We are not members of an association
You might have noticed that Rest Funerals & Death Care is not a member of the National Funeral Directors Association of Australia (NFDA) or Funerals Australia. That’s deliberate.
Why We’re Not Members
Both the National Funeral Directors Association of Australia (NFDA) and Funerals Australia have codes of ethics and professional standards. We don’t suggest that being a member means a funeral provider does the wrong thing, any more than not being a member means a provider does the right thing.
We’re not opposed to membership or professional associations. Quite the opposite.
Rest is a member of the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN) and the Australian Home Funeral Alliance (AHFA).>
We value being part of organisations whose purpose and philosophy align with ours. We simply don’t see ourselves as belonging to the traditional funeral industry associations.
Rest would not be eligible to join the NFDA under the Association’s current requirements. Funerals Australia also requires full member firms to comply with standards covering premises, equipment and vehicles before membership is granted.
But here’s the more important part:
Not because we don’t believe in standards.
Because we don’t believe that every funeral business needs to look, operate or spend money in exactly the same way.
We don’t need an association to tell us how to be decent human beings
There are some things in funeral care that shouldn’t require a Code of Ethics.
That’s just being human.
The NFDA’s Code of Ethics talks about truthful advertising, reasonable and realistic costs, confidentiality, written estimates and professional conduct. Funerals Australia’s Code similarly talks about dignity, transparency, compassion, providing information about prices and services, written estimates and respecting personal choice.
We agree with those things.
They’re the minimum standard we set for ourselves because that’s how we believe people should be treated.
We’re willing to be different
The traditional funeral industry has been built around a particular model of funeral care: funeral homes, funeral directors, established suppliers, standard coffins and caskets, hearses, chapels, viewing rooms, mortuaries, embalming facilities and established ways of doing things.
Rest was started because we challenged some of those assumptions.
We believe families should be told clearly what is required, what is optional, what things cost and what alternatives exist.
That includes things that can be uncomfortable for the funeral industry.
Most of the time, yes.
And we don’t think families should have to buy a particular funeral, simply because that’s how the industry has traditionally operated.
Our vehicles are fit for purpose
One of the NFDA’s requirements relates to vehicles and facilities. We understand why an industry might want minimum standards.
But we don’t think a funeral vehicle needs to be new, shiny or recognisable as a funeral vehicle in order to safely and respectfully transport someone who has died.
We have two transfer vans that are around 11 years old.
We could spend a great deal more money replacing perfectly serviceable vehicles every few years. We could make them sparkle. We could make them look more like what someone might expect a traditional funeral vehicle to look like.
But why?
Keeping a well-maintained vehicle on the road for longer avoids the environmental cost of manufacturing and replacing vehicles unnecessarily.
It also keeps our operating costs down.
And that matters because every unnecessary business cost eventually becomes part of someone’s funeral bill.
We would rather put that money into caring for people than into replacing a vehicle simply because it has reached an arbitrary age.
Our premises won’t look like everyone else’s
We visit our clients. We go to homes, hospitals and aged-care facilities.
And when we eventually have a small office and care facility on our property, it won’t be designed to look like a conventional funeral home.
And that’s exactly how we want it.
We understand why the traditional industry has developed pristine, professional looking facilities. But we don’t believe a funeral facility has to look clinical to be professional.
In fact, we don’t want ours to feel clinical.
Death is not a medical procedure. It’s something that happens to people and families.
We want our environment to feel human.
We don’t need a screened loading dock
Some industry standards make perfect sense in some environments.
Our circumstances are different.
Our property is around five hectares, and the area where we load and unload is approximately 160 metres from the public road.
So we don’t have a screened loading area.
Not because we don’t care about privacy.
Because the physical circumstances simply don’t require one.
A standard designed for a funeral home operating on a suburban street shouldn’t automatically be treated as the only acceptable way of operating a funeral business on five hectares of rural property.
We don’t need an embalming room
- We don’t embalm.
- We believe there is something important about acknowledging that death has actually happened.
- Where a family wants to wash and dress their person themselves, we encourage it.
- We’ll bring them home.
- We’ll help them.
- We’ll explain what to expect.
- We’ll be there if they need us.
It isn’t for everyone.
But for some families, being able to wash, dress and care for their person is one of the most meaningful parts of saying goodbye.
We don’t need a clinical preparation room because we don’t provide a clinical service that requires one.
