Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (23 October) . . Page.. 4026 ..
MR CORBELL
(continuing):This program is, in effect, an accreditation system to set acceptable standards for the industry and to assess the individual pharmacies against these standards. Eighty-five per cent of the pharmacies in the ACT carry QCPP accreditation, whereas 68 per cent of the Australian pharmacies are accredited. It is anticipated that 98 per cent of the ACT pharmacies will be QCPP accredited by the end of 2003.
The issue of the ownership of pharmacies by supermarkets is a complex and controversial one. Nevertheless, it is being considered by a number of large companies which are based either nationally or overseas. The ownership issue is also generating significant political and media interest.
Mrs Cross' proposal today asks the government to clarify the legislative position in relation to whether pharmacies can be established within supermarkets. The ACT government is quite happy to do that work and report to the Assembly on it. I will certainly be instructing my department to undertake this work if the motion is passed today.
MS TUCKER
(3.41): The Greens also support this motion. It is a very good motion. Mr Corbell outlined clearly the social functions of pharmacies, as did Mrs Cross. We had a debate on this subject in this place when we passed the Pharmacy Amendment Bill 2001. The national competition policy review also found that it was in the public interest to be able to have what is perceived as anticompetitive behaviour in restricting pharmacies to the control of pharmacists and I think that we would all be concerned if that was, once again, under threat by multinationals or national supermarkets. It is useful for the government to scrutinise our legislation and see whether there are loopholes in it. If there are, no doubt Mrs Cross or some other member will seek to have those loopholes closed.MS DUNDAS
(3.42): I too will be supporting the motion as amended today. It will bring about a review of the legislation, which can be done quite quickly, so that we will have all the information we need about the situation in the ACT with regard to pharmacies in supermarkets. As has been said, many pharmacists provide a primary health care role whereby they are often asked to diagnose minor ailments and recommend a drug or other remedy or that the customer should perhaps visit a doctor. It is questionable whether supermarket pharmacies would be able to fulfil this primary health care role and therefore we would see a further increase in the burden on our GPs.I think that an important question in the debate is what will happen to our pharmacies. I understand that in the last decade, for every dispensary opened in a supermarket in the United States, 1.3 independent pharmacies were forced to close their doors and that the United Kingdom government has already rejected proposals to totally deregulate the pharmaceutical retail industry. Those are interesting statistics that we need to keep in mind.
It is important that we look at the price of health care products and how we can make sure that health care products stay affordable and accessible, but whether supermarkets coming into the pharmaceuticals market would actually result in a lowering of the prices of health care products is something of which we need to be wary.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .