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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 739 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Non-pharmacist corporate structures are more likely to focus on maximising commercial returns, for example, through encouraging greater sales of medicinal and health care products. Overseas experience also shows that chain store-type pharmacies do little of the across-the-counter counselling that is provided by independent pharmacies.

Some time ago, I was approached by the Pharmacy Guild about an anomaly in the ACT legislation concerning pharmacists. While the intent of the legislation is to limit the practice of pharmacy to individual registered pharmacists, it could allow a company to own a pharmacy business. This company could merely employ a registered pharmacist to manage the pharmacy part of its business.

My original bill sought to eliminate this anomaly by allowing companies to operate a pharmacy, but only if the company is controlled and managed by registered pharmacists. The bill protected the public interest by ensuring that pharmacies can be owned and operated only by pharmacists, while providing pharmacists with the flexibility of using a corporate structure for their pharmacy business, should they so choose. My bill was modelled on the pharmacy legislation in South Australia, which follows this approach.

Companies that seek to be registered pharmacists must have only one object in their constitution, which is to carry on the business of pharmacy. All the directors of the company must be registered pharmacists. The shares of the company must be owned by registered pharmacists, or their immediate relatives, and only the registered pharmacists have voting rights.

After my bill was tabled, the department of justice raised an issue with the then Minister for Health about whether the bill was consistent with paragraph 23 (1) (h) of the self-government act.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Ms Tucker has the floor.

MS TUCKER: This provides that the Assembly has no power to make a law in respect of matters that are the subject of the laws in force in the territory relating to companies.

We received contrary legal advice that the bill is not legislation that is the subject of the Commonwealth Corporations Act. The bill does not prescribe general rules for the management or ownership of companies. Rather, it prescribes which management arrangements are acceptable for a company to be eligible for registration as an incorporated pharmacist. It is the choice of a particular company whether it wants to operate as a pharmacist or not. I therefore still do not believe that this bill is contrary to the self-government act.

The former minister for health, Mr Moore, agreed with our view that the bill did not contradict the self-government act, and was prepared to support it with a few fine-tuning amendments, which we thought would remove any doubt. It is a concern to me that, just before this legislation was to take effect, some five months after its passing, the department of health has now come back to argue again that the legislation is contrary to the self-government act.

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