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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2510 ..

In addition, there are other pharmacies in the territory where there is another non-pharmacy business being operated within or adjacent to the pharmacy. I am advised in particular of a pharmacy in Campbell that also has operating as part of its business a post office shop. Clearly these provisions, as proposed by Ms Dundas and Mrs Cross, would result in that pharmacy also having to close down.

The Pharmacy Board has advised me that most pharmacies are located in complexes that sub-lease space to the pharmacist. These pharmacists would have to buy the complex in which they are located or leave it if they wanted to continue to trade legally. This would mean that most shopping centres would no longer have a pharmacy.

This is one of the most ham-fisted, awkward and misjudged pieces of legislation I have ever seen in this place. It claims to protect community pharmacies but every single element of it that I have seen either from Mrs Cross or from Ms Dundas has exactly the reverse effect—they actually impinge on the existing operating practices of pharmacy as they exist today and this would result in me, as Minister for Health, having to advise pharmacists that they were trading illegally and they would have to rectify their circumstances.

I do not want to be the minister for health who has to do that. I do not want to write to pharmacists saying, “You are trading illegally because of the legislation passed in this place by the crossbenchers, with the support of the Liberal Party.” That is why I am saying to members today that this legislation is fundamentally flawed. It will result in the closure of dozens of pharmacies because they will not be able to operate legally under these provisions. It may seem melodramatic, but that is how fundamentally flawed this legislation is. The government will not be supporting it. At the very least, I would encourage members to sit back, look at the issue in some more detail and not seek to pass this legislation today.

MS TUCKER (3.40): The ACT Greens are opposed to the push from supermarkets to include a pharmacy in a supermarket premises. In 2002 the Legislative Assembly supported my Pharmacy Amendment Bill, which we understood at the time would prevent supermarket ownership of pharmacies by ensuring that pharmacists are the only people who can own a pharmacy business. I would just like to recap on a speech I made in 2001 which explains our commitment to pharmacists owning pharmacies. I said:

Mr Speaker, for many years in Australia, there has been a general presumption that the pharmacies we see in our shopping centres are owned by the registered pharmacists who work within them. In fact, all state pharmacy legislation limits the ownership of pharmacies to pharmacists.

However, in recent years, concern has arisen within the pharmacy profession about the potential for corporations with no particular pharmacy connections to take over the operation of pharmacies and run them as a retail business. For example, a supermarket could operate a pharmacy section within its premises in the same way as it may have a bakery or delicatessen, or a company may want to set up its own chain of pharmacies.

This concern came to a head when the state and Commonwealth governments agreed through COAG to undertake a national competition policy review of national

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