Page 2649 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 October 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
opinion with me. I am getting quite used to it. The point here is that Mrs Grassby and Mr Berry before her, often, have worked out that they are on the losing side in this particular debate. They do not understand the debate because they do not understand the issues. We will get on to why they do not understand the issues when we get to the debate on the question that the report be noted.
Madam Speaker, it seems to me that what we have coming into the committees here is ALP gutter faction fighting tactics. We do not want them in these committees. We are not interested in that style. I think Mrs Grassby should be terribly embarrassed by that. I point out, Madam Speaker, that at page 45 of the report Mrs Grassby puts her opinion. She says:
It is my opinion that pharmacies are primarily a commercial enterprise and as such their focus is on volume of sales, customer service and supply. It is difficult to see where the relevance of dispensing methadone fits into the running of a commercially viable enterprise.
I suggest, Madam Speaker, that the reaction to this is still the sting of Stan Aliprandi. Mrs Grassby seems to claim that she has never been to her pharmacist and had a discussion about whether a particular drug is useful or may help in a particular situation. I will relate a personal experience from Sunday night. I phoned an after hours pharmacist and said that I had a particular drug that a doctor had recommended that I give to my son, but that this antihistamine was out of date. I asked whether it would be a problem. We had a quite long discussion, and the result was that I did not have to go to the pharmacy to buy that particular drug and his advice to me cost him some money. That is how pharmacists operate. That is why they are on the top of the popularity list and why, as we see here, politicians are so low or so damn far down on that confidence list, in the view of the community as a whole.
Madam Speaker, unfortunately, I have used quite a bit of my time in speaking to this part of the issue. I would have done far better had I spoken to the report as a whole in order to clarify where it is that Labor, in particular the Minister for Health, has failed in understanding health promotion. He seems to have misunderstood what the development of health is about.
Mr Berry: You have not seen my response yet.
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, we have an interjection that we have not seen Mr Berry's response. Perhaps after my speech and after he reads the report he will realise that his earlier comments and the approach that he has taken so far to the methadone program indicate that he is way off beam.
Madam Speaker, I referred in my preface to this report to a speech by Professor McMichael. I did so because I think it is important to note the whole thinking in terms of population health and the development of an attitude to improvement in health. That attitude to change has been reinforced internationally. The World Health Organisation meeting in Russia in 1976, reinforced in Ottawa in 1986, accepted the notion that if we are going to improve people's health we need to empower people. I drew attention in my preface as well to the fact that this was recognised in the excellent report on Aboriginal deaths in custody by the royal commissioner, Mr Johnston, QC. He recognised the same sorts of things and took the action to which Ms Follett responded in a very positive and appropriate way.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .