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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1462 ..

matter. Clarification is needed within the legislation to ensure that pharmacists are the only controllers and operators of pharmacies. I believe this bill does that.

The primary intention of this bill is to ensure that healthcare remains the chief focus of pharmacists and that the professionalism of pharmacists conforms with the highest standards. This is done by ensuring pharmacists are properly qualified, are accountable to the supervisory board and are required to own, operate and be responsible for their own pharmacies. Thus the role of pharmacies in society is different from other retailers and service providers because pharmacists are not just sellers of medicine, drugs and medicinal medical supplies. They are not just retailers like butchers or greengrocers or bakers.

Pharmacists are often the first point of health advice for many in our community. Pharmacists often act as de facto doctors and nurses, patching up cuts and abrasions, providing basic advice and making medical recommendations. Pharmacists understand the history of their clientele and are best equipped to provide the best combination of drugs and medicine that will improve the individual’s overall health. Pharmacists also provide a number of community based healthcare programs such as the methadone program that provides significant benefits to the community.

In sum, pharmacists combine the roles of health supply retailer and primary health care provider and adviser and monitor. Pharmacists must also make judgments about what medicines and drugs to supply—decisions that have significant ramifications for the clientele of the pharmacy. The annexation of such judgments to a supermarket or some outside party would have a definite and most certainly negative effect on the community.

It must be acknowledged that the profession of pharmacy is unique, as are the outlets from which the pharmacists operate. This uniqueness came about not as a matter of professional preference or an idiosyncrasy in the legislative framework within which pharmacies operate but out of necessity—out of the necessity to ensure only qualified and responsible people dispense these potentially lethal medicines and drugs; the necessity to ensure that only the most qualified people are in charge of healthcare in our community; and the necessity to ensure that the health of our community is placed in the hands of professionals whose priority is healthcare, not professionals whose priority is profit.

It is, therefore, quite plain that the intention of the bill is to have pharmacists in full control of the ownership and operation of pharmacies. Any attempt to remove total responsibility away from the pharmacists through clouding the issue of ownership and operation of pharmacies will no doubt create a greater danger in our community where drugs and medicines could or will be distributed by unqualified people and where medical supplies and medicine varieties will be severely limited based on economic considerations.

This amendment bill is necessary because a loophole exists in the current legislation that would permit a pharmacist to operate as a sublessee, and this would create confusion about who actually operates the pharmacy. This loophole has led to a case where a supermarket and a pharmacist attempted to negotiate terms where the pharmacist would operate as a sublessee of the supermarket. This is a clear breach of the intention of the Pharmacy Act, even if not of its wording as it stands at present. Prohibiting a pharmacist

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