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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2515 ..

The original bill is founded on the best of intentions to stop supermarket pharmacies and the fears that were raised in relation to crown leases have been addressed. We are explicitly prohibiting supermarkets from operating pharmacies and pharmacists operating inside supermarkets. I believe that the Assembly supports this idea. I hope that we can deal with it today so that pharmacists who have been working on this issue can get back to their primary job of delivering health care to the community.

MRS DUNNE (3.57): This is a very important issue that, up until today, I thought there was bipartisan support for. On 23 October last year, when Mrs Cross first raised this issue, the government supported the notion of taking steps to ensure that pharmacies were not able to operate within supermarkets. At that time the minister made the case very clearly, and that case very much supports the case made by Mr Smyth—that this is about small businessmen and women in this town, supporting this town and supporting the health of the people in this town.

I will quote what the minister had to say. He said:

There are currently 56 pharmacies providing pharmacy care across the ACT. A majority of these pharmacies are owned by pharmacists who reside in the ACT. A few of these pharmacists also have business partners who are based interstate. It is estimated that local pharmacies employ approximately 200 pharmacists and 500 other staff on a full-time or part-time basis.

We are talking about a serious matter. But it is not just business. This is about the health care of people in the ACT. When representatives of the Pharmacy Guild came to see me I made the point that I suppose I am a bit old fashioned in that I have had the same GP for 25 years, I have had the same pharmacist for as long as I have lived in my area and I go out of my way not to go to another pharmacist.

But from time to time things happen. You do not always go to the one doctor. Sometimes you have to go to a specialist. I went to have a prescription filled recently for one of my children who had been to a specialist, after having been to a GP, and the pharmacist said to me, “Do you realise, Mrs Dunne, that this is the third time in a row that you have had this prescription. You really need to be careful. Next time you need to have a different antibiotic.” I had forgotten and because I had seen two different doctors, they did not know. But the pharmacist knew. The pharmacist could give that little warning and make sure that next time I could say, “Don’t give him so-and-so because he has already had that three times in a row.”

That is the sort of thing that you would miss out on getting if you went to a pharmacy in a large supermarket. You are never going to see the same person all the time. I know that when I go to my local pharmacy I am going to see one of three people. They know who I am—not because I am a member; they have known me for a long time. They know who my children are. They know the ailments we all suffer from and how prescriptions interact. You are not going to get that in a supermarket. That is why I thought that we had bipartisan support for this notion and why we should be supporting this bill.

Mr Corbell, the minister, suddenly stood up in this place today and said that we could not solve the situation. This is a very ingenious minister. He can work his way through the planning system—he is the planning minister, for goodness sake! But he stands up and

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