Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8222] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I would just like to say that I am very pleased to see the Minister for Small Business here while we discuss the issue of pharmacy. Perhaps it would be a very good thing for the Minister to examine the 900 small pharmacy businesses in New Zealand. Maybe he could even consider doing a regulatory impact analysis of those businesses because he would find that under this Government not only have their co-payments been reduced but 30 percent of their income has been yanked out as a result of stat dispensing. At the same time we have imposed increasing regulatory and compliance costs on pharmacies in New Zealand. I appeal to the Minister for Small Business who is sitting in this House to look at this particular area. There are all these wonderful moves towards reducing the compliance costs of small business in New Zealand and the Minister has been doing some great work in that area but I think this is one area he has overlooked. 
Turning to this bill I would like to speak very briefly to Mr Hide’s impassioned speech in favour of his particular amendment. The first thing I would like to say to Mr Hide is that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to stop supermarket operators having pharmacies in their supermarkets right now—nothing but greed. The only reason they are not doing it is that they want to be able to take all the profits for themselves. 
Secondly I would like to point out that we are not talking about sweeties confectionery or cakes but about medicines and pharmaceuticals. As Dr Lynda Scott has intimated the fourth major cause of disease is adverse interactions with pharmaceuticals. We are talking about potent and toxic substances and we cannot just compare them with confectionery and cakes. There needs to be a strong regulatory mechanism and trained pharmacists are needed to make sure that there are not adverse interactions between medicines that have been prescribed. Just as Dr Scott has I have had letters from pharmacists pointing out that by checking the prescriptions doctors send in they have avoided major problems. Doctors for instance will dispense 11.9 milligrams of something when it should be 1.19 milligrams and so forth so pharmacists have a very important role in checking the scripts that doctors write. They have a very important role in the whole ethics of a pharmacy and in making sure that medicines are not dispensed in a way that could be abused particularly where those medicines could be the basis for drugs like methamphetamines. Pharmacists who own and operate their own pharmacies have a very strong ethical commitment. 
The member keeps talking about a monopoly in this area. If this role were handed over to supermarkets it would be to a monopoly of two New Zealand supermarket chains both owned by global multinationals. So instead of going into our community any profits would be sent offshore. We would be giving up 900-odd small businesses in New Zealand to a couple of global multinational corporations. I cannot see how that would advantage New Zealand—quite to the contrary. I think that small pharmacists have done a magnificent job in New Zealand particularly the community-owned small pharmacists. They function to a great extent almost as social workers in their communities and we should be supporting them not undermining them. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 115 in the name of Pita Paraone to insert a definition of “authorised ophthalmic prescriber” in clause 240(1) be agreed to.