Pharmacy Guild of Australia president Trent Twomey with Health Minister Mark Butler last year.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“This is a really good move which shows the government is listening to the voices of consumers,” the consumer group’s chief executive Elizabeth Deveny said. “Every dollar saved at the pharmacy is money that can be spent on groceries or rent.”
But the president of the Guild,which isone of Australia’s biggest political donors,dismissed the consumer advocacy group as one that “receive[s] millions of dollars of funding from the Commonwealth Government” and had been briefed by the government before the pharmacy sector.
“We don’t know how this is going to work and we do have concern for our patients,” Twomey said.
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He also warned of widespread medicine shortages and accused Butler of making “false claims” when the minister said that only seven medicines on the list were experiencing supply problems.
Butler said he wanted to “caution against some of the scare campaigns being put by the pharmacy lobby group” as he rejected the guild’s claims of widespread supply problems.
He said seven in the list of 325 were experiencing shortages and they were being closely monitored by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
“I caution people against taking advice from the pharmacy lobby group about supply arrangements that are monitored very closely by our medicines authorities,” Butler said.
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“This will not impact the supply and demand of these 300 medicines... We have deliberately decided to phase in these arrangements over the course of this year and next year,so pharmacists are able to change their itinerary arrangements.”
Coalition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston backed in the guild’s concerns.
“Until we see the budget papers,we cannot be confident that this is a legitimate cost-of-living measure,” she said.
Canberra pharmacy owner Samantha Kourtis,appearing alongside Twomey on Wednesday,said there was no doubt she would have to cut staff and reduce trading hours,given the loss of profit.
“Small business owners,your community pharmacy where you and your loved ones live,have to make up for those cuts somewhere,” she said.
Butler said he would have liked to see the Coalition support the “important cost-of-living measure that’s good for hip pockets and good for Australians’ health”.
“Perhaps no one will be surprised that[Opposition leader Peter] Dutton,given the choice between backing patients or backing profit,has yet again decided to leave patients out in the cold,” he said.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley.Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.