The silver tsunami is about to hit, but the future of retirement living in Queensland is not scoring well compared to the rest of the nation.
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The Retirement Living National Planning Report Card, released on Friday, reviewed the current state of aged care and also looked at what the industry’s future held.
The number of older Australians will more than double in the next 40 years, according to the 2015 Intergenerational Report.
This latest report card, prepared by Urbis for the Property Council of Australia, was designed to identify the barriers to better planned retirement villages and promote ideas and reforms for improvement.
On the scorecard, Queensland ranked five out of seven, with an overall score of 41.2.
According to the report, 15 per cent of Queensland’s population is aged over 65.
“Queensland is associated positively, both from within and outside the state, a view driven primarily by Brisbane City Council’s incentives initiative to drive development of retirement living,” the scorecard said.
“However, until amendments to the planning schemes are approved by the Queensland Government, the package lacks statutory weight.”
South Australia scored the highest with an overall score of 52.8 while Tasmania ranked seventh with an overall score of 36.5.
Queensland outranked other states on efficiency, which the report said was largely due to Brisbane City Council’s approach.
In August 2016, lord mayor Graham Quirk announced new incentives to attract more aged care and retirement facilities to Brisbane, including reduced infrastructure charges and additional building heights for aged care in medium and high-density locations.
The report suggested four reforms to help the sunshine state better plan and cater for its ageing population.
The reforms included calling for the state government to approve the council incentives into the planning schemes, broader adoption of the Brisbane City Council initiatives by other councils, increasing the number of zones for retirement facilities and flexibility on the built form requirements.
The council is about to commence its consultation on the aged care proposals, so they can then be implemented.
The full report will be released at the 2018 Retirement Living Conference in Brisbane on Friday.
