Webinar information session

Video transcript

Speaker 1: Nick Steele

Alright, welcome everybody to tonight's meeting regarding the Pharmacy Business Ownership Act. I hope everybody can hear me OK online. If you can't, please let us know in the chat. My name is Nick Steele. I'm the Deputy Director General for Queensland Public Health and Scientific Services and I'm joined tonight by Marguerite Taylor, who's the Executive Director of Strategy and Coordination Branch within my team and also Kirsten Law, who I'm sure many of you will know anyway, who's the Director of the Pharmacy Business Ownership Implementation Unit.

Next slide.

Can I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging wherever you are in Queensland today. Can I also thank you all for attending today, I think all of you will have had a busy day today and I'm really grateful for your time this evening. We will try and keep to an hour tonight, so I will try and cut us off at 8:00 to give you at least a bit of an evening.

Just in terms of housekeeping. If you could stay on mute as we're going through the presentation, it'll just make it easier for us to present the slides tonight. But do feel free to put questions in the chat as we're going along and we will attempt to answer as many of those questions as we can within the hour that we've got. Please rest assured, if we don't get to your question, we will try and answer it afterwards and we will be publishing the recording and also putting some Q&A's on the website that we've established so that you can actually go and check the answers out on there after the meeting.

What we've tried to do today is really give a bit of a background to where we're at with the Pharmacy Business Ownership Act because we probably recognise that some of you online may not have been on the journey with us over the last two to three years in terms of the details. We will try and give you a bit of background of the current Act and some of the requirements that are in there. We have within the slide deck tried to incorporate answers to many of the questions that you've asked in advance of the meeting through the registration process.

We will be trying to answer questions as we go through the presentation tonight.

What I should also say as well is this won't be the only webinar that we’ll do. We haven't quite decided on the frequency of the webinars, but when we have enough issues or we've got lots of things to update on, we will be holding a series of these webinars over the next year or so to keep everybody up to speed with where we're at.

The final sort of bit of housekeeping I'd probably let you know is the legislation that you've probably gathered is quite detailed. Given we only have an hour tonight, we're only going to have the opportunity to really give a bit of a high-level overview. It really is important that you understand the legislation yourself and also seek your own legal advice. That's one of the things that we probably won't be able to do tonight as government employees is provide you with legal opinion. That will be something that you will need to get from your own lawyers as we progress the implementation of the Act.

I think most of you will be aware of of the journey that we've been on over the last sort of two to three years in terms of the new Act and some of the key requirements in there. As you'll know, the government is committed to maintaining and protecting the community pharmacy model and the Act maintains the current ownership restrictions so that pharmacies are predominantly owned by pharmacists or pharmacy control corporations. The Act also provides greater clarity about who can and who cannot hold an interest in a pharmacy business to try and help ensure that control of pharmacy businesses remains in the hands of community pharmacists, which has been the overall commitment of the work that we've done.

We also know that the current Act, that is prior to this one, was actually out of date and didn't really give Queensland Health the powers it needed to properly regulate the pharmacy business ownership restrictions.

And a lot of the feedback that we heard through consultation was the owners wanted to see the existing regulations enforced. And it's for that reason that the Act gives the regulator the powers it needs to enforce the legislation. That's obviously a bit of a change that we will explain tonight in a bit of detail. Just move on to the overview. What we'll seek to do is give you a bit of a rundown of the key aspects of the new Act, particularly the licensing scheme.

We obviously in an hour won’t be able to provide full details of every aspect of it, but we will cover as much of the components as we can.

We'll also tell you a bit about when the new Act commences and what you need to do to apply for a licence. And we'll give some information about the new Pharmacy Business Ownership Council and the process for that to be appointed. And then finally, we'll provide an overview of the implementation process.

So just as I say, if you have questions, please put them in the chat. We've got a couple of people in my team available and they will be collecting through those questions and we will answer as many as we can tonight. And then we'll certainly be sending out details of the further answers that we don't get to tonight.

So with that said, I will hand over to Marguerite and she will take you through the next bit of the presentation. Over to you, Marguerite.

