Doorstop- Dr Bill Glasson, AMA President, Canberra - Smoke Free Zone Contracts, Medical Idemnity, Medicare

GLASSON:                The issue today I'd like to highlight is the one about smoking.  And I say to the people out there who smoke, what's the best present that you can give your children for this Christmas?  And I'd suggest to you that it is a smoke free environment, an environment that your children, both at home, in the car, wherever it be in a public place that you do not subject them to the adverse effects of smoking.

We know that, particularly with young children who have quite often an undeveloped respiratory system, they are particularly susceptible to passive smoking.  And it's susceptible in the sense of asthma, of chronic airways disease, and also behavioural effects as well.

It also sets a bad example, I suppose, in the sense it's shown that children who are brought up in a smoking environment are more likely to smoke later in life.

So we try and set a good example for our children by not smoking.  So we have produced a card which we have called the Family Contract, the Smoke Free Family Contract.  And you'll find this on the AMA web and it reads, 'The signed certificate states that, as a parent, we agree to the following:  We agree to make every effort to give up smoking, number one, and that's the most important thing you can do for your children - is to stop smoking full stop.  However, if you feel as though you have to smoke, smoke only when you're away from home or smoke outside your home.

Certainly don't smoke in the kitchen or anywhere inside the house where you can subject your children to passive smoking.  Certainly don't smoke when you're cooking food.  And that's the other important issue.  People who smoke while they're preparing food is unacceptable.

And never smoke when you're holding young children, particularly babies.  Obviously if you're pregnant you shouldn't be smoking.  But if you've got young children, breast-feeding or whatever, please don't smoke around them.  It has quite adverse effects on the child as far as their current and their future development.

We know later in life it puts them at risk of not only cardiovascular disease, lung disease, heart disease, but also all sorts of cancers and we know that people who smoke have a higher risk of all sorts of cancers which obviously are in many cases are preventable.

And I suppose my message is that my mother smoked and my mother just passed away about five months ago and she probably should have lived for another 20 years.  And that saddens me because she, for the first time this Christmas, she won't be here with us.  And I suppose I haven't really come to terms with that.  And the fact that my mother's not going to be there, I'd like to think that you who smoke out there would like to have - for you to be around for your children when you get later in life and certainly don't subject yourself, your children into a position where you compromise their life or their quality of life by smoking around your children.

So we ask the children to take this contract to their parents, have it signed and see whether we can make a difference.  Make a difference for the whole family, as I say, from the perspective of encouraging people a) to give up, but certainly not to smoke in the home, in the car, or any closed environment, full stop.

JOURNALIST:           Christmas message for the Health Minister, Tony Abbott?

GLASSON:                Yes, I mean for Mr Abbott, I think I would suggest to you that over the last 10 weeks I've got to know Mr Abbott extremely well, with the Abbott Review Committee.  I've found him to be a very dedicated, very intelligent and sharp man as far as understanding the issues.  I think what we developed out of the Abbott Review, most of that was picked up by Cabinet, and I think that the position that indemnity stands today is largely as a consequence of the efforts of Helen Coonan, Tony Abbott, and all those people on that committee.

I wish Mr Abbott and his family all the very best for the coming festive season, as I do all of you around here by the way, and to say to you that hopefully 2004 will be a quieter year, particularly from the indemnity side of things.  I'd like to think it's off the front page.  We move on to some more important issues like outlawing people smoking.

JOURNALIST:           Have you had much feedback this morning from your members about this...?

GLASSON:                No, it's actually been very quiet.  I've been waiting for the cries one way or the other.  Maybe the silence is some acknowledgment of what has been achieved.  I think a lot of people don't understand to date what has been achieved and the impact I think this will have on affordability and security and hopefully in retaining doctors within the workforce and particularly retaining doctors in our public system.

And as I said to you, doctors do not want to leave the public system.  They've got a loyalty there to their public patients, a loyalty to make sure that the younger doctors are being taught properly.  So I think that the clear message to the doctors is look, I think we've come a long way.  It's not perfect.  It may not be the long-term result, but I think it gives sufficient, I suppose, confidence that we should retain - keep at our posts and see if we can move forward and progress until we get further changes as required.

JOURNALIST:           The Minister says that...

JOURNALIST:           ... patent protections, and do you think that will result in higher medical prices...

GLASSON:                Yes, we've got to watch this one very closely because, at the end of the day, the PBS is under huge amount of pressure now.  And we've made it very clear to the government that the PBS in relation to the free trade agreement is not on the table from our perspective.  And I think any back way or manoeuvre to try and undermine that, we need to be very wary of and we will be coming out very vocal, vocally if we find that there's some move, I suppose, to undermine the current PBS and subsidy system we have in this country because essentially that's the basis of medicine in this country.

And as you know the costs of medicine for a lot of our patients now, even at the current level, is such that patients are now choosing or going to their pharmacies and saying, listen, which of these drugs do I have to take because I can't afford them all.  Now that's a terrible scenario.  So we're going to make sure drugs are cheaper, not more expensive.

And my concern is these big drug companies, which have huge amount of political pressure, particularly in America, will start to force the hand of government to give them more open access to the Australian market.

Ends