Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, with Assistant Minister McBride, I visited the Windsor Village Pharmacy—located in the north-eastern part of my electorate of Sturt—to speak to pharmacist Farida about the Albanese Labor government's cheaper medicines initiative. The Windsor Village Pharmacy is a family-run pharmacy with a focus on community. Owners Farida and Rodaina purchased it in 2007 with the goal of providing easy, convenient and patient-focused pharmacy solutions for the local community and the patients of the neighbouring Paradise Medical Centre.

Farida and Rodaina have decades of pharmacy experience. They know their community, and they are deeply committed to providing personal, tailored services to each patient who walks through their door. Farida told me that her pharmacy had experienced an overwhelming response to the $7.70 per script rate for concession card holders. With many of her patients needing multiple scripts, the half-decade long freeze on increases to the concessional PBS co-payment, which began on 1 January this year, has actually been a life saver. Farida's patients with concession cards will pay a maximum co-payment of $7.70 until 2030. This freeze provides certainty about the maximum cost of PBS medicines. Seven dollars seventy means that people do not decide to not fill a script; they fill it, getting the immediate health care they need and deserve. Farida, like the Albanese Labor government, knows $7.70 scripts for concession card holders are not only good for the hip pocket but good for the community.