Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendment (2) on sheet 8353.

(2) Schedule 2, item 15, page 19 (after line 24), after subsection 26BF(5), insert:

(6) All indications citing traditional evidence must include the following statement: This traditional indication is not in accordance with modern medical knowledge and there is no scientific evidence that this product is effective.

It is really important to note that the Sansom review suggested a range of changes. They suggested a change that meant that sponsors of products couldn't list the indications for that product as free text—in other words, they couldn't decide what they wanted to say about a particular product; there had to be a list of pre-approved options. We've got some concern that that list seems to be growing, but ultimately we do support the recommendation from the Sansom review which said that there have to be a range of pre-approved indications and that sponsors need to indicate that they're going to choose one of those pre-approved indications rather than simply stating in their own words what they believe a product might do, which on a number of occasions has been found to be misleading.

But the second thing the Sansom review also recommended was that there needed to be a disclaimer put alongside these indications—in other words, basically a statement on all products sold so that, while a particular indication, say for a traditional medicine, has been listed, it's followed up with a statement in the same space, using the same font, which basically says, 'Look, this is what the traditional indication for this medicine is, but it has not been scientifically tested.' That is very important because having an indication like that might give a consumer some confidence that, given that this product has been approved by the TGA, there's been some scientific testing to validate that indication, when in fact that's not the case. So the Sansom review said: 'Get rid of this free text. Don't allow sponsors of products to say what they want about a particular drug. That can be misleading and give the false impression to an individual that a product has a scientific basis behind it, so you're going to have to basically tick a list of pre-approved indications, but you also need to make sure that you make it very clear to the individual purchasing the product that it hasn't been scientifically tested.'

That was what the review recommended, and we support that. That recommendation was also supported by a number of other health bodies and consumer groups—for example, CHOICE, the Consumers Health Forum and the Friends of Science in Medicine. They all raised concerns in their submissions. We're simply saying that, if you're purchasing a product, you should have all the information available. You shouldn't be misled about the particular scientific evidence behind a product, which I think is really important protection for people who spend often a lot of money on this stuff in the belief, sometimes mistaken, that there is a valid, scientifically tested indication for that product. So we'd like to see that statement included, and that's effectively what this amendment does.