Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025

Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh—Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Minister for Health and Ageing and Deputy Leader of the House) (16:19): I move: That the amendments be disagreed to. This bill is the result of more than 10 years of work—work conducted in a proper, iterative, evidence based way, work that seeks to continue to expand the opportunity for nurses to work at their full scope of practice.

Given that there are quite a number of different proposals for the expansion of what we would regard, I think, as the existing work provinces of different parts of the health profession, can I make my view clear that this is best practice. This has been conducted by the nurses board in very close consultation with all relevant groups—medical professionals, patients, colleges and universities.

As a result of 10 years of hard work, this endorsement for registered nurses, appropriately qualified, to be able to prescribe medicines has been enthusiastically endorsed by all health ministers in the health ministers group. The Senate has proposed a last-minute amendment to bolt on to this best-practice piece of work, conducted to support the work of our hardworking nurses, a proposal to expand opportunities to podiatrists to prescribe medicines, which reasonable people might think is a good idea in principle.

I can indicate that we have been engaging with podiatry groups, including the Australian Podiatry Association, about this issue for endorsed podiatrists. There is a live discussion about whether the sort of expansion for registered nurses that we're seeing now, in the bill that the government presented, should be available to podiatrists as well. But let me be clear; the work in relation to podiatrists is not finished.

It is still underway. It is far too early, in my view, to bolt on at the last minute an amendment to expand the opportunity to podiatrists to prescribe PBS medicines when that work has not yet been completed. Unlike the work for podiatrists, the work for registered nurses has been completed.

Universities have already started delivering their programs. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee is already considering the medicines that may be put on the list for registered nurse-prescribers to prescribe. That work has not yet been done for podiatry organisations.

I understand that some in this parliament—certainly, obviously, some in the other place and some out in the community—would like to see an expansion of the work of podiatrists. That is not something I have any problem with, in principle. But I do not support the idea that—after 10 years of work to set this up properly in an evidence based way in consultation with medical groups, patient groups and the like for registered nurses, the largest professional group in our healthcare system—at the last minute, we bolt on, because it seems like a good idea, a podiatry addition to this when that work has not yet been done.

So we do not support the amendments sent to us by the Senate, and we ask the House to support the government's position.