The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has rejected the competition policy review’s recommendations to deregulate pharmacies.
The Federal Government yesterday released the 548 page report by economist Ian Harper on Australia’s competition rules, the first of its kind in two decades.
One of the key recommendations is to immediately remove regulations governing retail trading hours and parallel imports, which shield local businesses from overseas competition.
Long standing restrictions on pharmacy location and ownership should be scrapped, opening the sector to more competition under a simpler set of rules guaranteeing access to medicines and quality of advice.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has opposed Harper’s calls to scrap restrictions on pharmacy location and ownership.
“The location rules ensure that health care consumers have timely and equitable access to Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines regardless of where they live, rather than having pharmacies clustered around affluent suburbs,” the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said.
“The ownership rules ensure that local pharmacies are owned by registered pharmacists, who are health care professionals first and foremost, frequently putting their patients before profits.”
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia said the alternatives proposed by the panel to ensure equitable access to pharmacy services in regional areas are “untested, not backed up by any evidence, and almost certainly impractical to implement”.
David Quilty, executive director of the Guild, said: “It is regrettable the competition policy review panel has apparently put ideology before the strong empirical evidence demonstrating that the current community pharmacy model is clearly superior to the deregulated alternatives.
“Australia’s 5450 community pharmacies, currently struggling under the pressures of price disclosure, need certainty and stability – not a constant push to abolish a system that’s working,” Quilty said.
Russell Zimmerman, executive director of the Australian Retailers Association (ARA), said the deregulation of community pharmacies was a concern for the ARA.
“The small to medium retail sector is reliant on pharmacies in supporting activity centres and the ARA strongly recommends that the government commits to supporting community pharmacy,” Zimmerman said.
The Harper report also said retail trading hours is overdue, and remaining restrictions should be removed as soon as possible
While the ACT, Northern Territory, Victoria, Tasmania, and NSW have almost completely deregulated trading hours, the report said Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland still had significant restrictions.
The review called for new laws to prevent big companies from misusing their market power.
The change should address concerns of small independent grocers that Coles and Woolworths’ dominance is seriously affecting their ability to compete.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it welcomed the release of the Competition Policy Review Panel’s final report.
“This is a very important report. It sets out many pro-competitive reforms which, if adopted, could significantly enhance economic productivity over the years ahead,” ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, said.
