
The proposal to omit Schedule 1 Section 5 (3)(e) which gives legal protection against discrimination and harassment.
The NSW Department of Housing wants this 'joint venture' clause removed. Removing this clause means that any Department of Housing tenants living in a 'joint venture' would not be able to defend themselves from discrimination in the future.
If this clause is removed, the self-funded residents will be protected against discrimination but Department of Housing tenants will not.
This creates an environment where two groups of people living in the same retirement village are not covered by the same legal protection. It can be seen as a form of discrimination.
It is about a group of people (in this case the Department of Housing tenants) who will be the scapegoats and demonised by other tenants.
I have assisted in building such joint projects with self-funded residents and Department of Housing residents.
I anticipated a problem that has now arisen in many such joint projects, whereby the self-funded residents disparage Department of Housing residents. Sometimes the village operators build a section of units on their own with the village for use of Department of Housing units.
These units are often referred to as 'the slums'.
Often residents who have paid large sums of money to enter the village, feel the Department referenced residents have gotten their security in the village on the cheap, and a form of apartheid grows up.
Sometimes the management adopts a 'them and us' approach to the residents.
Anticipating this kind of problem arising, I had written into an agreement between Wesley Mission and the Department of Housing, that a certain number of Department funded units would be made available to their recommended residents.
These units would not be in an isolated group, and would be selected at random whenever a unit became available. No resident would be identified as a Department of Housing recommended resident.
Hence, no one would know who or where any department recommended residents was or where they lived.
My concept was that retirement villages should consist of a normal cross-section of society - even a villages established by churches should not be full of Christians only but be a similar cross-section of society.
I would ask the Minister to consider notifying all Village operators who are involved in joint ventures that such responsible relationship be established to prevent isolation and disparagement from developing."
