Good morning
Welcome to parliament Friday (the last day of the parliament sitting) where this strange sitting fortnight will come to an end (until 4 September).
The health minister, Mark Butler, is on a ‘can you believe these guys’ tour about the Coalition’s attempts to disallow the two-for-one prescription change for about 300 or so chronic medications. The Coalition attempted to get support in the Senate to kill the government’s plan, following intense lobbying from the Pharmaceutical Guild, but didn’t find the numbers it was looking for.
So the change goes ahead, with the first stage to begin in September, and Butler is taking all the opportunities to criticise the opposition for standing against a policy which will save patients money.
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In other health news, teal independents are turning their attention to alcohol companies and why there is an increasing number of products which appear as though they are being marketed to underage drinkers.
It’s not a new problem – sweet, colourful drinks that don’t particularly taste alcoholic and are available in bright bottles and cans that resemble soft drink have been available for decades. But with ‘hard’ versions of soft drink –like Solo – becoming available in Australia, North Sydney MP Kylea Tink and her crossbench colleagues are pushing for tighter regulation. Representatives from the alcohol industry are in town today to meet with the teals to discuss that push (which means it must be gaining traction). That comes on top of the teals push to stop gambling and alcohol ads during sports games. (I don’t actually know anyone under the age of 38 who drinks Solo, but I think it is the principle of the thing).
It is a busy day for the teals, who, along with David Pocock will also be pushing for the release of the Office of National Intelligence’s Climate Risk Assessment Report, which the government is declining to release because of national security reasons.
And they will also be pushing along calls for ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle’s prosecution to be dropped.
So a busy day for the crossbench. What else is going on? The voice debate continues (as it will until October) although the Coalition moved on to other issues in question time yesterday. We will cover it all off as it happens, so don’t you worry about that.
You have Paul Karp, Daniel Hurst and Sarah Basford Canales in Canberra and Amy Remeikis on the blog. Mike Bowers is also in the building (huzzah).
I am on my second coffee with a third brewing – so let’s get into it.
Key events
Battle against soft drink flavoured alcohol isn’t a new one
When I was in high school, the big drink furore was over soft drink flavoured alcoholic drinks, alcoholic ‘pops’ which included ice blocks and sickly sweet pre-packaged ‘shots’ of alcohol which could be hidden from bag searches (or so I heard).
It is not a new battle, is what I am saying. There is a reason things like Passion Pop are still for sale in liquor stores. The pattern seems to be the same – an outcry, a push back and a simmer down again.
Closing advertising loopholes, given that most young people do not consume their media in the same way as their parents, let alone when the advertising codes were put in place is one thing and probably the battle worth focussing on.
Focussing on one product doesn’t usually lead to a change.
Teals push for stricter alcohol regulations as Asahi’s Hard Solo launches
The teals push to have stricter regulation around the marketing of things like alcohol (as well as junk food and gambling) is not new – it has been one of the issues the crossbench, and independent senator David Pocock have been pushing since April/May.
The main thrust of the campaign is to have the government close the advertising loopholes that let companies “saturate broadcast and social media with harmful product marketing”.
Groups like Fare (Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education) are in support of the mission, which it says is crucial given how companies use data.
In May, Fare CEO Caterina Giorgi said:
By the time a child reaches 13 years of age, 72 million data points will have been collected on them – and this is used to build a profile of them so that marketing can be used to most effectively target them.
Alcohol and gambling companies are using this data to track, trace and target our children with marketing online.
This is an alarming statistic. When it comes to addictive products like alcohol and gambling this targeted marketing causes significant harm.
Today’s push comes after the approval of Hard Solo (an alcoholic version of the soft drink Solo, which I only vaguely remember because of some guy in a kayak) which North Sydney MP Kylea Tink has told the SMH is a step too far. Tink told the paper:
For a company like [Japanese brewer] Asahi to come out and say there’s no problem with that product to me indicates there’s a clear breakdown in between community expectation and corporate expectation.
Questions have to be asked of both the company and the [Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code panel] … that product did not pass the pub test.
Asahi has said that most drinkers of Solo are adults and “strongly refute any claims that Hard Solo can be confused with regular Solo”.
