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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2594 ..

Mr Speaker, the amendment is neat and it addresses the concerns that Mr Corbell raised earlier. It has been run by the pharmacy guild, which I understand agrees with it and thinks that it will work. I know that it has been run past legal advisers and they think it will work. Mrs Cross thinks it will work. The Democrats, the Greens and the Liberal Party seem to think that it will work.

Mr Hargreaves: Oh, that makes it right, then.

MR SMYTH: I can think of a few bills passed by the opposition in the last Assembly that were so wrong that we had to come back and clean them up. Every now and then you might get it wrong. Indeed, I think Mr Wood said yesterday that we would be back within 12 months amending the emergency services legislation, because it will need amendment. Some days assemblies, as legislators, do not get it entirely right. But I think that this is pretty close to what we can do tonight to make it workable. I think that it will work. We will have to wait and see. Often legislation is reviewed after it is passed. If we are going to start relying on the excuse that we cannot be certain that it will work, nothing will ever get through this place and this place will be unworkable and it will become a joke.

There must be a point in each debate where we must work together to make sure that things work. I am very happy to have the support of the majority of the people in this place, people who have worked very hard throughout the day, across the dinner break and since that time to try to come up with a workable solution. I am glad that we have a workable solution. The opposition believes that it will work and we are unstinting in our support of the pharmacies of the ACT.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make an explanation under standing order 47 about words I used in my speech that have been misquoted.

MR SPEAKER: Proceed, Mr Corbell.

MR CORBELL: Mr Smyth suggested in his speech that the Labor Party, in opposition, supported a bill to oppose pharmacy ownership by other than pharmacists, but in government was doing something else. That is incorrect, Mr Speaker. I said in my speech that in opposition we supported provisions that ensured that pharmacies could only be owned and operated by pharmacists. Whether a pharmacist-owned and operated pharmacy should operate in a supermarket is a different matter from whether a pharmacy should be owned and operated by a pharmacist. There is no inconsistency in what the government did in opposition and the approach that it is adopting now.

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming) (10.26): I will be brief. I want to respond to Mr Smyth who, as usual, became very personal in his attack on Mr Corbell, which is usually the case when he has very little ground beneath him. I have to say that Mr Corbell made what was probably the most intelligent contribution to this debate in terms of analysing and telling this house why there is difficulty with this legislation.

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