That’s not a failure to meet a standard, it’s a deliberate decision about the kind of care we provide.
We don’t need a valuables register
We don’t currently need a conventional valuables register because our approach is to deal with valuables with the family before the person comes into our care.
We strongly recommend that wedding rings and other valuable or highly sentimental jewellery be removed.
We’ll help with that at home, in aged care or at hospital if necessary.
We explain what happens to metals during cremation and that they are separated afterwards for recycling.
So our approach is simple:
Don’t let the valuables enter our facility in the first place.
Maybe one day, we will have a valuables register. But till the day comes that we need it, why complicate things to manage a problem that doesn’t exist.
And a hearse? Why?
The NFDA’s standards include a hearse.
We don’t have a hearse.
And we’re not particularly sure why we would need one.
If someone wants a traditional hearse, that’s fine.
We’ll hire whatever is needed to make it happen and a hearse is just one option.
It isn’t the definition of a dignified funeral.
The question we ask is not “What does a funeral normally look like?”
It’s:
“What would mean something to this family?”
We don’t include things just because they’re “traditional”
We also don’t provide “free” things that aren’t actually free.
A signing book isn’t free if its cost is built into the funeral price.
A photographic tribute book isn’t free if everyone pays for it whether they want one or not.
We don’t automatically provide either.
Because how many families actually need a signing book that ends up sitting in a cupboard or collecting dust for years?
And how many need a professionally printed book containing reproductions of photographs they already have in an album or on their phone?
Some families absolutely want these things and that’s fine.
But they’re wanted by some families, not required by all families.
We’d rather let people choose.
The Costco question
An interesting example comes from the Australian funeral industry.
When Costco started selling coffins directly to Australian consumers, it challenged one of the industry’s traditional assumptions: that a family would buy its coffin through its funeral provider.
Costco’s Australian coffin range was reported in 2016, with coffins available directly to consumers. CHOICE subsequently reported that Costco and other businesses were selling coffins directly to the public, that the move had met resistance from some funeral homes, and that many funeral homes were accepting family-supplied coffins.
There is one story about this episode that we have heard within the industry: that Costco selling coffins was discussed at an NFDA meeting or conference, along with whether or how the industry could prevent or limit that kind of direct-to-consumer competition.
We cannot independently confirm that account, and we are not presenting it as fact.
We mention it because it speaks to a bigger question.
When families are able to bypass a traditional part of the funeral supply chain, should the response be to protect the traditional model, or to embrace the fact that families now have another choice?
We believe more options are good for families.
We don’t believe in selling fear
Anyone who has sat through funeral arrangements will know how quickly a simple purchase can turn into an upsell.
A family might choose exactly the coffin they want and then be encouraged towards another because it is more appropriate for burial, more substantial, more suitable, more dignified or somehow better.
Sometimes there is a legitimate practical reason for a particular product.
But sometimes the distinction can become little more than a sales technique.
There are documented examples of funeral sales practices involving upselling coffins and other products, including memorial books, vehicles, viewings and embalming. CHOICE has reported on these practices and on the significant variation in funeral pricing and coffin mark-ups.
We aren’t suggesting this is universal and are not suggesting any particular organisation tells its members to use these tactics.
We’re saying something much simpler:
Families should be able to make decisions about funeral merchandise without being frightened, confused or quietly persuaded to spend more than they want.
A coffin isn’t a measure of love.
A more expensive coffin doesn’t make a better funeral.
So why aren’t we members?
Rest isn’t trying to reproduce the funeral industry. We’re trying to give families a genuine alternative to it.
Those things aren’t professional achievements. They’re the starting point.
Where the industry associations establish standards that protect people, we agree with them.
Where they establish requirements that make sense for particular types of funeral businesses, we understand why they exist.
And where those requirements don’t make sense for the way Rest operates, we’re comfortable not complying with them.
We want to operate a funeral service that makes sense for the people who actually use it.
We’ll happily work alongside funeral homes, cemeteries, crematoria, celebrants, suppliers and other professionals (including members of both the NFDA and Funerals Australia) whenever doing so is in the best interests of a family.
But we are also completely comfortable standing outside the traditional industry structure.
We would rather be accountable to the families who use us than to an industry model we’re deliberately trying to change.
That’s not an attack on the NFDA or Funerals Australia.
It’s simply the truth.
Rest doesn’t belong to the traditional funeral industry.
We’re doing things differently on purpose.