David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to give a big shout-out to and thank 6,000 community pharmacies for helping us get through the COVID episode, which is, fortunately, in the rear-vision mirror. There is a milder version circulating, but they're still out there helping people with their health needs.

Community pharmacies are even more critical in regional Australia than they are in the big smoke. There are plenty of towns—in fact, over 300 of them—where it is the health system, where there isn't a general practice anymore. They've all been put on salaries in state government hospitals, in preference to working in general practice, and we have a shortage. Pharmacies upped the ante and expanded the range of services they do. Some of them have gone more corporate, and gone into a supermarket model where they're just a retailer and prescription dispensing is a small part of their business.

I'm really quite flabbergasted to see that, in this recent budget, there has been a cut, which the finance minister has mentioned—$3.5 billion less over the forward estimates. This is going to affect so many pharmacists. I'm flabbergasted. Having worked in the portfolio myself as a minister and assistant minister, I thought the community pharmacy agreements were locked, signed, sealed and delivered financial arrangements. Until a new arrangement has been done, I don't know how they think they can do that. It's like summary justice. I'm sure plenty of people in the pharmacies would happily sit down if the government wanted to change things. Come to the negotiating table.

Anyhow, I was just looking back on what happened with COVID. I remember there were roughly 10 million vaccinations delivered through pharmacies. When general practices were shut and you had to do telehealth for consults and to pick up scripts, and you couldn't get into a general practice, what was open? The pharmacist was open—like in country towns. I worked in health for 33 years as a doctor; I worked in a country area. We had fantastic support from pharmacists over the years. Their work in their pharmaceutical role is not just dispensing; they do a lot of other work in advice and medication management, and they do a heap of work in aged care. At the moment they are bundled up and have done many of these things pro bono. When you cut $3½ billion out of a system that is financed, has got loan commitments, has employees to keep employed, has pharmacists to hire and work in your business—it is a really devastating blow to wake up one day and be told that, within a week, your whole business model is up in the air.

There was an impact analysis done by the government. I had a look at it before this speech, and it said that there are going to be unintended consequences. I know why the pharmacists are worried—because plenty of people have put their life savings, their mortgage, into opening these businesses. Some of them will be losing $250-odd thousand by the fourth year of these changes. Instead of dispensing 350 drugs once a month and being paid for it, now they've got to do two months but don't get twice the payment. The core of their businesses is their dispensary—unless you're one of these huge corporate things that sell everything and has a different business model. But for true community pharmacies that check your blood pressure, do medication management and do Webster-paks—all these things being done pro bono will evaporate.

On some of the documents saying they're reinvesting: the government is actually just announcing the reinvestment of things that were already baked in, so it's quite misleading. To say they're putting extra money in for stuff that other people get, like the e-script infrastructure, the National Immunisation Program vaccinations—it's not new money. But we won't realise how valuable pharmacists are because plenty of them will close— (Time expired)