Queensland centre cries out for a retirement village

One of Queensland’s major ports is resorting to special deals to attract investment in the region’s first retirement village.

By Stephen Easton

Gladstone is in dire need of a retirement village so that retirees can stay in their home town without the burden of owning a home, and Gladstone Regional Council has taken matters into their own hands.

The council has called for expressions of interest from non-profit providers, and is offering favourable terms on council-owned land and rates, in the hope of entering into an arrangement with a provider to have the much-needed village in place within the next few years.

Although expressions of interest have now closed, the council is still open to late enquiries from non-profit retirement services providers.

The Member for Gladstone Liz Cunnigham said that the Queensland Government has long avoided contributing to retirement villages.

“The state government has been, for the years that I’ve been in parliament, backing out of that at a rate of knots,” Ms Cunningham said.  “They don’t want to contribute; they want to leave it to private enterprise.”

Ms Cunningham believes the investment potential is strong in the rapidly growing area, although only three expressions of interest have been received so far.

“The tenure would be such to ensure a rate of return for the investor,” she said.

The city, south of Rockhampton on the central Queensland coast, is one of the sunshine state’s biggest ports, and is known for its young population attracted by job opportunities with large multinational corporations.  But young workers have flocked to the area since the 1960s, and now many are reaching retirement age and don’t want to move.

“We have major industry located here and people see us as a very young population,” Councillor for Community Services, Maxine Brushe said.  “But now people who have come for those jobs love the lifestyle, love the place and want to retire here.”

“They’ve brought families with them, they’ve established families here, and now they just don’t want to leave the place.”

But that is exactly what is happening, according to Cr Brushe.

“Because we don’t have that retirement village concept here, they’re moving away to access that, and this migration is causing this region to lose a great deal of valuable social and economic benefits.”

“We’ve had massive aged care issues in the past – residential aged care issues – but we have recently had another low care facility come online with another 57 beds, so that’s alleviated some pressure there.”

“There’s still some pressure in the high care sector, but it’s much, much better than it used to be.”

Cr Brushe is also the secretary of the board of management for Bindaree Lodge, a small independent aged care facility, which she said could not meet its operating costs without fundraising through its auxiliary committee.

“The funding subsidies are not meeting the demand, particularly in relation to rising wage costs,” she said.  “We are really looking to the Productivity Commission report to increase those subsidies.”

Cr Brushe said it was difficult for the facility to compete with the wages offered to registered nurses by Queensland Health, and while it was wonderful that carers are expected to have a Certificate III in aged care, this had also driven their wages up.

“Well, we can’t compete with that, and it’s really only for the love of the role that we are able to attract people to those jobs,” she said.

The council was also providing in-home high and low care packages in the Miriam Vale area up until the end of last year, a service that has now been taken over by AusCare.

“The reason why we were doing that is there was nobody else to pick it up,” Cr Brushe said. “A council shouldn’t have to provide these kinds of services so it’s wonderful that AusCare has picked that up.”

Gladstone Regional Council can be contacted on (07) 4970 0712.
 

Tags: aged, aged-care, ageing, gladstone, gladstone-regional-council, investment, liz-cunningham, maxine-brushe, retirees, retirement-village,

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