Speaker 2: Marguerite Taylor

Thanks, Nick. As Nick said, this is just a bit of an overview for those who might not have been on the journey with us the whole way. Throughout 2022 and 2023, there's been consultation on the draft Bill. which has gone through many iterations based on extensive feedback, primarily with a lot of advocacy from the Guild. We want to thank all those people who've contributed to that, either collectively or individually through that consultation process. In November 2023, the bill was introduced in Parliament and just recently it was passed by the Parliament and has now received Royal Assent. It's now considered to be an Act. The Act will come into force in stages as we go through the implementation process and we'll talk about how the commencement of that Act will be influenced by the stages of the implementation process as we go through this. The Act has a number of key objectives and these are the objectives that we will work through tonight with you in stages. The first one is the repeal and replacement of the 2001 Act, which Nick has talked about.  It talks primarily about the establishment of the Pharmacy Business Ownership Council. The Council will be the primary driver and the regulator of this. That's a change moving from Queensland Health as the regulator to the Council. The Act also establishes a licensing framework for how we move forward with that or how the Council, sorry, I should say, moves forward within that licensing framework. It provides greater clarity about who may own a pharmacy and confirms who may hold a material interest, and it also retains the existing limits on ownership around that. We're hoping that this Act provides more clarity, but it is a very significant piece of legislation and very detailed. Kirsten's going to take you forward through the detail of those areas of each of those 6 objectives, and we'll work through those as we go through now. Thank you, Kirsten.

Speaker 3: Kirsten Law

Thanks, Marguerite. Hi, everyone. Just starting at the top, what is a pharmacy business for the purposes of this Act? A business will be captured by the Act if it provides pharmacy services in Queensland if those pharmacy services include compounding medicines for sale to the public or dispensing medicines to the public by or under the supervision of a practising pharmacist.

The new Act makes clear that some entities are not pharmacy businesses and therefore don't need a licence under the Act. The first category is hospital pharmacies, and that's businesses carried on by the state at a public hospital or a business carried on at a hospital that only dispenses or compounds for hospital patients.

That doesn't mean any pharmacy located at a hospital is exempt. If the business dispenses or compounds for the public, it will be a pharmacy business. Then the second category is veterinary surgeons and finally businesses that deal only with medicated animal feed.

In terms of who needs to apply for a licence, it would be an offence to operate a pharmacy business without a licence. That means all existing pharmacy business owners and anyone who wants to open a pharmacy business in the future will need to apply to the council for a licence.

I know everyone's really keen to understand when they'll need to apply for a licence. The start date for the new Act has not been set yet and we won't set that date until next year because we need to ensure that everything is in place and ready for a smooth transition for everyone involved in the process. To give you some certainty, we can say we're not planning for it to commence before one July 2025, just to give everyone plenty of time to make sure they're ready for the new provisions. From the date the legislation commences, all existing owners will have at least one year in which to put in their application for a licence. If you're an existing pharmacy business, when the Act commences you'll have one year to put in an application and you can continue to operate your existing business until the council makes a decision about your application for the licence.

The Act also includes transitional provisions, which are specific provisions that help to work out what we do when we transition over to the new legislation. Under these provisions, a small number of businesses will have an extra year to apply for a licence and that's primarily where the existing owner has corporate shareholders or corporate beneficiaries in their ownership structure.

We'll talk more about that later in the webinar, but based on our records, that's a very small number of businesses in that category. The vast majority of people will have one year from the date the legislation commences in which to apply.

We've had a question come through on the registration information about what pharmacy owners need to do in the meantime until the new Act commences. I just wanted to note that it's important to be clear that until the new Act commences, the current legislation continues to apply. That means if you, for example, make a change to your ownership structure in the next few months until the new legislation commences, you'll need to notify Queensland Health in the same way that you would have in the past.

Only an eligible person can apply to hold a pharmacy business licence and an eligible person means a practising pharmacist, a corporation, but only if the corporation is controlled by pharmacists.

So that means either all of the directors and shareholders are practising pharmacists, or all of the directors and shareholders are practising pharmacists, or their close adult relatives and the practising pharmacists hold the majority of shares and all of the voting shares.

Other eligible people are Friendly societies and the Mater.

There are a couple of areas where we've made clarifications. In the new act, the pharmacist owner must be a practising pharmacist. That means they are a pharmacist who's registered under the national law to practise as a pharmacist with general registration. It doesn't include non-practising pharmacists.

We talk about close adult relatives of a pharmacist, that includes a spouse or an adult child of one of the owner pharmacists and for Friendly societies, this only includes Friendly societies that were permitted to own a pharmacy business under the current Act or an amalgamation of two more.

