Making for interesting reading, a recent QCAT case that focussed mainly on discrimination touched on information surrounding buybacks.
A retirement village wanted to deregister as a retirement village scheme in order to avoid the buyback requirements claiming that they would not be able to afford it.
The village is resident-owned freehold. Although the Retirement Villages Act 1999 was recently amended to allow these villages to be exempt from buybacks, a Regulation needs to be made which names the individual retirement villages scheme as exempt. This regulation is not yet made, so the village is not exempt.
The main point of the case being that the village, once deregistered, still wanted to only allow older people as residents. The RV Act says villages can discriminate based on age and they won’t be in breach of the Anti-Discrimination Act. But, if they aren’t a village, then the Anti-Discrimination Act would apply.
So the “village” sought an exemption from the Anti-Discrimination Act. The Human Rights Commissioner argued against giving an exemption. But the Tribunal gave the exemption noting that the village, if deregistered, would turn into a normal body corporate and the QLD BCCM Act prohibits age discrimination.
For more information, you can access the case here.