[Greens-Media] Media Release - Greens put transparency on the agenda

[Blyberg, Andrew (Sen R. Di Natale)]

Media Release

Dr. Richard Di Natale
Greens Senator for Victoria
 
21/06/13

Greens put transparency on the agenda

Australian Greens health spokesperson, Senator Richard Di Natale, said today that the Greens have successfully pressured the pharmaceutical industry to reconsider increasing transparency but that the changes will be too weak if the industry is left to regulate itself.

"The Greens put transparency on the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry when I introduced a bill to regulate the financial interactions between drug companies and doctors," said Senator Di Natale.

"The relationship between doctor and patient is built on trust. It's critical that patients believe that they are getting advice from their doctor that is based on the best available evidence and that advice is not compromised by a commercial relationship with a drug company.

"Even though the old parties did not have the courage to get behind my bill, it still managed to shine a light on the huge gaps in regulation and transparency. Medicines Australia bowed to pressure from the community and set up a Transparency Working Group to look at the issue."

The Medicines Australia Transparency Working Group has today released some principles for transparency and a proposed transparency model for consultation.

"I am generally pleased with most of the principles and the model for reporting financial interactions but sadly the working group has watered down its good work by including some enormous loopholes. For example, clinical research would be excluded from the transparency requirements. And the risk is that these draft proposals will be watered down even further by Medicines Australia before it ever agrees to implement them.

"The really difficult thing with the current state of self-regulation in the pharmaceutical industry is that even if Medicines Australia adopted a very strict approach to transparency, it wouldn't impact on any companies that subscribe to one of the other eight industry codes of conduct or don't subscribe to any code at all.

"Its clear that self-regulation is not going to fix this problem on its own. So while the old parties keep fighting amongst themselves, the Greens will keep standing up for what matters."

Media contact: Andrew Blyberg 0457 901 600