The new Act also introduces the concept of a material interest holder. The purpose of that is to distinguish between the people who own the business and therefore have additional responsibilities under the Act, and other people who have an interest in the business.

A material interest means the interest of a shareholder, the interest of a beneficiary of a trust

or a person who’s not an owner but has an interest in the business that entitles them to receive consideration that varies according to the profits or takings of the business.

An example of that last category could include, for example, a lendor if the terms of the loan agreement increase the repayment amount depending on the profits or the takings of the business.

We talk about the interest of the beneficiary of a trust. Just to be clear, a trust includes discretionary trusts. I know that in the past discretionary trusts haven't been regulated by Queensland Health, but the new Act clearly captures those.

The only people who can hold a material interest in a pharmacy business are a practising pharmacist or their close adult relative. I've mentioned before, the pharmacist must be practising pharmacist with general registration and the close adult relative must be a spouse or a child who is at least 18 years of age.

The spouse of the child can only hold a material interest in their own relatives business. The spouse of the pharmacist can only hold a material interest in the pharmacy business that their spouse has an interest in.

The Act retains the limits on how many pharmacy businesses a person can have an interest in. Those limits are the same as under the current legislation. For Friendly societies and the Mater that limit is 6 pharmacy businesses and for everyone else the limit is five pharmacy businesses. Importantly, holding an interest includes both owning a pharmacy and having a material interest in a pharmacy. That means I could own 2 pharmacies and be a beneficiary of a trust that owns three other pharmacies as a total of five. But I couldn't own 5 pharmacies and be a shareholder in another company because then I would have six in total.

The new Queensland Pharmacy Business Ownership Council will be responsible for deciding licensing applications, Council can only grant an application for a licence if it's satisfied of a number of details.

Firstly, the applicant is an eligible person which comes back to that test around who can own a pharmacy.

Second, is the applicant a fit and proper person to hold to own a pharmacy business.

Third, would be, does the owner exceed the maximum number of pharmacies permitted if they owned this pharmacy business.

Forth, are the premises authorised premises? Premises will be authorised provided they're not located in or directly accessible from a supermarket and if they meet the standards prescribed in regulation. There will be premises standards prescribed in regulation. That's likely to happen sometime next year and we'll obviously release further information about that in due course. Finally, are all the material interest holders people who are allowed to hold a material interest under the Act and would any of them exceed the maximum number of pharmacies if they held interested in this pharmacy?

In terms of how to apply for a licence, firstly, just to reiterate that the licensing provisions won't commence until next year, so you won't be able to apply for a licence before that time.

There will need to be 1 licence for each pharmacy business and the owners of that business will apply jointly for the licence. There'll also be fees associated with applying for a licence, which we'll put up in a moment.

In considering the application, Council can ask the applicant to provide any further information or document the Council needs to decide the application and if the applicant doesn't provide the information or document requested, the application is taken to be withdrawn.

The Council can inspect the premises at which the pharmacy business is carried on and the applicant must make the premises available for inspection.

If the council approves the application for the licence, the licence will be issued for a term of up to one year.

These licences do need to be renewed annually.

We did have a question about whether there are time limits on Council in terms of making a decision? There are no time limits in terms of how long Council can take to make a decision. Some applications will be straightforward, some will be more complex. However, the Act does make clear that for existing businesses, as long as the person applies for the licence within the required period, the person can continue to operate their pharmacy until the Council makes a decision on the licence.

We have focused on the initial licence applications, but just a flag that there are other times when you need to make an application under the Act, for example, adding or removing a licence holder or a material interest holder or changing the licence premises. Licences need to be renewed annually.

The fees associated with licence applications will be prescribed in a regulation made under the new Act.  Again, we expect that will happen sometime next year, but in the meantime, we've published those indicative fees on our website and also put them up in these slides. There'll be a tiered fee structure. Fees will be more higher for more complex ownership structures, which reflects the additional work for Council in terms of reviewing those ownership structures for compliance with the Act.

These are the indicative fees and I should mention we will provide the slides to you after the webinar. So you'll be able to see those and they're also available on our website.

You see there's a fee payable when a person applies for a licence and then an additional fee that's payable if the licence is approved. There's also fees associated with other things under the Act like changing premises, adding people to licences etcetera. Consistent with other regulatory schemes, the Council will be self funded and the fees from the licensing scheme are required to cover the costs of Council regulating pharmacy businesses.

