(Image: Private Media)

This is part one of Preying on Grief, Crikey’s four part investigation of the funeral industry.

Across Australia, the funeral industry is largely unregulated. In most states, the only requirement is to dispose of the body properly under relevant health acts, and funeral operators don’t need a licence or registration to operate.

Funeral directors are torn — some are calling for regulation to ensure agreed standards are met, others think there should be training requirements to make sure those performing invasive procedures on bodies know what they’re doing, while others still believe some aspects of funerals are already more complicated than they need to be.

But the lack of regulation has led to some dodgy tactics, with companies outsourcing services for a premium.

Providers or brokers?

Australia’s biggest funeral service provider, InvoCare, which dominates 25.6% of Australia’s funeral service market, has a range of price points across its subsidiaries. One of its companies, White Lady Funerals, charges $6500 for a direct cremation in Sydney, with no extra services and no ceremony — $2300 more than the average price. Despite these price disparities, bodies often end up in the same mortuary and are treated by the same staff — raising questions about what consumers get for their extra cash.

The Funeral Directors’ Association (FDA) of NSW executive officer John Kaus told Crikey many funeral homes subcontract services at high profit margins. While they may be the face of the business, they simply rent out hearses and mortuary spaces at lower prices.

“There are organisations that act purely as funeral brokers, get the funeral and then try to subcontract out to whoever will do it for the cheapest price … and there’s no real mechanism for the public to be made aware of the differences,” he said.

The lack of licensing for funeral directors, he said, meant that “if you have a mobile phone or a briefcase, you can call yourself a funeral director”.

“There’s no check as to the ethics and professionalism and the proper person to be doing what is one of the most important jobs a family can ever entrust a firm to do.”

Inexperienced, untrained and handling the dead

Mortuary science isn’t popular schooling: in 2019, just 57 students enrolled in funeral services-related qualifications across Australia, and only 13 graduated. This means those moving, storing and preparing bodies for burial and cremation rarely have formal training in what they’re doing.

Independent Melbourne-based funeral director Robert Nelson told Crikey this led to many health codes being breached.

“There are a lot of issues … from people being stored in cupboards with air conditioners without properly refrigerated mortuaries, to people performing invasive procedures on bodies without any form of qualification other than others showing them what to do,” he said.

While embalming requires a degree, preparing the body does not. Preparation procedures range from the routine — such as sewing the mouth shut, inserting cups under the eyelids to keep the eyes from caving in, and draining organs of fluid — to the complex, such as removing pacemakers before cremation, cleaning or closing wounds, and restructuring the face or body after damage.

“Without any training or education, a lot of those people are just making it up as they go along,” Nelson said.

Earlier this year the bodies of two elderly men were accidentally swapped by a local funeral home in Sydney’s west, with the families only finding out after the funeral service — staff hadn’t checked the IDs before placing the coffin lid on.

Is regulation the answer?

There are currently no national guidelines or standards around funerals, and no states have licensing requirements for funeral directors. Because of the lack of regulation, there’s no clear mechanism to lodge a complaint about a funeral director. The FDA said it only received 168 complaints in NSW between 2013 and 2018 — representing one complaint in every 1875 funerals. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has launched a public survey seeking comments from consumers, businesses and industry participants about competition and consumer issues in the funeral services sector.

While the FDA is an advocate for licensing and regulation, Nelson isn’t sure this will solve anything — and could even decrease competition in the sector. Some smaller organisations, he said, would struggle to join the FDA or other accredited organisations without increasing prices.

“We need education and training before licensing,” he said.

But Tender Funerals general manager Jenny Briscoe-Hough thinks the average funeral should be less complicated than it already is. Her NSW-based not-for-profit organisation reduces costs by using volunteers and aims to give power back to the family, inviting them to participate in as much of the process as they wish, from washing and dressing the body to organising custom funeral services.

“The body is actually not a complicated thing … and hardly ever do people come into our care because they need reconstructive work,” she said.

While Briscoe-Hough agrees some sector reform is needed, “regulation can be a double-edged sword; it could also exclude people from helping prepare the body”.

Tomorrow: the sleazy tactics of death salesmen