Rip-Off Merchants !

The most vulnerable people in Australia are from both ends of the age spectrum.   Young people today are desperate to get the qualifications they need to secure a good paying job with advancement prospects.  They face a bleak future as the advance of robotics and the application of artificial intelligence erode unskilled work.  They are prepared to accept a heavy debt load that they will struggle to repay to gain that qualification that will lift them above the herd.

Those people who are ending their working lives and looking to retirement face a very different problem.  They need to plan for the time when they need care and for many that means moving into some sort of retirement facility.  That is now a big and growing industry and many are finding a vast difference in the conditions that apply and the highs and lows of the various schemes offering.  Usually the terms and conditions run to a multi-page booklet and are far beyond the comprehension of the average person.   They are usually accepted - with a quick, scan, but unread in depth

We are now seeing failures at both ends of these service industries.  Another training college has closed its doors, moved its operational base to the Philippines and will not deliver the proficiency certificates its students earned.  In the case of some overseas students, they will be denied the right to continue to live in this country.  Their visas were conditional on achieving that qualification and the money their families have scraped together to send them to Australia is now lost.

In some cases these new college ventures were put together with more optimism than wisdom and failed because their structure was faulty, but others were simply rip-off merchants seeking a quick dollar and milking both the students and the education department of funds. Unsuitable students were recruited using commission agents and had they gone full term the certificates they proposed would have been of doubtful value.

There is a vast quality difference in the standards of retirement village living in this country.  One very big group has received an appalling presentation when a joint newspaper and television channel conducted an investigation into their practices.  Residents were charged exorbitant fees for simple tasks like changing a light bulb, repairing leaky taps and " churn " tactics were used to gain profit from the requirement that accommodation would be refitted at the outgoing residents expense when they moved - or died.  Onerous requirements skilfully buried in the contract they signed allowed the owners to deplete their capital and make them virtual prisoners.

Sadly, the government instrumentalities that are supposed to oversee both the education industry and retirement villages lack the authority to prosecute or right wrongs.  Along with the Ombudsman, they have the power to suggest, but the ability to force action does not rest in their hands. There is an urgent needs for oversight with the teeth to insist on change - and the power to implement that authority through the courts.