We've talked about who is eligible to hold a licence and I wanted to now run through a couple of the scenarios that have been allowed to operate under the 2001 Act, that won't be able to continue under the new Act.

And as Nick mentioned earlier, one of the main objectives of the new Act is to maintain the current community pharmacy model by ensuring we've got greater clarity about who owns, controls and benefits from the pharmacy business.

For this reason, the new Act doesn't allow shareholders to be corporations. We've got an example of this type of structure on the screen. The owner of the pharmacy business is a corporation, two of the shareholders are pharmacists, which is permitted, but the third shareholder is a corporation.

This type of structure isn't permitted as the people holding shares in a corporate owner must be individuals.

Similarly, a corporation can't be a beneficiary of a trustee owner which in this case, the company is the beneficiary. Xavier Pty Ltd is the beneficiary and this isn't permitted. The only people who can be beneficiaries of a trust are pharmacists and their close adult relatives.

If your ownership structure does include corporate shareholders or corporate beneficiaries currently, the new Act acknowledges that these structures have been allowed to operate for some time and accordingly, it gives existing businesses some additional time in which to restructure.

These existing owners will have two years after the new Act commences to apply for a licence instead of the one year that applies in most cases.

That additional year will apply provided the corporate shareholder, corporate beneficiary is pharmacist controlled.

That comes back to that test we talked about earlier where all of the directors or shareholders are pharmacists or a combination of pharmacists and close adult relatives, where the majority of shares and all voting shares are held by pharmacists.

The transitional provisions in the Act are quite complex, particularly around these corporate shareholders and corporate beneficiaries. We do plan to talk about this in our subsequent material and a future webinar. But in the meantime, if you think you'll fall into this category, I'd encourage you to review the materials already on our website and also Part 14 of the Act, which deals with those transitional arrangements and seek legal advice if needed.

The second area of significant change under the new Act relates to discretionary trusts.

Queensland Health has not considered the beneficiaries of discretionary trusts in the past and so we understand there are existing owners who hold on trust for beneficiaries who wouldn't be permitted to hold a material in interest under the new Act. For example, we've heard that some discretionary trusts have a large number of beneficiaries, including a pharmacist, siblings, parents and young children and this isn't permitted under the new Act.

Existing owners who have a discretionary trust will have two years in which to ensure their beneficiaries comply with the new Act. For two years after the new Act commences for existing businesses, the beneficiary of a discretionary trust won't commit an offence because they don't comply with the material interest provisions, either because they're not a pharmacist or a close adult relative or because they have an interest in too many businesses.

That doesn't mean that the owner has two years to apply for a licence, most owners will still need to apply in the first year after commencement. This just means that for those first two years, Council won't take action against beneficiaries of discretionary trusts who don't comply with the new Act. Again, we will try to cover this in a future webinar, but I just wanted to draw this to your attention so you can start looking at that if you think you might fall into this category.

And the final area is around third-party control provisions. Section 22 of the Act deals with third party control. It makes clear that a contract, agreement or arrangement with a third party cannot do or purport to do any of the things on the screen. Control how a pharmacy services involving medicines are provided to the public, restrict the types of medicines or health services the business may provide, requiring medicine to be brought from a particular supplier, or impose a sales target for a particular medicine.

This doesn't apply to an employee of the business or if the requirement is only about opening hours, advertising, branding, product displays or other marketing, IT systems, staff training or staff uniforms.

If the business does have a provision giving this type of control to a third party, there are a number of consequences under the Act. The provision in the contract will be void. The third party may commit an offence with the maximum penalty of 200 penalty units and the Council may find it may impact the owner's ability to obtain a licence as the Council may find the owner is not a fit and proper person to hold the licence.

Again, another area where we intend to cover off in more detail in some of our guidance material. But in the meantime, I'd encourage you to consider whether there are any clauses in your agreements, such as franchise agreements that might fall into this category.

I'll now hand back to Marguerite to run through the implementation process in a little more detail.

Speaker 2: Marguerite Taylor

Thanks, Kirsten. We just thought it would be helpful for people to have an understanding of some of the steps that we'll need to go through before the Council does come into effect and what that might mean for individuals. There's a significant implementation process around that and the first focus in that process is about the establishment of the Council. Right now we’re in the middle of a recruitment process. There was an expression of interest that was released for members of the public and others to put their names forward to be part of the Council and that will go through due process. The Council will then be considered by Government and also by Governor in Council for how that moves forward. There is a bit of a time lag on that process, but as soon as we know who those Council members are, we'll make sure that communication goes out to the sector because we appreciate there's a lot of interest in that at the moment.

