Minister for Health and Aged Care, doorstop - 4 June 2024

Read the transcript of Minister Butler's doorstop on the 8th Community Pharmacy Agreement; cheaper medicines.

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Aged Care

Media event date:
Date published:
Media type:
Transcript
Audience:
General public

PHARMACY GUILD NATIONAL PRESIDENT, TRENT TWOMEY: Good morning everybody, we are here at the award winning Capital Chemist who were one of the finalists in the Pharmacy of The Year competition nationally in 2024. I'm joined by Minister Butler and Minister McBride to announce the new 8th Community Pharmacy Agreement, and it is a good agreement. It is a good agreement for patients, it is a good agreement for our healthcare system, and it is a good agreement for the frontline healthcare pharmacists and pharmacy assistants that serve Australians each and every day.
 
What this agreement does is it strikes an agreement between the Government and the Pharmacy Guild that delivers both affordable medicines, cheaper medicines in a cost of living crisis. But most importantly, a sustainable funding mechanism for Australia's 6,000 community pharmacies that look after 450 million annual occasions of service for the Australian population. I'll hand over to the Minister, thank you.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you, Trent. It’s such a terrific opportunity to be here in a leading pharmacy, a finalist of the Pharmacy of The Year in 2024. We were starting to have a look at all of the consulting rooms that have been set up in this pharmacy. Recognising that pharmacy now is not just a retail business, it is a full service. It is an integral part of our healthcare system that Australians have come to rely upon more and more, particularly during the COVID pandemic, and I'll say a few words about that. I want to thank David Smith for hosting us here the local Member of Parliament, and also Emma McBride, the Assistant Minister for Rural Health and also for Mental Health, who is the Parliaments only pharmacist and is such an important source of advice for me and for the broader team about issues relating to pharmacy.
 
Before I come to say a few words about the content of the agreement that Trent and I signed yesterday,  I want to thank Trent, the Pharmacy Guild, and the Department's negotiating team for the incredibly hard work that they've undertaken over many months to get to this point. These were robust negotiations. As I read my history books, I think every Pharmacy Guild agreement has been a robust negotiation and so it should be. Anthony Tassone is here, he led the negotiating team for the Guild, the Vice President of The Guild, and the Victorian President, with our Departmental team. They engaged in tough negotiations because this is such an important agreement. It seeks to achieve a balance between cheaper medicines on the one hand, which is something the Guild has been advocating for a number of years, but also charged in a secure and sustainable future for community pharmacy. For the almost 6,000 community pharmacies around the country that are such a central part of the health of our nation. We saw that particularly in the COVID pandemic, when pharmacists were finally allowed off the bench and into the national effort to vaccinate Australians in a once in a century pandemic. They delivered more than 10 million vaccinations for COVID. We've seen already some of the rooms that were set up by pharmacies to be able to do exactly that. Pharmacies have very rarely if ever closed their doors during the worst periods of the pandemic and Australians value that. Australians already had this deep relationship with their local pharmacist, many visit the pharmacist very, very frequently. That relationship became even deeper, even more trusting, in the pandemic. It became clear that pharmacies were in many senses, the most accessible healthcare service, even at the worst of times during that pandemic. I think that's a great credit to the thousands of pharmacy businesses and the many, many thousands of pharmacists who were there on the front line, putting themselves at risk, making sure that their patients, their customers were safe and were vaccinated during that time.
 
This agreement strikes a great balance, it delivers even cheaper medicines after a series of waves under our Government’s cheaper medicines policy. We will freeze the co-payment for five years for pensioners and for concession cardholders that are a very big part of the average pharmacy business. That's just so important at a time of huge cost of living pressure to all Australians. But as the Guild has made clear in their advocacy over the last couple of years as well, cheaper medicines is not just good for the hip pocket, it is also good for the health of our nation. In any year, the Bureau of Statistics tells us that as many as a million Australians almost will go without a medicine that their doctor has prescribed as important for their health because they simply can't afford it. Trent and his members have told me time and time again of instances where their patients come to the counter, present a number of different scripts and ask for advice on which is the most important and which they can go without. That's the importance of our cheaper medicines policy. But it also sets a secure foundation for the next five years for pharmacy businesses. That is obviously important to the Guild as the representative of those businesses, but it's critically important to Government as well, the Prime Minister, I and many others in Government have made that clear. We wanted to see a thriving, viable, strong community pharmacy sector well into the future because we know we learned through the COVID pandemic, just how important that sector is to the health of our nation.
 
I really want to pay credit to pharmacies for their role in vaccinations generally. On the 1st of January this year we opened up the National Immunisation Program to community pharmacies, that means that pharmacies are able to deliver vaccines on the National Immunisation Program in the same way they do COVID vaccinations. I’m told that around 3,000 community pharmacies have already signed up to that program and right now are delivering, for example, flu shots and shingles shots to older Australians, completely free of charge to those patients because the Commonwealth is paying the bill. Importantly, we're paying pharmacists exactly the same fee that are paid to GPs. That was something that was strongly advocated for by the Guild. At a time when flu cases are rising, when COVID cases are rising as well, for the first time - we're seeing those two waves rise at the same time over the last five years - it is more important now than ever, for people to think about getting that flu shot, you could do it for free now, if you're over 65 at your local pharmacy. Think about getting a COVID shot if it's been more than six months since you had a shot and you're over 75 years of age. If you’re between 65 and 75 and it’s been more than 12 months, in particular, you should also consider it. If you're an adult under the age of 65, you should also consider it. This really does reinforce the broad role that community pharmacists play in our healthcare system. I'm so delighted we've been able, as we committed to, reach an early agreement with the Guild and set that strong foundation for the coming five years.

Tags: 

Help us improve health.gov.au

If you would like a response please use the enquiries form instead.