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**Pharmacy Guild accused of misquoting rival and scrubbing critical comments**

*By Max Aitchison, Margin Call, the Australian*

There have been more than a few proverbial molotov cocktails thrown this week in the turf war over prescribing powers between doctors and pharmacists.

But it was the normally all-powerful Pharmacy Guild of Australia which took most of the battering – and not for want of trying.

A bad week which began with a report by the Grattan Institute criticising the power of the peak business group for pharmacy owners, headed by Professor Trent Twomey, only got worse when this column caught the organisation using shoddy, possibly AI-induced, evidence to defend its members’ interests.

But the men and women in white coats hit back on Wednesday, clipping up an interview Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Michael Wright had given to ABC Radio that morning.

“Isn’t it just making our job easier? And, look, I’m all for that,” Dr Wright purportedly said of expanding pharmacists’ prescribing power, followed by six seconds of suspicious silence.

“Well said, Dr Wright,” the guild captioned the clip together with two clapping-hands emojis.

“Pharmacist prescribing helps alleviate pressure on GPs, helping achieve better health outcomes for communities.”

But that’s not what he said.

He was asked by 2CC breakfast radio host Stephen Cenatiempo if he thought expanding the prescription powers of pharmacists would be a positive thing because it could take pressure off GPs.

“I think that’s the assumption that many people have had: ‘Isn’t it just making our job easier?’ And, look, I’m all for that,” Dr Wright responded.

“But I think what we’ve seen and what’s being proposed around Australia is that we’ve had up to 20 conditions where governments and the pharmacy guild have said: ‘Oh, look it’s fine for pharmacists to start doing it’.

“And as GPs we’ve been quite concerned going, look, ‘what’s the evidence for that? Is that safe? Is that going to save money? Is it going to be better for patients?’ And we looked and we couldn’t find much evidence to support it.”

The RACGP rather politely described the post as a “misrepresentation”. But we’d go as far to say that’s a Donald Trump/Four Corners-esque misquote from the guild right there.

Speaking of the US President, outspoken Newcastle GP Max Mollenkopf left a comment below the guild’s post accusing it of “DOGE level engagement” – a reference to the one-time Elon Musk-headed government department that appeared more concerned with populist memes than actual cost cutting.

“If it’s not AI-drafted responses to genuine research, it’s editing clips to manipulate another person’s message,” he wrote, accusing it of taking a “weirdly personal cheap shot”.

He added: “Is there someone else we have a reasonable discussion with about pharmacists prescribing?”

But Dr Mollenkopf’s comment soon vanished.

“This has been a theme across Facebook and LinkedIn,” he tells Margin Call.

“They put up a post, let the comments run for about an hour and then immediately shut them off citing their own ‘community guidelines’.

“Basically, every time the comments fill up with people saying something other than what they want to hear, they immediately turn them off.”

When you have the ear of those in power, why listen to the peanut gallery?