Once the Council is established, one of its key activities will be around the recruitment of the chief executive officer. The chief executive officer will also be recruited through an open recruitment process and that process will then occur through Government and appointed by Governor in Council. As you can appreciate, there are some timing issues that we are working towards and that will take some time to get in place as we go through those Government processes. But this is a priority for Government and we will continue to move that process along as we go.

Once the Council is established, the particular things that I think you will all be interested in will start to happen. They'll be able to start publishing the approved forms, the guidance materials and other materials to support you in that transition to the new arrangements. We will continue to provide frequently asked questions and other materials which we can to support you between now and then.  The kind of official parts of that will really kick in once the Council is appointed and then there will be a process to prescribe the supporting matters in regulation. As Kirsten has mentioned, the fees that we've providing at the moment are indicative, they will be then prescribed in regulation as well as the premises standards. That will be some of the key steps before the licensing scheme commences and at this stage, we don't anticipate the scheme commencing prior to 1 July 2025.

Now at the start, you've met Kirsten and we've established a dedicated team within our division to help support the implementation of this Act. It is a significant amount of work and we want to make sure that the support is there to get this right the first time, but also for the sector. We continue to work strongly with the Guild and also the Interim Pharmacy Roundtable. We thank Fiona Watson for chairing, who will be a key contributor to how we move through some of these questions until the Council is in place. We don't know exactly when the licensing scheme will commence because of those processes of Government, but we do not anticipate that it will be before 1 July 2025. This is an indicative time frame to show you through how we will get between September 2024 and July 2025 and the steps that are required in that process.

This will give you a year to get ready for the scheme from when the legislation has passed as a minimum.

The establishment of the Council is a significant change under the Act and once the new Act commences, the Council will be responsible for regulating the pharmacies. As you've heard, it is an independent statutory body, so it is separate from Queensland Health and is accountable directly to the Minister. The Council will have minimum of five members who are appointed by Governor in Council, the exact number of members will be subject to a matter between the Minister and Governor in Council.

There are necessary skills and experience for membership of the Council and these are specified in the Act. The Council must include at least one pharmacy business owner and one practising pharmacist who's employed at a pharmacy business. In addition to having skills around administration, governance and finance, the Council is very clear the Government's commitment to the Council having a good understanding of pharmacy business, pharmacy practise and pharmacy ownership.

The Council will make all the licensing decisions under the Act and it will have life legislative powers to enforce compliance with the Act and include non compliance penalties. It will also provide advice to the Minister in matters relating to the Act, such as the standards for authorised premises, and it will be responsible for both audit and compliance activities under the Act. You might be at the moment used to those happening through Queensland Health, that function as well will transfer to the responsibility of the Council.

I might just hand back now, I know some of you have been putting questions into the chat and the team has been working away on that. Kirsten is going do her best to answer some of those and get through what we can for you today. So we might hand back to Kirsten.

Speaker 3: Kirsten Law

Thanks, Marguerite. I'm just going to try and run through the questions as best I can. One of the questions here is around what's the earliest and latest date that a pharmacy owner can apply to put their pharmacy on the register. Most pharmacy owners will have one year from the start of the new Act to apply for a licence. If we assume and I'll be really clear, this date has not been set, but if we assume just for the sake of the example, that the legislation commences on 1 July 2025, the earliest you could apply is 1 July 2025 and most owners would have to apply by 30 June 2026. The Council will then consider that application and make a decision. Existing owners can keep running their business until council makes a decision on that application.

In terms of the register, the Council must have a register of pharmacy businesses and it may publish that register online. Once it issues a licence, it will put it on the register that Council maintains. As I've said, there's a small number of people who will have an additional year, but it is quite a small number of category of people so I'll just focus on the vast majority of people there.

The next question is what information will be needed for a licence application? Some of this detail will be made available once the Council is established. Under the Act, an application for a pharmacy business licence must be in the approved form. Council will be responsible for making those approved forms and making them available. Essentially, it's just a standard form and we expect it will be done electronically via a portal or a website and lodged that form online.

The application must, at a minimum include the address of the premises of the pharmacy business. If the applicant is made by a corporation, it must have the name of each director and shareholder of the applicant.

