Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The proposal is inconsistent with the report of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, which examined this bill and recommended that the bill be passed without amendment. The government does not consider the separate scheduling arrangements of medicines and chemicals to be implemented by this bill to be a major change. All they do is provide for the secretary rather than a statutory authority to be the decision maker and divide the current single committee into two expert advisory committees. However, given that these changes will not come into effect until the best part of a decade after the review by Mr Galbally, the government accepts that there may be merit in a further review of the scheme after it has been in operation for some time. However, there is no real case for the review panel to be required to include a person with expertise in complementary medicines. The overwhelming majority of the substances that are scheduled are prescription medicines or over-the-counter medicines. Complementary medicines are low risk and do not meet the criteria for scheduling. Therefore, I move an amendment to Senator Xenophon’s amendment (4):

Omit from Paragraph (4):

the words “including a person with expertise in complementary medicines”