I am very excited to rise this afternoon to speak on the Owners Corporations and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2019. That is because this bill builds upon previous governments’ work to go ahead and regulate owners corporations and, most importantly, protect the people that live in them. Owners corporations are a significant part of our property system in Victoria. There are more than 85 000 owners corporations covering 772 000—that is a big number—individual lots of property. There are 1.5 million Victorians who live in or own property in an owners corporation. That is almost a quarter of us. These are property owners, these are renters and these are families who struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills. There are even retirees living in retirement villages.

I can tell you I love getting out and visiting seniors at the retirement villages across the electorate of Tarneit. In fact I remember being contacted early last year by a resident from Tarneit, a wonderful woman living in an owners corporation, and in one year her fees had nearly doubled for the purposes of maintaining nothing other than the community gym. According to her, it felt like she was paying the equivalent of another council rate. By the time she got to my office she had experienced long periods of anxiety about paying this bill and had nowhere else to turn. This is entirely unsatisfactory, and this bill is looking to better protect women like the one I met early last year in Tarneit from these sorts of situations.

When you go ahead and you buy into an owners corp as a home owner, you probably have a mortgage to pay off. Like everyone else you have bills to pay, you buy the groceries and you might even look after the kids or the grandkids. When you are paying nearly $750 in yearly fees, it makes a big difference to families trying to do their best to make ends meet, especially in communities like Tarneit. We know that a big reason for sudden spikes in fees is a sudden need for owners corporations to pay for maintenance on shared facilities, which is exactly why this bill is going to require them to deposit some of their fee revenue into a maintenance fund.

Another great change that this bill introduces is the creation of a five-tier system to categorise owners corporations based on their size. Not all owners corporations are the same, and what we do know is that one size does not always fit all. These thresholds are consistent with the way in which we distinguish between small, medium and large businesses and the standards of reporting and accountability that they are subject to.

But at its core this bill is simply about protecting people living in owners corporations from potential abuses committed by their managers. People should not be disadvantaged due to poor management or indeed criminal activity on the part of the manager, so under changes in this bill managers cannot be registered if they have criminal convictions. It is also extremely important that they are held to the same professional standards as any corporate director in Victoria, and that is exactly why they will be required to hold professional indemnity insurance. This bill also protects people from unfair contract terms, such as those that restrict the ability for owners corporations to remove a manager. To do this VCAT will be empowered to declare unfair contract terms in owners corporation agreements.

The relationship between managers and developers is also something that this bill heavily regulates, and I have to say on record it is quite distressing that we do have to go ahead and regulate these types of relationships. That is because we have seen a disturbing pattern of collusive behaviour between developers and owners corporation managers. The only way to prevent this type of behaviour is by tightening up our regulations. That is why this bill is going to ban developers from appointing themselves or their associates as manager of the owners corporation and from voting on any resolution relating to building defects. This lines up our legislation with that of New South Wales, and it makes it perfectly clear that owners corporations must act in the best interests of the lot owners, not the developers. The bill also requires developers to disclose beneficial relationships with managers and to provide documents relating to maintenance plans for buildings. Developers are going to be banned from engaging in dodgy practices such as enticing buyers by setting unreasonably low initial budgets or designating common property lots as private lots to increase their voting power. All of these changes will work to protect the good people in our communities from dodgy developers and corrupt managers.

Retirement villages that are owned by owners corporations will also be protected by this bill with up-to-date regulations that separate owners corporation meetings from retirement village meetings as well as going ahead and aligning their managers’ powers with those of the Retirement Villages Act 1986. As I said earlier, there are a lot of great retirement villages across the Tarneit electorate, and I do love going to visit them and their residents. They are home to a lot of great people in the west. I have been fortunate enough to listen to many of the people there share their stories as well as their experiences of living in retirement villages. Some of these experiences have been fantastic and some of them have not.

But when I think of the great stories and all of the retirees I have met along the way in Tarneit, I think of people like Noel and Margaret Canning. Noel and Margaret decided not so long ago to sell up their family home. They sold the family home. It was an excruciating decision for them. They decided to go ahead and downsize. A couple of months later after moving into a local retirement village I bumped into Noel and Margaret, and they felt like they had a new lease on life. They had never been happier. They had never been fitter in their 70s, which was wonderful to see, and they had made so many new friends.

Retirement villages create strong, tight-knit communities. I have seen it in action. They provide retirees like the Cannings the opportunity to contribute to our wider community. Last year I had the pleasure of joining them for the day as they hosted a fundraiser for Cancer Council Victoria. We shared some great tea and scones, and I was more than happy to sit for very long periods of time getting great advice and tips on how to cook a really great roast and the fluffiest scones. It was certainly something that was much debated across the table as to which ingredients would prepare the best scones in the west. My community knows that I am not the greatest cook as their local MP, and I am more than willing to share their cooking tips, which I greatly appreciate.

So when I saw the changes introduced by this bill, these changes to retirement villages really stuck out to me. They are really important. They seem like a small change, but it could mean that wonderful people like Noel and Margaret, along with thousands of retirees across Victoria living in our communities, are not going to be exploited by dodgy developers or selfish managers who exploit their owners corporations and retirement villages.

Owners corporations do form a big section of our property system and they encompass a rapidly growing number of residents. My own electorate of Tarneit has seen several owners corps move into the local community. The reforms that this bill seeks to implement will make them more accountable to lot owners—to people like Noel and Margaret Canning—and better regulate their financial and administrative governance. As a result, not only will owners corporations benefit but so will the communities who live in them. I commend the bill to the house.