If the applicant is or is to be the owner of the business as a trustee of a trust, it must include the name of each beneficiary of the trust.

It must have the name of each person who to the best of the applicant's knowledge, holds a material interest in the business and it must be accompanied by the application fee that's prescribed in regulation. The approved form may require additional details, for example, details of other businesses owned or interests held. But those approved forms will be published at a later date, likely next year.

We've got another question here about, is there a related regulation that will be released? Yes, so we will make subordinate legislation, a regulation under the Act and that will do a couple of things. It will prescribe the fees that are payable, which we put up earlier and it will also prescribe the premises standards that businesses must comply with. Those are standards around, the criteria that a particular pharmacy must comply and that the business must comply with in terms of its location. Those are expected to be made sometime next year and again, we'll provide more information about that going forward.

Next question, will hospital pharmacies or dispensaries that are only about hospital patients continue to be regulated by Queensland Health? The bill excludes those pharmacies from the pharmacy business ownership criteria licensing scheme, but they will still absolutely be regulated under other Queensland and Commonwealth legislation. It's just that the ownership restrictions don't apply to those types of pharmacies and that's consistent with the position under the 2001 Act.

Next question is around can a non-pharmacist own the retail business, including S2’s and S3’s. This is around whether a business that simply sells S2’s & S3’s but doesn't dispense or compound will be regulated under this Act.

That type of business, the Act makes clear that a pharmacy business is a business that dispenses or compounds. If a business only sells but doesn't dispense or compound, it won't be a pharmacy business and it won't be required to be licenced under this Act. It would still need to comply with existing state and federal legislation. To sell S3s, for example, the business would need to employ a pharmacist and the pharmacist and the business would be subject to the Medicines and Poisons Act, Medicines and Poisons Regulation, the National law, the National Health Act and the Therapeutic Goods Act.

We've got a question about online pharmacies.

The Act applies to an online pharmacy in the same way that applies to a bricks and mortar pharmacy. If the business is providing pharmacy services in Queensland and if it compounds and dispenses to members of the public, it will be a pharmacy business for the purposes of the Act.

We've got a question here about whether the premise standards prescribed in the regulations will be set by the Council.

The Act provides that the premise standards are prescribed in a regulation and so that process involves the Minister for Health making a recommendation to Governor in Council, who will actually be responsible for making those regulations. However, the Act does say that before making that regulation, before the premise standards can be made, the Minister for Health must get advice from the Council on the standards.

The council will have a role in inputting into those standards. Ultimately, they're made through the government process there. That's something we'll be working on over the coming months.

There's a question here about the definition of a fit and proper person.

There's a range of things that the Council must have regard to in deciding whether a person is a fit or proper person to own a pharmacy business.

It's quite a long list, so it includes things like whether the person has previously held a pharmacy business licence or whether they currently do and if so, conditions on that licence or whether that licence has previously been suspended or cancelled.

It also considers their registration under the National Law.

It also looks at things like whether they've contravened either this Act, the National Law or the Medicines and Poisons Act, and whether they've been convicted of an indictable offence, whether they're insolvent, disqualified from managing corporations and that sort of thing. It can also consider another matter that Council considers is relevant.

There's one other factor as part of that, and that's whether the person is a party to a contract, agreement or arrangement that Section 22 applies.

I recall earlier I referred to Section 22, which is about third-party agreements.

If a pharmacy owner has a contract agreement or arrangement with a third party and that agreement gives the third-party control, that's not permitted under the Act, that's actually something that the Council can consider in deciding whether or not the pharmacy owner is a fit and proper person to hold the licence.

We're going to put some more information on our website about that fit and proper person test because it is quite a long-complicated test within section 72 of the Act. There's a range of things that can be considered.

The next question here is about franchising agreements that would infringe the third-party control provisions in which would be OK? That's probably not something I can provide advice on here.

We will talk a little bit more about those third-party provisions in the future, but the Act is quite clear about what is and isn't permitted. Those third-party control provisions focus very much on the medicine and health services that the pharmacist provides. It's not intended to capture more general business related matters like IT or marketing or uniforms, hours. It's really focused on the medicines and the services, the health services that the pharmacy provides.

