As Australians increasingly head abroad for work and leisure, a quiet but consequential shift is underway in how the nation delivers frontline healthcare. Hundreds of pharmacists, armed with advanced university qualifications, are now authorised to prescribe for conditions that once required a GP appointment — from urinary tract infections and contraception to travel vaccinations and asthma — meeting patients where they already are, often on the eve of departure. This expansion is less a disruption than a reckoning: a healthcare system stretched thin by cost, demand, and chronic illness is red