He has worked for the Ansett-Air New Zealand aviation group and as a consultant on transport policy.
He has also worked in Canada on exchange with the Privy Council Office (1993-1994). His career with the government started in 1976 with the Department of Overseas Trade and included periods with the Treasury; Finance; the Prime Minister’s Department and Transport; and he worked for two years in the Prime Minister’s Office on secondment from the Prime Minister’s Department as a member of then Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s personal staff.

In 2013, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia ‘for distinguished service to public administration through leadership and policy reform roles in the areas of telecommunications, the environment, primary industry and transport’.

He is a career bureaucrat and has a degree in Economics from the University of Queensland (1975) and is married with two children.
On assuming his role as chairman of the Productivity Commission he stated that he was concerned that the recommendations of the earlier Harper Review had not been implemented quickly enough and that anti-competitive regulations remained in place despite significant progress made under National Competition Policy.
The panel recommended removing regulations governing retail trading hours, parallel imports and removing pharmacy location and ownership rules.
Peter Harris thus has a background that shows no experience of health, and being a career bureaucrat has had little experience of the real world.
Two segments of his career are associated with failure – the Ansett-Air New Zealand segment ended in liquidation of the group and the NBN project is less than spectacular in its roll-out and service quality.

Government is not obliged to implement all or any recommendation from any reporting agency and this is seen in the current treatment of the Location Rules that are being legislated to ensure permanency.
This is a logical process if pharmacy is valued by government and is given the opportunity to work at an appropriate level of skill.
Location Rules are sensible when they guarantee a uniform access to health services and community pharmacy has always performed in this role and rated highly by the Australian population for its performance.

That Peter Harris produced his Shifting Sands report without any discussion with the stakeholders affected is illustrative of the quality of his work and it is obvious that he is deliberately “stirring the pot” and setting himself up for another failure.
Unfortunately, this places unnecessary stress on every person working in pharmacies around Australia and reduces their productivity because they have to devote time and energy into defending themselves from potentially poor government policy based on flawed recommendations.

i2P has published articles on the Scottish vision of pharmacy which Peter Harris seems to have simply copied.
But unlike the Scottish model which places pharmacists at the centre of productivity changes, Peter Harris’ proposal is to eliminate pharmacists altogether.
He certainly does not appear to have much originality in his thought processes given the power inherent in his career position to destroy the aspirations of many dedicated and hard-working individuals.
It is past time for pharmacy leaders to step up their activities to selectively attack disruptors (like Peter Harris) on a planned,regular and ongoing basis.
Become proactive rather than reactive.
The lead article for this edition concerns an innovative method of delivering goods using drone technology, and how the resources of a new global retailer to Australia are being directed to perfect this system.
Amazon Australia has opened its first fulfilment centre and is busily stocking its warehouse (based in Dandenong, Victoria). Price, speed of fulfilment and the ability to provide a broader range of consumer needs than any other retailer are the solid platforms underpinning their success.
The fostering of innovation and the nurturing of ideas and their conversion to unique offerings are a force to be dealt with. They will eventually dominate the pharmacy market and they will integrate their pharmacies within a wider health offering. But there is always opportunity for those who are imaginative and quick on their feet.
Meanwhile, everybody currently needs to learn how to pilot a drone to understand the reach of this type of technology solution.
Read: Prime Air – The Amazon Solution for Internet-ordered products is not quite ready for take-off

Change imposed by government on pharmacy is not a new process as this article, written by Peter Sayers illustrates.
In a past conversation with Dr Gregory Haines (author of “The Grains and Three Penn’orth of Pharmacy”) he commented that Australian Pharmacy culture never evolved from within – movement only occurred through stimulus applied by the medical profession or by government. This article illustrates a classic example of a government, advised by the Productivity Commission, simply looking around the globe for a more productive version of pharmacy and altering the model to actually destroy pharmacy.
It is also illustrative of how Australian pharmacy leadership has failed to evolve pharmacy culture to a point of relative immunity, leaving pharmacy open to imposed change.
Read: The Productivity Commission Recommendation to decouple pharmacists from dispensing mirrors a progressive Scottish community pharmacy culture

Mark Coleman is back with an article on the recent release of tax haven files of many high profile people using this type of service.
Because global pharma’s are involved, the system does eventually impact on pharmacy.
Mark Coleman describes some of these impacts in his new article.
Tax havens have become more than just a method of evading or avoiding tax.
They have become a secret meeting place for the global elite who are seeking to control all the natural resources of the world for conversion to wealth that only they control.
A corporate form of a one-world government is envisaged.
Because the system is based on greed and secret controls and mostly now illegal, it has begun to affect economies and lifestyles on a global basis, creating a system of “haves” and “have nots”.
The immorality and illegality of the participants is slowly being exposed through the leaking of confidential documents that would not normally be available for public scrutiny.
The “whistle blowers” involved in these exposures are to be commended.
Read: The Paradise Papers – Tax Evasion by The World’s “Elite” and a Payments System that buys “Decisions”