Lobby group the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, which represents pharmacy owners, has defended making a $15,000 donation to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Payments of $7,500 were made to the political party by the guild’s Queensland branch in June and July. In March, the branch made a $1,450 donation to Katter’s Australian party. While the guild has also made donations to Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals, no donations have been made to the Queensland Greens.

Hanson has previously made controversial comments about vaccination. Last week a secretly filmed al-Jazeera documentary showed senior One Nation figures meeting with the National Rifle Association in the United States and discussing ways to roll back Australia’s strict gun laws.

I’m disgusted - I will be cancelling all my memberships. — bozley rafa saab (@bozleyrafasaab) April 5, 2019

A spokesman for the guild, Greg Turnbull, did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia about how guild members had responded to the donations. He said: “The Pharmacy Guild attends paid political events and functions across the political spectrum, with all such payments to attend events reported and declared to electoral regulators and published by them.

“Attendance at political events by guild officials does not denote endorsement of policies of the host party.”

But Dr Sajni Gudka, a former pharmacist who complained about the donation on a Facebook page for early career pharmacists, said he did not accept the explanation.

“According to me donations are mindful, deliberative activity,” she told Guardian Australia. “One decides where and when and how much to donate.”

Gudka posted on Facebook that “surely there’s a line”.

I'm a hospital pharmacist and beyond appalled. We all know the Guild is an effective lobbying organisation, but I thought they had SOME ethics.

Clearly nowhere they will not go. — smogdownunder (@smogdownunder) April 5, 2019

“Would the guild attend a function for, say, Fraser Anning’s party?”

The president of the Victorian branch of the Pharmacy Guild, Anthony Tassone, responded that “The guild continuously considers and reviews its donations to political parties”.

Tassone justified the donation to One Nation by saying the payments were “made last year and well before the latest reported events in the media”.

@PharmGuildAus Well? We are your customers but will not support this disgraceful behaviour. Explain or lose business. https://t.co/2mQpE1ApYs — Jane Pepper (@Maintenonmadame) April 5, 2019

While the guild would not comment on the response to the donation from members, online, people shared their disgust. The vice-president of Professional Pharmacists Australia, Carmel McCallum, said; “The Pharmacy Guild doesn’t speak for pharmacists – we are proud of our diversity … we condemn One Nation and its policies”.

Someone else wrote on Twitter; “I’m disgusted - I will be cancelling all my memberships”. Another person wrote; “I’m a hospital pharmacist and beyond appalled. We all know the Guild is an effective lobbying organisation, but I thought they had SOME ethics. Clearly nowhere they will not go”.

Associate professor Ken Harvey, a campaigner for accurate medical labelling and public health physician, said “the guild wishes to back any horse that might serve its self-interested agenda”.

I don’t usually swear in public but WTF @PharmGuildAus ? Please explain? My Muslim pharmacy colleagues and patients deserve to know. #auspol https://t.co/x1g6pusjni — Peter Branjerdporn (@peterbranj) April 5, 2019

“I presume their strategy of donating to One Nation, along with Labor and the Coalition, is to ensure their patch continues to be protected by all, that competition from supermarkets will not eventuate and plans to allow patients greater quantities of medication each time they visited a chemist can be torpedoed yet again,” he said.

One Nation have a racist policy of DNA testing Aboriginal people. Members of the Pharmacy Guild are responsible for dispensing Closing The Gap prescriptions to Indigenous Australians. Who is confident of culturally safe service if the Guild are donating to PHON? — Tim Senior (@timsenior) April 5, 2019

“While the pharmacy professional body, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, has come out against pharmacists stocking non-evidence-based products such as homeopathy, the guild resists; there’s money to be made in pills with no active ingredients.”

• Do you know more? melissa.davey@theguardian.com

