Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to thank the local pharmacies in my electorate and in urban Ipswich as well as the country towns for the work they do, the employment they provide and the contribution they make with local organisations, including sport organisations.

I'm pleased to speak on this motion because it gives me an opportunity to call out some of the exaggerated claims and scaremongering around the Albanese Labor government's plan to allow Australians to buy two month's worth of medicine for the price of a single prescription. This policy is supported by so many health organisations: Consumers Health Forum, the Heart Foundation, the Lung Foundation, the Breast Cancer Network, the Rural Doctors Association, the AMA and so many others. The reality is our cheaper medicines policy will help around six million people: patients with chronic health conditions who require regular drug treatment for the rest of their lives, halving their medicine costs and saving $1.6 billion over four years, with fewer visits to the GP and the pharmacist. It builds on the changes that we've made in terms of the costs of prescription medicines from the beginning of this year.

Unfortunately the Pharmacy Guild, which represents the interests of too many pharmacies and now the opposition, are trying to mislead Australians with a dishonest scare campaign. The suggestion in the motion that the government has not consulted with, or listened to, the concerns of community pharmacists is simply not true. The Pharmacy Guild were briefed early, and in detail, by the government on the increased dispensing policy which is the basis of a recommendation of the independent expert Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, the PBAC. That body is made up of clinical experts, including from the pharmacies sector. Moreover, the changes were first recommended back in 2018. So for the Pharmacy Guild to now claim that the prospects of the proposal being implemented were not known to them is simply disingenuous. They weren't letting on to their members about this prospect.

The PBAC has now reconsidered the issue and recommended hundreds more—in fact up to 300 more of the most common medicines used by Australians. The majority of these are currently in good supply or have a readily available alternative. It's disappointing that the Pharmacy Guild has chosen to break their non-disclosure agreement with the government prior to the announcement of their reasons and deal themselves out of the policy implementation discussions. The invitation remains for them to be engaged in a constructive process.

I've met with many local pharmacists in my electorate. I had a Zoom meeting with up to 31 people. I had meetings in my electorate office in Ipswich and also down here in Canberra. I'll continue to engage with them, as will the Minister for Health and Aged Care and other government members because we know how important local community pharmacies and the role they play in our local communities are.

Secondly, the motion calls for the government to guarantee this change will not harm the viability of community pharmacies. Don't get me wrong. We acknowledge there will be some impact on individual pharmacies, including in regional and rural areas. But that's why the government is reinvesting money back into the community pharmacy sector. The government recognises that rural and regional pharmacies face particular challenges; that's why we've doubled the rural pharmacy maintenance allowance ahead of the introduction of the policy. This provides a significant boost to small and regional pharmacies, with some pharmacies set to receive more than $90,000 under the subsidy.

It's worth noting the Australian pharmacy sector receives a lot of government support already. On the whole it is highly profitable, well regulated and highly protected. For example, the total industry revenue was estimated to be nearly $26 billion this year, with an industrywide profit margin of well over eight per cent. The benchmark the Pharmacy Guild has been using is a highly selective use by the Pharmacy Guild. It's an inaccurate description of the profitability of the sector, relying on that figure that I refer to based on the turnover of pharmacies earning more than $3.5 million a year. That's not the preferred benchmark of the ATO, by the way, which is the cost of sales, not the expenses divided by annual turnover, which the Pharmacy Guild tends to use. If you look at that, it goes from the actual eight per cent to nearly 38 per cent profitability, which is commensurate with what a legal practice, an accounting practice or some other professional practice might earn.

The argument also that somehow this will result in drugs not being available or not being dispensed is simply nonsense, quite frankly. The PBAC considered this whole issue on 5 May, and the chair of the PBAC, Andrew Wilson, confirmed that 60-day dispensing will not cause medicine shortages, and it's simply rubbish to say otherwise. RMIT has said that, Macquarie University has said, and a whole range of other people have said that as well.

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