Labor biggest recipient of Pharmacy Guild generosity

3 minute read


The Guild shelled out $400,000 in donations last financial year, new records show.


The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has once again claimed a place in the top 10 corporate political donors this year, with the bulk of its largesse going toward Labor.

According to the latest data from the Australian Electoral Commission transparency register, the various federal and state branches of the Australian Labor Party received $252,641 in donations from the pharmacy owner’s body.

That is almost exactly $100,000 more than the Liberal and National parties received, put together.

Guild president Professor Trent Twomey may have tearfully criticised federal Labor’s move to progress 60-day prescribing on the lawns of Parliament House in April 2023, but donation records suggest that this rift was well on its way to being healed by February 2024.

Over four consecutive days in February 2024, the Pharmacy Guild donated $135,700 to federal Labor.

Its biggest day was February 17, when it donated a total of $121,000 to the party. This was also the largest single donation that it made in the 2023-24 financial year.

It wasn’t insignificant to Labor, either.

The $121,000 Pharmacy Guild payment was federal Labor’s second-largest external donation for the year and was beaten only by a $1m donation from Pratt Holdings, a company controlled by packaging magnate Anthony Pratt.

Queensland Labor alone received $28,000 from the Guild between August 2023 and June 2024.

Over that time, the state – which was then governed by Labor – went ahead with a planned pilot of pharmacist-led prescribing.

In October 2024, after the reporting period captured by this year’s transparency register data, Labor promised to make that pilot permanent.

The state went to an election that same month, which the Liberal National Party won.

Altogether, the various Liberal and National Party coffers received $150,000 in donations from the Guild in the 2023-24 financial year.

The largest of these sums was $30,000 to the Liberal Party of Australia in October 2023, followed by $27,500 to the National Party of Australia in April 2024.

The Pharmacy Guild may be the biggest political donor in the health space, but it’s far from the only one.

Medicines Australia – which represents pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly – gave $179,200 last financial year.

Around $90,000 of this money went to the Coalition, with the remainder going to Labor.

Several pharmaceutical and medical device companies made donations of their own across Liberal and Labor parties:

  • Bristol-Myers Squibb donated $94,400,
  • Roche donated $79,200,
  • Medtronic donated $73,300,
  • Johnson & Johnson donated $66,000,
  • Novartis donated $63,000,
  • Pfizer sent out $55,000,
  • Eli Lilly donated $26,000 and
  • Merck donated $22,000.

Other notable mentions included tobacco company Phillip Morris, which donated $100,000 to the National Party of Australia, and non-profit health insurance peak Members Health Fund Alliance, which donated a total of $56,700.

Donations below $16,300 were not disclosed on the transparency register.

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