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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2505 ..

Rivett has quite a large ACT Housing population. A large number of the residences in Rivett are owned by ACT Housing. I think it is acknowledged that Rivett is probably not as well off socioeconomically as some of the other suburbs that surround it. When the pharmacist went, the doctor stopped coming and the butcher closed down. Before that happened I think Rivett had two supermarkets. One of the supermarkets went under, and for a long period I think there was a small corner store-type supermarket with a newsagency in the Rivett shops. That was the effect of losing the pharmacy.

You can say, “Well, all right, that’s a commercial decision. The pharmacist closed up, he sold back his number to the government,” or whatever occurred. But it is what is lost beyond that that worries me about supermarkets controlling pharmacies in the ACT. And that is what will happen. The buying power of the chains will ensure that they control pharmacy in the ACT.

It is a matter of what we lose. It is not just the scripts; it is not just the ability to go and get the script. It is the allied health, I guess you would call it, that goes with picking up a script. As well as the antibiotic, you have to get some cough mixture, some throat lozenges, a chest rub or something else. When you look at it, the front line in health care is our pharmacies and our GPs. The people we actually go and chat to first are our pharmacist and/or our GP. Often, the pharmacist will refer you on to your GP or some other form of appropriate health care.

I am not against supermarkets and I am not against chains. They serve very useful functions. But I do not believe that you will get that same level of service from a pharmacist who is an employee in a chain supermarket that has got targets and different objectives. You will not get the personalised care and attention that you will get in your local pharmacy. It is about history and it is about local knowledge. In many ways, often the pharmacist is the only friend a lot of people have got. They chat to the pharmacist and their newsagent once or twice a week. That cannot be replicated inside the supermarket. So it is not just the scripts: it is the additional advice that you get on how to use products; it is the additional service; it is the chat; it is the home delivery.

A number of pharmacists have aged care facilities in their area, and they pack the pills for the older Canberrans who live in those facilities. I will bet you that would not happen in a chain store run supermarket. That is my prediction. People with mental health difficulties also use their pharmacies as a first port of call. I am sure that most, if not all, of the pharmacists I know pre-pack the medication required by people with mental health issues. I bet you that will go out the window with a pharmacy that is run with a bottom-line profit motive. Let us face it, supermarkets want pharmacies in their stores to entice people to buy more; it is to make a profit.

I would worry about the government services that pharmacies currently offer. For instance, will supermarkets offer methadone programs? That is a good question. We know that, say, the friendly societies—the big chains that operate in other cities—do not offer nearly as many of the services that government want delivered right in the community, right in the suburbs. These are services that your local pharmacists have offered for years and will continue to do so. Often, local pharmacies are handed on from parents to son or daughter. We want services delivered on behalf of the community but I question whether the ACT government would get the same level of penetration out in

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