Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Health Legislation Amendment (Pharmacy Location Arrangements) Bill 2006. This bill proposes the amendments made as a result of the fourth community pharmacy agreement negotiated between the government and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, aimed at ensuring Australians, particularly in rural and remote areas, have access to the supply of pharmaceutical benefits. The bill will include more flexible location rules, which will preserve the traditional community pharmacy and enable pharmacists to move to areas of high unmet demand for PBS drugs.

In the Riverina I have found community pharmacies are vital in providing a service to residents and that customers value the commitment and dedication of the pharmacists. As I have said in this House many times in this same debate, in many areas the pharmacist is the only real medical attention that members of my communities have. They may go to a doctor in another town, but they come back to fill their prescriptions, and they rely on their pharmacist for a host of advice in the way in which they use the drugs available on the market. So it is really most important that pharmacists are valued, particularly in those smaller community areas.

This pharmacy location rule has had some unintended consequences, though, in the application of the current location rules. One such unintended consequence has been that an area not in my electorate but just outside of it has seen a particular pharmacist purchase both pharmacies in that community. Then of course the community members were not given a choice and there was concern that there were many overpriced goods. However, the pharmacy location rule prevented any other pharmacist from moving into that area to dispense.

Whilst I support the location rule, it does have some unintended consequences. It makes sense for a discretionary power to be made available to address on an individual basis any area where there is an unintended consequence of the location rule. One such situation occurred within my electorate. Recently in Wagga Wagga there was an issue with a new suburban shopping centre, because the pharmacy location laws created some confusion about the dispensation of medicines. The existing legislation and location rules came into play because a pharmacy was located too close to the new location. Because of the location rule, there was an issue about where the dispensary was going to be located within the shopping centre.

The angst came about in August last year with the inception of a mobile dispensary in a portable building in the middle of a paddock just 100 metres away from the shopping centre—a portable building was sitting there in the middle of a paddock because there was another suburb just 100 metres outside of the distance factor of a pharmacy location rule. People were having to drive away from this new shopping centre location in order to access their pharmacy requirements in another pharmacy. It was quite ridiculous.

It was reported in the Daily Advertiser that customers found out about the legislation when a sign was put at the front of the temporary location. It read:

Under the current New South Wales laws, a chemist cannot open within two kilometres of an existing chemist. The shop inside the mall is too close to an existing chemist at Ashmont, so we had to position it 100 metres away.

So a pharmacy, a mobile dispensary, was set up in a padock. This situation shows the need for some sort of discretion to intervene when there is a brand-new shopping centre to service an entire suburb—the entire suburb was going to do their shopping there—but, because of the location rule, the customers would have to travel to a pharmacy elsewhere for their very essential pharmaceuticals.

The minister has indeed acted on some of those anomalies and given himself some room to move. Basically people were travelling two kilometres to another pharmacist when there was one available to them. As I said, somebody set up a mobile dispensary in the middle of a paddock. The management of South City at Glenfield said that the portable dispensary was closer for customers. They would have had to drive two kilometres to the nearest alternative, which for customers and staff was completely inappropriate.

The fourth pharmacy agreement was introduced in November last year and has meant some changes to location rules. New provisions allow pharmacies to relocate to large medical centres with eight or more doctors that operate extended hours, which is a fantastic move; to small shopping centres such as the one that I have just spoken about, with 15 shops and a large supermarket; and to large, single-pharmacy rural towns. The provision of a pharmacist at a shopping centre with 15 shops and a large supermarket will see the resolution of the problem at the Glenfield shopping centre, South City Shopping Centre. It will also enable pharmacists to move to a large, single-pharmacy rural town with 8,000 or more people and to urban areas with high population growth.

The agreement also ensures that pharmacies are prevented from opening in, or having public access to, supermarkets. I absolutely welcome this. I welcome the minister’s advice that this agreement will continue the prohibition on pharmacies within supermarkets. It is no secret that I sincerely oppose the attempts by Woolworths, Coles and other large multinationals to take pharmacies into their operations. I again reaffirm my opposition and thank the minister, in his wise judgment, for precluding pharmacists from being able to set up in supermarkets. I am deeply opposed to the idea of companies like Woolworths, Coles and others being given an opportunity to set up concise and limited pharmacy applications within their supermarkets. It is something that I will always be deeply opposed to, moreover because I rely particularly on community pharmacists providing valuable medical advice, support and contact to the people I represent in towns throughout the Riverina.

Our pharmacists work extremely long hours in rural and regional areas and they are perhaps not recognised for the amount of work that they do. Many of them work to cover the shortfall in the numbers of general practitioners in many of my rural areas. Pharmacists ease the burden of many people. Residents can have access to educated, reliable advice and assistance to help them through troubling times, particularly if they have to go off to another town to attend a GP or a specialist and they come back with a prescription to be filled.

Often in rural areas the pharmacist knows the customer, who is his client, and he certainly knows their problems. Community pharmacies have an amazing commitment. It is not just an employment option but a choice of lifestyle in regional areas where they can serve the community with the best advice and assistance. I know that this type of care would not be made available to customers if profit for shareholders was first and foremost.

Pharmacies provide many services free of charge. Pharmacists are generally always available. They generally provide home deliveries for the elderly. Many provide a subsidised Webster packing service, which is a major issue. Once you put in a packing service for a Webster pack, you might provide a treatment for a few months. If the doctor changes that treatment then the pharmacist gets all the packs back. They have to take them apart and repack them. It is a very time-consuming option, but pharmacists still provide that service. Would we see that happening in supermarkets? I think not. The majority would just be dispensing a schedule of drugs with the least time possible put into serving the clients’ needs.

Pharmacists can also be subagents for Diabetes Australia. We all know about the major problem we are experiencing worldwide through the onset of diabetes type 2 and juvenile diabetes. We have a management program which is assisting us in being able to manage our diabetes across the board in rural areas. Community pharmacies should not be diminished by letting multinational supermarkets just cherry-pick a small number of items and completely knock out the system that is operating in rural and regional areas—and, more particularly, one that I am very proud of that operates in the Riverina. This is the greatest threat to my communities from a health perspective. Pharmacists offer programs for asthma management and certainly diabetes assistance—an enormous amount of advice on a host of illnesses that are treated by GPs. As I said, they really are in many cases the lifeline link for many communities that do not have a GP.

The government has been committed to ensuring that people living in rural and regional Australia have access to pharmacy services. It has increased its funding support for rural pharmacy programs by $40 million to $111 million with the new agreement. This amendment bill is another step forward in reducing the location issues of pharmacies and allowing the inception of a chemist, including dispensary, in shopping centres with 15 shops and a large supermarket, which has been and is currently an issue within the Riverina.

I support this amendment bill. I congratulate the Minister for Health and Ageing on his work towards making sure that community pharmacists can continue to serve their communities in the most effective manner. I applaud the minister for recognising the concerns that have been presented to him time and time again on this fourth pharmacy agreement, particularly with the issue of looking at changing the location rules so that pharmacies can operate in supermarkets. I applaud the minister for the sensible decisions he has made in this Health Legislation Amendment (Pharmacy Location Arrangements) Bill, which does give some ability to address unintended consequences of the application of the location rule. I commend the bill to the House.

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