Australia politics live: Sussan Ley says pharmacists ‘wouldn’t even be in her top 10’ of noisy parliamentary protests

Ley has been one of the biggest supporters of pharmacists pushing back against government dispensing changes. Follow today’s live news updates

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Ley defends pharmacists’ opposition to 60-day dispensing rule for prescriptions

The interview then gets to the issue of pharmacists and the change the government made to allow for 60-day dispensing (two-for-one prescriptions) which will save chronically ill patients up to $180 a year (as well as money on less trips to the doctor, travel etc.) but will cost pharmacists up to $150,000 a year (from the fourth year of the change) in lost dispensing fees (plus people buying fewer ‘incidentals’ such as jelly beans).

I’ve been in contact with many pharmacists over recent weeks, including those who left their businesses and assembled here a couple of weeks ago and I really am concerned about the impact this policy change is going to have.

I’m hearing [about] pharmacies who are already laying off staff. They’re already letting people go and most importantly, they can’t continue to provide the previously free support services that they used to …

Because they’ve told me.

Because if the government has changed the contract it has with pharmacy and is paying them less, they have to change their business in response. It’s as simple as that.

I would like to absolutely recognise the contribution she has made. She has been a trailblazer for our party. She has changed national politics and I have seen the work that she’s done over many years, much of it very modest, very behind the scenes, very in community.

So people often think of her as a defence and foreign affairs minister. I’ve seen her as a local champion for Western Sydney, and disadvantaged people across this country, and I have yeah, I mean, I’ll be really sad to see her go.

Always standing up for Australia’s national interest and a safer, stronger region. It’s as simple as that.

I think we did extremely good work with the Solomon Islands and, indeed, with the Pacific and people are looking at this through the lens of Covid and suggesting that we could have done more when, in fact, travel was an impossibility. I think that issue is well and truly being put to bed.

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