Thank you very much Kos for those very, very kind words of introduction, to my many Ministerial and other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to be here tonight and it's an opportunity for me to do a number of things. First and foremost to reaffirm the Government's ongoing commitment to the cause and the future of community pharmacy in Australia. As you know, I've always been a devotee of small business. I came from a small business background myself and from the time I was a child I identified pharmacies, the local chemist shop, whatever you might call it, as being a quintessential demonstration of what a small business was all about. The people who you regarded as nice, friendly men and women that you could turn to for a bit of advice and seemed to be part and parcel of the stability of the suburb in which you grew up were invariably pharmacists. The local pharmacy or chemist shop was one of those places where your mother sent you to get things and you felt always very welcome and you imagined that it was part of the solidity and the predictability of the environment in which you grew up. As the years go by the character of marketing changes, the relationship between customers and retailers will change and it's often very hard to preserve that kind of atmosphere, but I think community pharmacists have done it better than most in the Australian community.
Now why is this so? I think the main reason why it is so is that they offer a great personal service to their customers and in the end the quality of personal service and the impression created by that service has the most lasting impact on people. I think another reason why its been such and the attitude of the community towards pharmacists has endured in such an effective fashion is that this has been another area where Australia has been most successful in combining the public and the private sectors in order to produce a very good community outcome. When I think of Australia by comparison with other countries, when I think of Australia's social security system compared with America's which on occasions can be a little harsh and unforgiving, and compared with Europe's that can on manyoccasions be over interventionist and for too paternalistic and therefore economically wasteful, you can find Australia somewhere in the middle combining the best elements of requiring people to stand on their own two feet, but also recognising there are occasions when the community must share the cost burden of ensuring that everybody has access to a vital service.
We've done a lot better at combining the public and private sector components in delivering services and community pharmacy has been right at the centre of that and when you think of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme which is the principle interaction of the government with pharmacists you see playing out once again that balance and that blend and that mix. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme wouldn't work if you didn't have pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme wouldn't work if you didn't have a federal government ensuring that vital drugs and medicines are available at accessible cost to all of the Australian community. And I well remember when President Bush came to Australia in 2002, sorry 2003, and when we had our bilateral discussion in my office just around the corner, we got onto the free trade agreement that was then being negotiated and many of you will remember that the PBS was seen by some at the time as being under threat from the free trade agreement. The reality was and still is that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme will never be under threat from the free trade agreement between Australia and the United States.
And he quite properly as the President of the United States, he put the views of some of the large American pharmaceutical companies to me, I wouldn't have expected anything less and I then by way of response explained exactly how our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme worked and it made a deep impression on him and I suggested that he might consider introducing such a scheme in the United States and I rather got the impression at the end of the discussion that the way they did it over there was far too firmly set in cement to make it remotely possible that any such scheme would be introduced. But the truth is that there's a real genius about that Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It's the best of its kind in the world and I don't want it changed in any of its fundamentals and I do take this opportunity of thanking the Guild for the very constructive way in which it has negotiated with the Government over the past number of months to bring about the new arrangement that was announced by Tony Abbott only a few days ago. It is to use that clich‚ a win-win arrangement. It guarantees the viability of the scheme, it guarantees the position of pharmacists, it ensures over time where price reductions ought to occur then the public gets the benefit of those price reductions. And most importantly of all, it enables all of us to say to the Australian people, irrespective of your income or your station in life, you will have access to essential medicines and life saving drugs. And that is a huge thing to be able to say. And every day virtually new drugs become available that provide the opportunity to prolong people's lives, to give them protection against life threatening illnesses in the future and generally to improve their enjoyment of life. It is a very important boast for a country to be able to make that we have a system that means that you don't have to be a wealthy person in order to have the same access to these drugs as the next man or next woman. And I think that is a hugely important thing to be able to talk about.
And may I take the opportunity here of thanking Tony Abbott very, very much for his negotiations, his patience, his commitment, and can I say his great dedication to the cause of pharmacists around Australia. Tony has his own negotiating style. It's unmistakable, it's distinctive and it's very effective. And without him and the assistance I know he received at all stages from Jane Halton, the Secretary of his Department, it wouldn't have been possible to bring about the very, very successful conclusion of those negotiations. And when you add that to the negotiation of the fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement and also the cooperation I know that's been involved between pharmacists and the Government in relation to the new Access Card and the commitment that you are all making to Project Stop, which is a wide ranging infrastructure and skill base system which is designed to tackle some of the social challenges in this area and also the generally cooperative approach that your industry has taken to the health challenges of our nation.
We all have an interest in spreading the use and the availability and the affordability of life saving and life enhancing drugs and medicines. But we also, if I can put in a plug for this, have an interest in making sure that we bring about lifestyle changes without the aid of medicines and drugs. We have an increasing debate in our community about obesity and it is a challenge. And clearly the broader health community, doctors and pharmacists, have a role in fighting that growing challenge of obesity. But as a community we can't expect drugs and the Government to do all the job in fighting obesity. We have to invoke our own reserves of self discipline and particularly parents, to ensure that the bad habits that have led to greater obesity in the Australian community are reduced, and where possible, eliminated. And I made the observation at a Heart Research Institute Dinner in Sydney on Friday night that those in the community who thought that the solution to this issue lay in greater government regulation were going to be disappointed by me and by my Government because I would hope as believers in market responses and free enterprise we placed a greater premium and a greater store on individual effort and individual self discipline in relation to lifestyle habits.
So ladies and gentlemen, pharmacy is right at the centre, right at the heart of small business in the Australian community. You are all entrepreneurs and we have taken a number of decisions over the years to make sure that you continue in a viable, identifiable, discreet independent community of small business men and women. I think our suburbs and our country towns would be socially poorer if they didn't have a local pharmacist and once you start in many of these smaller population centres, losing a critical mass of small businesses, then you begin to lose much of the spirit and the heart and soul of the local community. So I'm here as friend and supporter of pharmacy. I have been so in the last ten and a half years that I have been Prime Minister. I have had a very close association with the leadership of the Guild. As Kos said, its always been easy to talk to you, you have always been quite clear as to what you've wanted. You're pretty good lobbyists, I have to say that, I pay tribute. I have dealt with a lot of industry groups over the years, you get your point across very well and those of you who comprise the community should feel well satisfied that your elected representatives have worked very, very hard in your interests.
But the important thing is that together, in relation to the Community Pharmacy Agreement and also in relation to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, we have achieved outcomes that are good for Australia. And my philosophy is very simple. I will work with any group to achieve an outcome that advances the social infrastructure and social stability of this country. And community pharmacies are part of the stable, cohesive Australia that I grew up in, that I know and I want to make sure that that continues. Thank you. [Ends]