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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2589 ..

Mr Smyth: Nobody said that.

MR CORBELL: No-one is saying that, because this is central to the bill.

MR SPEAKER: Please do not respond to the interjections. Direct your comments through me.

MR CORBELL: The government will not be supporting this provision tonight. We will hear in the course of the debate before we vote on this, I assume, a whole series of motherhood statements about how important pharmacies are. No-one is suggesting otherwise. For the record, I have a daughter who would not be able to eat unless I got the prescription she needs filled by my local pharmacist. So don’t go around telling me that I do not, as the Minister for Health or as an individual, value the importance of pharmacies. My daughter would not live without having that prescription filled by my local pharmacist. But that is a separate issue from whether or not ownership controls on pharmacies should be considered in a rational and objective way. That is what the government is attempting to do tonight. Regrettably, I do not think that is being done by other members in this place.

MR HARGREAVES (10.04): Mr Speaker, I want Ms Dundas to get up and explain a couple of things to me in her response to this debate. Some things seem to have escaped me. Maybe she can clear them up. I understand, and I am happy to be corrected in this regard, that the Lanyon Marketplace building is owned by Woolworths. The major activity in that marketplace is the supermarket. Therefore, the marketplace is, in my understanding, the premises of a supermarket. There are other businesses around it, including a pharmacy. Can somebody explain to me whether the owner of that pharmacy would be in breach of this amendment? If the answer to that is no, I would like someone to prove it to me. I cite that example because it is the only one I am really aware of. There may be more.

I turn to the other matter that I am curious about. Perhaps Ms Dundas can explain this one to me. If the big objection is that the large supermarket chains are all about squeezing out community pharmacies, are you actually covering your base with this amendment? It is my understanding that Coles Myer owns the Coles supermarkets and that it also own Grace Bros and the Kmart stores. If you are concerned about the predatory nature of the owners of supermarkets, perhaps you ought to go up one level and consider the predatory nature of those people. Is it therefore possible that the Grace Bros store in, say, the Canberra Centre can open a pharmacy? Can you explain that to me? If not, why not? Perhaps it is because the space is too big. If the space is too big, where is the inconsistency with some of the larger pharmacies?

I understand what you are trying to do, but I am challenging you. I do not think that you are going to stop it with this amendment. All you are doing is picking up one part of the possibility of predatory practices concerning community pharmacies. What is to stop any large activity that is part-owned by pharmacists? Why can they not do it under their ownership? The scrutiny of bills committee report makes mention of there being a question mark over exactly what constitutes ownership. A pharmacist who has shares in Woolworths and shares in Coles Myer is a part-owner of them. Would that person escape

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