In December 2014, Barry O'Farrell wrote to a group of residents at a retirement village telling them he "remained of the view that a parliamentary inquiry was required" into the multi-billion dollar retirement village sector.

The letter, sent months after he stepped down as Premier of NSW after being "Granged", said the issues and concerns, if not remedied, would affect more people in coming decades given current demographic projections.

He said a parliamentary inquiry was the best vehicle to investigate the sector as it would be public, involve MPs from various parties, under the Parliament's rules, and its recommendations would have to be publicly responded to by the government within three months.

"I regret that largely due to the winding up of the parliament's sittings I have been unable to secure such an inquiry," he said.

But he said given he was stepping down at the next election in March he had made it clear to his parliamentary colleagues the importance of calling an inquiry.

O'Farrell left politics in March 2015, and his words have left a hollow ring for the growing number of retirement village residents who describe buying into a retirement village as financially ruinous.

One former diplomat, John Lander, described his purchase of an Aveo unit in Veronica Gardens as a "financial sinkhole", others have used similarly disturbing phrases such as "financial bondage" and a financial prison, largely due to the high exit fees and other costs associated with leaving.

Fast forward to now and almost 2000 residents of retirement villages in NSW signed a petition calling for an industry ombudsman and other reforms.

Sadly, even that fell on deaf ears, with the government believing an ombudsman wasn't necessary.

It has been a common theme across the sector. In 2016 a parliamentary inquiry was conducted in Victoria but the Andrews Government has opted to sit on a weak set of recommendations.

Federally, there is a lot of hot wind going around Canberra but little sign of much else.

To be fair, the sector is regulated by the states, but given many retirement village operators are national and the growing calls for reform, the Turnbull Government should at least meet the opposition half way in its offer for a bipartisan approach to solving the sector's problems.

Federally, there's a lot of hot wind going around Canberra but little sign of much else.

Surely, launching an inquiry into the sector isn't that hard.

A joint Fairfax Media investigation with Four Corners has put the spotlight on the retirement village industry, particularly on Aveo, one of the biggest operators. It uncovered a litany of questionable business practices including fee gouging, safety issues and misleading marketing promises, made to some of the country's most vulnerable people.

The investigation found that many retirees don't know what they are signing until it is too late and when it comes time to exit a retirement village, due to death, illness or something else, some find they are financially trapped and don't know where to turn.

The best the Federal Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt will do for now is review a set of recommendations made a decade ago in a federal parliamentary inquiry.

Those recommendations included the ACCC investigating whether exit fees should be banned. It recommended the appointment of an ombudsman and said if state legislation wasn't working, consideration should be given to putting it under federal corporations law.

Wyatt has also met the lobby group for the industry, the Retirement Living Council, which is an arm of the powerful Property Council. In a letter, the peak body said it had a one-on-one with Wyatt, who it said "acknowledged the importance of our sector in providing accommodation and support for older Australians, and knows there are many outstanding operators doing great work."

Weak protections

That the Turnbull government is dragging its heels on announcing an inquiry has raised eyebrows.

The ACCC, for its part, has launched an inquiry that it says will look at some of the more serious allegations being raised, including whether contracts are unfair and unconscionable.

Gerard Brody, the chief executive of Consumer Action Law Centre, recently said the retirement living contracts were some of the worst contracts he had seen across many different industries - even worse than complex financial services.

He said it boiled down to weak regulation and weak consumer protections. "I think they're able to run rampant and be really unfair," he said.

In the meantime, lawyers can see a gap in the regulation and a number of law firms and litigation funders are assessing the potential for a class action. Little surprise there.

Aveo's chief executive Geoff Grady has been busy doing the rounds of villages since the joint media investigation put the company into the headlights.

Since then, its shares have plunged and it has launched a $145 million share buyback to try and prop up the share price. It has also lost a substantial shareholder in Perpetual, which has reduced its holding to less than 5 per cent. There have been rumours it will privatise, something it denies. 

Grady said he had spoken to a number of residents and the feedback was that they were angry with the media coverage because they felt they had been portrayed as vulnerable and not able to understand the contracts they had signed.

'We genuinely care for you'

But a key revelation of the media investigation was that the contracts are complex, opaque and more than 100 pages in length. Not even lawyers understand them.

Grady says the new Aveo Way contracts being rolled out by Aveo are simpler and give more certainty. He says across the group's 79 villages, which house more than 12,000 residents, there are 140 different contracts.

This is a lot of contracts to manage. To put it into perspective, more than 8000 people are estimated to still be operating under the old contracts, which have varying exit fees, terms and conditions.

But Aveo doesn't think it's done anything wrong. It believes its products are innovative and leading the sector.

It sees its latest acquisition, Freedom Aged Care, filling a gap in the market. "At Freedom we don't just provide care – we genuinely care for you."

But behind the marketing hype, the fees and confusion tell a different story.