A recently released statutory review calls for a shake-up of the funeral industry in NSW. The report calls for significant changes to the funeral industry (note that the report is dated Aug 2020 but was withheld until recently).
Last Friday SMH published an article on the report, specifically the recommendation and creation of OneCrown, a single government operator of the Crown cemeteries.
However, the article missed several other critical points in the report, including recommendations to:
- make natural burials more feasible and accessible in NSW
- change regulations to allow mortuaries to hold bodies for longer, so that people are not rushed to choose a funeral director
- introduce mandatory renewable interment rights as in WA and SA
- encourage the Crown to introduce vertically integrated customer offerings, so that they can provide affordable options to private sector operators like Invocare
I was interviewed on ABC Illawarra about this topic. You can hear my interview here.