Senate ‘has a choice’ to deliver cheap medicines to 6 million Australians, Butler says
Mark Butler says he is speaking to senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell about the importance of the policy for patients (the Greens have already said they won’t support the Coalition’s motion).
This is a critically important cost-of-living measure for 6 million Australians whose medicine bills will halve if this measure is supported by the Senate.
But it’s also good for their health. We know that 60-day prescriptions, which are very common around the world for ongoing chronic health conditions, improve medication compliance. It also has the ability to free up millions of GP consults, which we know are desperately needed out in their community.
And that’s why this measure is supported by every patient group and every doctors’ group. But it has been opposed by the powerful pharmacy lobby now for five years when it was first recommended by the medicines experts who manage our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The former government ignored the recommendation and as a result, those 6 million patients have paid literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in fees they shouldn’t have had to pay.
The Senate has a choice this morning: they can put that to an end – that delay, that blocking to an end – and they can deliver cheaper medicines to 6 million Australians, which will be really good for the health system as well.
Health minister on Coalition’s attempts to block two-for-one script changes
Health minister Mark Butler was up bright and early on the Seven Network to talk the two-for-one script changes, which the Coalition are trying to block with a disallowance motion.
That’s because the Pharmacy Guild have been running a very strong campaign against the changes. Why? Because pharmacists stand to lose up to $150,000 or so in dispensing fees over the mid-term life of the policy change. The government has said it will take the $1.2bn it is estimated to save with the policy over the forwards and reinvest it back into community pharmacies, and have brought forward the next community pharmacy agreement negotiations by a year (that is where the details of how much pharmacists will receive for dispensing medicines, giving flu shots etc is nutted out).
But the Guild and its members are upset not just because of the lost dispensing fees, but also because of the incidentals (like jelly beans, I imagine) people buy when they are filling their scripts. And if chronic patients are coming in half as often, then that is a lot less jelly beans being sold on top of the prescription.
Not politics, but politics adjacent – the ABC shut down almost all its X (formerly twitter) pages yesterday, as Amanda Meade reported:
Musk has responded:
Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media.
The Australian public does not.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2023
There is a difference between censorship and abuse, but apparently not in Musk’s world.
Good morning
Welcome to parliament Friday (the last day of the parliament sitting) where this strange sitting fortnight will come to an end (until 4 September).
The health minister, Mark Butler, is on a ‘can you believe these guys’ tour about the Coalition’s attempts to disallow the two-for-one prescription change for about 300 or so chronic medications. The Coalition attempted to get support in the Senate to kill the government’s plan, following intense lobbying from the Pharmaceutical Guild, but didn’t find the numbers it was looking for.
So the change goes ahead, with the first stage to begin in September, and Butler is taking all the opportunities to criticise the opposition for standing against a policy which will save patients money.
In other health news, teal independents are turning their attention to alcohol companies and why there is an increasing number of products which appear as though they are being marketed to underage drinkers.
It’s not a new problem – sweet, colourful drinks that don’t particularly taste alcoholic and are available in bright bottles and cans that resemble soft drink have been available for decades. But with ‘hard’ versions of soft drink –like Solo – becoming available in Australia, North Sydney MP Kylea Tink and her crossbench colleagues are pushing for tighter regulation. Representatives from the alcohol industry are in town today to meet with the teals to discuss that push (which means it must be gaining traction). That comes on top of the teals push to stop gambling and alcohol ads during sports games. (I don’t actually know anyone under the age of 38 who drinks Solo, but I think it is the principle of the thing).
It is a busy day for the teals, who, along with David Pocock will also be pushing for the release of the Office of National Intelligence’s Climate Risk Assessment Report, which the government is declining to release because of national security reasons.
And they will also be pushing along calls for ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle’s prosecution to be dropped.
So a busy day for the crossbench. What else is going on? The voice debate continues (as it will until October) although the Coalition moved on to other issues in question time yesterday. We will cover it all off as it happens, so don’t you worry about that.
You have Paul Karp, Daniel Hurst and Sarah Basford Canales in Canberra and Amy Remeikis on the blog. Mike Bowers is also in the building (huzzah).
I am on my second coffee with a third brewing – so let’s get into it.