Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I look forward to seeing the metrics of success. In your previous contribution you said, 'This hasn't just happened overnight.' What has happened overnight is the change in position in relation to the mechanism for supplying vapes in Australia. That has happened in the last few days. Up until Monday Australians were unaware that vapes will be available in pharmacies, without a prescription, if the legislation gets through this place, so I would say that this has happened overnight. It has happened overnight because, for some reason, the government decided that they wanted to do a deal with the Greens. I don't know why the government decided that they needed to change their position. I have to say: the government has been absolutely rock-solid in its obsession with sticking with the prescription-only model, up until a few days ago.

The coalition has always taken the view that restricting and prohibiting children's access to vapes is the No. 1 priority that should be delivered through legislation in this parliament, and we do not shy away from that. We merely differ in our belief about how that is best achieved. At the end of the day, the coalition believes in being honest with the Australian public, and the mechanism through which vapes are currently available is plainly not working. It is not stopping children from getting access to vapes. I don't think there is anybody in this place that doesn't believe that if they walked out of here, no matter how old they were, they could walk into a store somewhere in Canberra and buy a vape. That has been no different over recent times, and following this legislation it will still be no different.

What we question is the need for you to have gone and done a deal with the Greens under the cloak of darkness, without any consultation with he very people it's going to impact—the very people you expect to implement this change of policy: Australia's 6,000 small-business pharmacies around the nation. I think it is not correct to put on the record that this hasn't happened overnight. The change has happened overnight. I will absolutely concede that the government has been pursuing a prescription-only model since it came into government. It had not been pursuing a pharmacy dispensed model until Monday. Or they may have been pursuing that, but the public was unaware of it and the very people who have to put it in place were unaware of it until Monday.

I would say that what we have before us here is one of the most confusing deals I have ever seen, the need for which I have yet to see. We have a completely unworkable solution now being put on the table. We have a whole heap of our frontline health professionals, our primary healthcare workers, our pharmacists, not wanting to have anything to do with this particular change in plan, and yet the government sit here and somehow pretend that they have been consulting with Australia's pharmacists about this particular change.

It is very disappointing that we are sitting here today. We are going to see a messed up change. It is just creating great confusion across the country. There is no consistency in what's gone on here, and yet the government seems to think that it's okay to do some deal with the Greens at the last minute and confuse all of Australia. It's very disappointing, Minister, that in all of the conversations that we've had this morning we don't seem to have got any understanding about the practical implications of a last-minute policy change for one of the most important parts of our health system and a part of our health system that is under immense pressure. We all know that primary care is under immense pressure at the moment. Now we've just turned around and blindsided pharmacies once again. This is a track record of this government. They did it last year when they decided without any consultation that they were going to bring in double dispensing. We've seen the result of that particular action. It has hardly delivered any real benefits in terms of the cost of medicines to Australians.

Here we are, once again, having a debate about something that has been a knee-jerk policy decision of the government under the cloak of darkness without any consultation with the sector that is now required to implement it and no consideration of the costs. We have heard nothing in response to any of our questions about what the government's intentions are in terms of the additional cost burden on our pharmacies of implementing this policy. So it is very, very disappointing to be standing here. We will certainly not be supporting the amendment that they have put forward.