Can a non-practising pharmacist own an interest in a pharmacy? No, if a pharmacist is, an owner or a material interest holder in a pharmacy, they must be a practising pharmacist and hold general registration. The only kind of exemption to that would be if they were a non practising pharmacist who was the spouse or an adult child of a practising pharmacist in that practising pharmacist was the owner, if that makes sense? But if they're holding it in their own capacity, they would have to hold general registration. On that point, I might just note that the Act does give an additional 2 years, so if you're an existing non practising pharmacist who has an interest in a pharmacy, you will have two years after the new Act commences in which to resolve that issue. You may still need to apply for a licence in the first year, but for that time the Council may grant you a licence even if you have non practising registration and you will get an extra year in which to either obtain practising registration or to divest your interest in that business.

Can a new business be registered with a corporation with presumably non pharmacist shareholders until the Act comes into play. I guess the short answer is if that business could be permitted under the current legislation, then yes.

The current legislation only permits corporations that have either pharmacists or pharmacists relatives as directors and shareholders. That restriction already exists in the current Act. The only change in the new Act, is to be really clear that we can't have layers of corporations. You can have a corporate owner that has corporate shareholders under the current provisions, those shareholders have permitted. Two layers of corporations, that won't be permitted going forward. So based on the information there, if it's not permitted under the current Act, then no, you won't be able to. The current Act still applies and it doesn't look like that arrangement would be permitted under the current Act if I'm understanding it correctly.

And that's just the last one on there. I think that might be too technical for tonight really. So Alex, you've just put a question on there. We might need to pick that one up after the session and we'll put the answer to that back online if we can.

So look, we've got probably about 10 minutes left. Are there any other questions that anybody would like to put in the chat? I'll just give it a minute.

Will Medicinal Cannabis pharmacies be covered?

If the medicinal cannabis pharmacy is compounding or dispensing to members of the public, yes it will be captured by the Act in the same way that any other pharmacy is captured.

How often the council will meet? Ultimately, it will be a matter for the Council to decide how often it meets. We expect that it will meet at least once a month, but it will be a matter for Council as to how it organises its business and how it decides to deal with the applications.

Questions about processing time, manual systems and support, But part of what the implementation team is working on is firstly establishing that Council, but also making sure that it's got all of the resources that needs in order to be able to accept the applications as efficiently as possible and then work with Council to support it to set up processes for how it deals with the applications. We appreciate the first year will be a challenging one as everyone adjusts to the new Act and that's why we want to make sure that we have enough time before the new Act commences, so that we can make sure it's a smooth transition for all involved.

OK, I think that's all the questions I can see on there. If we have missed any, I apologise and we will pick those up after the session and put the answers online.

If there is nothing else, I might just try and conclude tonight. We just have two more slides. I guess there's a lot of information in that presentation and there is a lot of really technical information on there. Just some key messages from me, as you've heard from Kirsten tonight, the licensing won't commence until at least 1 July 2025. We're not saying it will start on that date, but that will be the earliest that it will commence.

Every pharmacy business will need to be licenced and you've heard some of the complex legislation really surrounding that.

Then some of you will have ownership structures that don't really comply with the new Act. It's really important that you start to take the steps now to consider how the Act will apply to your business. Changing corporate structures and trustees is going to take some time so please start looking at the Act now rather than waiting until next year. That will also provide you where we can, with an opportunity to ask us some questions or to get some appropriate legal advice. It's particularly the case if you fall into one of the categories listed on the screen there. Non practising pharmacists, corporate shareholders or corporate beneficiaries and a discretionary trust where not all beneficiaries are close adult relatives.

If you've got agreements or contracts that give a third-party control, please make sure you're considering how Section 22 of the new Act applies to those agreements.

And finally, we would encourage you all to seek legal advice if needed. We will be as supportive as we can through the mechanisms that we'll put online, but a lot of you will need your own legal advice given the complexity of your existing ownership arrangements.

Just on the last slide there, can I thank you all for attending tonight. I know it's late and I appreciate your patience in terms of listening to us present and also your questions tonight. Keep the questions coming in, we've got various mechanisms open as you can see on the screen where we provide relevant information. We've got a copy of the Act linked to there as well and you can see in there, the pharmacy business ownership implementation unit that Kirsten heads up, their email address is on there too. As long as we're not providing legal advice, we will seek to answer as many of your questions as we can over this next year. So thanks, everybody, I hope you have a good rest of your evening and we will see you on the next Webinar. We will send details out about that when we get close to it. Thanks everybody.