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BSA bludgeons balance standard again
By Steven | January 27, 2026
I have long been frustrated that the BSA seems to have defined the balance standard almost out of existence. Balance isn’t required because the thing you’re complaining about wasn’t the focus of the programme. Or the programme’s not controversial. Or the introduction makes it clear the audience is only getting one side. Or the issue wasn’t “discussed”. Or the nod toward other opinions that was included is enough to satisfy the standard. Or balancing material might be provided in the future. Or it might be provided on other media outlets.
Balance complaints are very rarely upheld. In fact, the BSA’s Codebook says they rarely will be. (I think this is extraordinary. Imagine if the Real Estate Authority said, “Yeah, we’re not going to uphold many complaints about real estate agents’ misleading conduct”). It also strikes me as very odd that the BSA in its Codebook can graft a further exception onto the standard that is not present in the statutory language about balance.
Anyhoo. Here’s another case that illustrates my point. Radio NZ’s The Detail broadcast an episode last September that was essentially an attack on rest home operators. The programme was 24 minutes long. It centred around an interview with Consumer NZ’s Jon Duffy, which made up most of the running time. Duffy was very fair-minded. But Consumer advocates for residents and has brought a complaint to the Commerce Commission on their behalf (as The Detail revealed). Duffy said many rest home contracts were “fundamentally unfair”. He said the retirement village operators had “too much power”. He said reform was long overdue. He gave examples of unfair provisions, in detail. He pointed out that most retirement villagers were profit-motivated and answerable to shareholders. Residents can be treated as a nuisance.
The Detail also interviewed Grey Powers Gail Chambers who was also critical of retirement village operators.
We also heard soundbites from several other people who criticised operators, including a residents’ advocate and Jane Wrightson.
The programme was framed around an incident where the factual details were murky, but where it seems Condell retirement village emailed its residents to chastise them for having a boozy BBQ, something that may or may not have actually happened, whereupon an alcohol ban was imposed. (The residents felt they were due an apology for the criticism. Somehow this made it all the way to the Retirement Commission, which did not uphold the complaint).
The Detail’s host seemed pretty much entirely onside with the residents, calling this “crazy” and “getting told off as if you were a toddler”, and said that residents needed to be respected and not treated as inmates or assets. (The Retirement Commission’s disputes panel said the village had not been disrespectful or discourteous in its communications, which were the subject of the complaint).
All in all, it was an interesting programme, and there very much seemed to be substance to the complaints about retirement villages. But one thing was noticeably absent: any voice from the operators, from Condell or from an industry spokesperson. How might they defend themselves? It’s hard to think they’d have nothing to say. The programme accused them of vociferously lobbying against regulation. What was their case? Does it stack up?
I would have thought that RNZ would instinctively have wanted to include that voice in this programme. But it didn’t. So the Retirement Villages Association (the obvious source of a contrary view) complained.
You know where this is going. The BSA didn’t uphold it. It reached for its bag of tricks for refusing balance complaints. First, it said that it was clear to listeners that they were only getting one side. The programme’s introduction clearly spelled out its focus.
Did it? I note, first, that The Detail bills itself (with justification, I think) like this: Join The Detail team six days a week as they make sense of the big stories with the country’s best journalists and experts.
Here’s the introduction to this particular episode, quoted by the BSA:
The 8 September 2025 broadcast of The Detail included an item discussing a ‘power imbalance’ between retirement village operators and residents. It started by discussing a Retirement Commission Disputes Panel case about a permanent alcohol-free retirement village policy:
Happy hours are now permanently alcohol-free at [a Retirement Village] after a Christmas Day barbecue that may or may not have breached the village rules… But residents said subsequent communications from village management, accusing them of boastfulness and bullying, exposed them to ill treatment and distrust. It was elder abuse and they wanted an apology.
…
Look, in the grand scheme of things, this case is not a big deal — but it has highlighted issues of imbalance between retirement village owners and their residents.
I don’t think this intro really suggests we’re getting only one side of that dispute. Quite the opposite. Nor does it really reflect the in-depth general discussion of unfair contracts that the programme spent most of its time on.
But the BSA had another reason for rejecting the balance complaint. Jon Duffy’s fairmindedness meant that many of his statements contained some sympathy for the position of the operators. This is true. The BSA sets them out at length.
But… he is still on one side, and that was very clear from the thrust of his comments. In fact, everyone in the programme was on that side. The host did not ask Devil’s advocate questions. And here’s the most important thing: what Duffy said was not necessarily what the retirement village operators would have said in defending themselves from what were fairly serious criticisms. And there was really no reason to think it would be. Many criticisms that were advanced at some length went unanswered.
Exhibit A: one of the main examples of the problems with retirement home contracts was that, if you want to get out, you may have to wait for a long time – sometimes, even years, said Duffy – before the Village gets around to selling your place so that you can be repaid (albeit without any capital gains). Meanwhile the resident has to keep paying weekly fees, even though they’re not benefiting and no-one’s living there.
The BSA says – well, Duffy addresses this criticism and answers it for the retirement villages. Here’s the exchange:
The Detail host: Which gives no incentive for the village owner to actually sell it in a hurry.
Consumer NZ: Well, that’s the suspicion in some cases — and certainly in some cases there’s, you know, as you can see in the dispute that’s given rise to this episode, there can be real bad blood between management and residents and so, it’s very easy for a resident to jump to the assumption that the operators are just sitting on the weekly fee and then they’re not making every effort to sell the property. It could just be that the market’s slow. It could be that the villa has been occupied for 10 years and actually needs to be refreshed before someone’s going to buy it. All of those things take time and all the while that’s happening the resident doesn’t get their money back and also has to continue to pay their weekly fee in some instances.
Well, okay. But here’s what the Retirement Villages Association would have pointed out:
Weekly fees cover ongoing services such as staff, maintenance, insurance, and amenities. They are not “profit” that operators simply “sit on”.’
Issues around retirement villages are fairly complicated. They’re important to people. Lots of people are affected. I suspect there’s a lot of misunderstanding about them. The programme made specific and detailed allegations. The criticisms were pretty serious. They were not challenged. If the Villages’ response is flannel, I’d like to hear it debunked. All of this, for me, makes it a prime example of the need for proper balance. I think it falls squarely within the balance standard, meaning RNZ was obliged to make reasonable efforts to present significant viewpoints either in the same broadcast or in other broadcasts within the period of current interest.
I don’t think they did that. And the BSA didn’t call them out for it. Journalism is the poorer for it.
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