Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise quickly to talk about the response to the 60-day prescription model. Strangely enough, I'm going to talk about the Key and Peele comedy series. Many of you may know them from the A-Aron and Jay Quellin skit. I want to talk about the Obama anger translator. This government needs a regional translator because they see every policy through the views of the cities. When we're talking about 665 pharmacies closing and 20,000 jobs being lost, affordability does not come into it if there is no accessibility. Time and time again this is where this government goes. We have cheaper child care, but you can't get child care in the bush. We have cheaper medicines, but there won't be chemists in the bush after this.

Senator Ciccone sat there and rattled off a list of people who were consulted—all these different groups—not one of which was pharmacy based. I tell you that if you took the same axe to the funding of those groups as you did to pharmacies they would squeal like bayoneted pigs, because they'd know this is wrong. In the bush, we don't have doctors and Medicare and all these things. These are community assets. We saw the mistake of the government my side was on when we merged councils in New South Wales. They don't understand that in the bush there is community. In the cities you wake up in one LGA, drop your kids in another LGA and go to work in another LGA. In the bush there is community, in the regions there is community. Near my place, Chelsea Felkai at Whitebridge Pharmacy said, 'It's soul-destroying, what's going on.' They've just bought this and they pay themselves three days a week so they can afford the interest rates on the pharmacy they bought, and this will take more. If we go down to Rowen Turnbull at Blacksmiths pharmacy, in a beautiful little beachside suburb, with the second-best surf club in the area—behind Redhead!—he is saying he will put off staff and cut services, or have to charge more to be able to maintain it. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.