Supermarket Pharmacies
Corporate supermarket chains like Woolworths are busy devouring all the services consumers need, with liquor and petrol being the most obvious. There’s also a battle now between the retail giants and the pharmacists guild with Woollies in particular keen to get the government to allow them to incorporate pharmacies and to retail drugs from within the supermarket walls. So far both Prime Minister John Howard and Health minister Tony Abbott have kept pharmacies quarantined from deregulation but with that ruling due to expire at the end of the month the issue is hotting up. The former president of the Pharmacy guild of new Zealand, Gray Maingay is in Australia this week as part of a public campaign to warn of the dangers of letting supermarkets run pharmacies. He’s been working in the UK for the past few years and told Annie Hastwell the deregulation of chemists there has been a disaster. Meanwhile Kadina pharmacist Kent Newbery says the move would threaten small country town pharmacies.