Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8175] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This part of the bill as my colleague Dr Lynda Scott has stated is primarily about pharmacists and pharmacies. Perhaps the most important provision in this part is one that might surprise people. It is the insertion into the principal Act of new section 55G in clause 252. What does this section provide? It provides an exemption for mortgagees in possession. Do members know what that means? It means that all the regulations and the rules about who can operate pharmacies who can own pharmacies and who can be in charge of pharmacies are relieved for a period of 3 months when there is a mortgagee in possession which means that the pharmacist has gone broke. That is exactly what is happening right now in this country to pharmacists. 
Dr Lynda Scott came to my electorate of Clevedon the wonderful electorate of Clevedon and came with me to see the Clevedon pharmacist. We then trotted across to the Manurewa electorate the electorate of the Hon George Hawkins. We did the job of George Hawkins. We went to see one of the pharmacists there who was just getting over a ram raid through her shop window. She had been burgled. Her shop window in the electorate of the Minister of Police had been ram-raided by people wanting drugs and they got them. So that is what we have got; we have got a section in this bill that is devoted to what to do when the pharmacists go broke because they surely will. 
Under the stat dispensing rules that this Government has put in place pharmacists are in fact going broke. They are worried people. Pharmacists are not simply sellers of medicines. It is a sad point but it is true that this Minister of Health has no respect for pharmacists. I do not know what she thinks pharmacists are learning in their 5 years of full-time training. I think she thinks they are learning just to type a few labels and stick some pills in bottles. But that is not true. The pharmacists whom we are talking about are highly trained health professionals and they deserve to be treated as such. To have this Minister of Health denigrate them and say that because they have sold a camera they are not health professionals shows the absolute limit of her capability as Minister of Health—and that is not very much. 
That is what we are dealing with here; we are dealing with a profession that is under siege. Not only is it under siege from the stat dispensing rules but also it is under siege from the fact that our qualified pharmacists who are very well-qualified are able to do much much better if they go overseas. One particular pharmacist told me that he is dispensing 300 times a day. This is a pharmacist who as he said would normally now want to be retiring or working part-time but he has to stay working because people have been going to him for years and they trust him and they trust his advice. They know that he does more than just type a few labels and stick them on bottles. They know they can trust him. 
This pharmacist cannot get locums. He cannot get graduates coming out of pharmacy school to work for him because instead of earning just $65000 a year which is the average I am told that well-qualified pharmacy graduates can expect to earn in this country they can earn A$90000—in other words some real money. They can earn $90000 a year in Australia just like that. These health professionals do not want to stay here under this sort of Government. They do not want to stay here talking about stat dispensing and nonsense like that. 
These people have shown me what is happening. I go around my electorate and I see what they are doing just as I go around the Hon George Hawkins’ electorate and find out what he is doing which is not much. They have shown me the boxes and boxes of drugs that elderly people routinely have. I think now of my dear departed mother and the huge boxes of drugs that she used to take. It was very very confusing even for a woman as intelligent and vibrant as her. She used sometimes to get a bit confused and would have to make a little list of what she had taken and when. That is quite normal. A lot of older people particularly if they have had strokes—a lot of elderly people have a series of strokes—find that their memory becomes a little less reliable. 
These pharmacists are such professionals. They put the drugs in little bubble packets put dates on them and go to a tremendous amount of effort. And what does this Minister do? She lets Pharmac rob the pharmacists. She lets Pharmac get away with it. She lets Pharmac actually say to the pharmacists: “We don’t care if you have extra work; we’re not going to pay you.”