The federal opposition will launch a fresh bid to overturn a Labor plan for cheaper medicines and 60-day dispensing.
The move followed a chaotic day in the Senate which ended in Labor defeating a coalition attempt to block its medicines plan, which the government achieved by forcing the disallowance motion and then voting against it.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said the coalition had lodged a new disallowance motion late on Thursday afternoon, which will come up in the Senate when it sits again in September.
The changes will come into effect on September 1 and allow for 60 days of medication to be dispensed from a single script for the same price.
Senator McKenzie said the opposition was serious about protecting regional pharmacies, which have cried foul over the policy.
"We want to see that great dispensing policy implemented, but not at the risk of the reduction of other health care, especially out in the regions where often the chemist is the only frontline health professional in town," she told ABC TV.
The changes will effectively halve the cost of 320 common medicines for about six million Australians.
Any Commonwealth savings will be reinvested into community pharmacies.
Pharmacies argue this will provide too big a hit to their bottom line as they lose out on dispensing fees and extra revenue.
But the nation's doctors have hit back, saying the changes will make medicines more affordable for patients and free up clogged GP clinics by reducing the frequency of repeat visits.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the sector could afford the hit after pharmacies had accrued $100 billion in revenue over the past four years and the industry grew 30 per cent.
He said the hit to revenue would only be around one to two per cent and while that wasn't small, "the catastrophic claims that are being made by the coalition and the pharmacy lobby itself simply don't stand up to scrutiny".
Mr Butler said he had received twice the number of applications for new pharmacies to open in the three months since he announced the policy compared to the same period the year before.
"So clearly this sort of massive hit to business confidence the pharmacy lobby and coalition have claimed would happen is not being reflected in investment in the pharmacy sector," he said.
The minister also raised legal concerns about a disallowance motion hanging over the policy.
The Senate won't consider the second disallowance motion until the week after the policy comes into effect.
Mr Butler said he had not received the final legal advice about what would happen to people who dispensed 60 days of medications if the policy was disallowed.
