The Law Won't Bend. Ageing in Place is Now Law.

Post One · The Legal Floor · 5 min read

There used to be a way out. Two medical practitioners, a certification that care needs exceeded what a village could support, and an operator could terminate a resident's contract and require them to move to residential aged care. In Victoria, that door has now closed. The rest of Australia and New Zealand are on the same trajectory at different speeds.

Across Australia, ageing in place has shifted from a consumer preference to a legally protected right. The shift happened in three layers, each reinforcing the next. Operators who continue to plan their village economics around an assumption that residents can be moved out when their needs grow are planning against the law.

Victoria has gone furthest

The Retirement Villages Amendment Act 2025 (Vic) commenced on 1 May 2026. The previous test for terminating a non-owner resident's contract on health and safety grounds has been replaced with a materially narrower one. Per Consumer Affairs Victoria, an operator can now only seek to terminate a contract for health and safety reasons if both of the following are true:

1. The resident has care needs that cannot be met in the village, even with external services, and
2. The resident would pose a serious risk to the health or safety of themselves or others if they remain in the village.

Termination cannot proceed without VCAT approval. The new section 16F test applies to non-owner residents - those on a lease, licence, or loan-licence arrangement, which is the typical DMF contract. Owner-residents (freehold, strata, shares, or units in a unit trust) have always been protected from contractual termination by property law. The result is the same for an operator with a typical mixed-title village: care growth no longer drives a contractually-triggered exit, regardless of resident category.

New South Wales has codified transparency

The NSW Retirement Villages Regulation 2025 commenced 1 September 2025, sharpening operator obligations around budgets, long-term maintenance, capital works, and prescribed disclosure documents. The NSW direction of travel is the same as Victoria's: a tighter operating environment in which residents' rights are explicit and enforceable.

The Commonwealth has set the national floor

The Aged Care Act 2024 commenced 1 November 2025. It is a rights-based Act, responding directly to the Royal Commission. Its statutory Statement of Rights gives older Australians the right to make their own decisions about which funded aged care services they use, who provides them, and how they live, including where there is some personal risk. Support at Home, which launched on the same day, is the operational expression of that right. Crucially, Department of Health materials confirm that Support at Home funding applies to residents in retirement villages.

The Aged Care Act 2024 operates nationally. The state retirement villages acts are converging on the same direction at different speeds. Western Australia's Amendment Act was assented in November 2024 with substantive provisions awaiting regulations. South Australia's reforms commenced February 2026. Queensland's financial transparency regulation has set the benchmark for the sector. Victoria is most advanced; the others are not far behind.

What this means for operators

The strategic question is no longer "should we support ageing in place?" It is "what operational capability do we need to build to meet that requirement well, without destroying our cost structure?" That is a capability question, and it has three components. We come to those at the end of this series.

Sources: Retirement Villages Amendment Act 2025 (Vic), Act No. 19/2025; NSW Retirement Villages Regulation 2025; Aged Care Act 2024 (Cth); Department of Health, Disability and Ageing; legal analysis from Maddocks, Russell Kennedy and Thomson Geer (2025).