Viewpoint: AIO new year review

A New Year often prompts a process of reflection and a resetting of goals for the next 12 months and beyond. Over the coming weeks and months, the Association will review and finalise its policies and put them in the public domain.

One AIO policy that is already clear and unchanging is that the use of the word ‘free’ in optics should be retired. Optics and eye care is demeaned by those that treat the profession as a simple exercise in retailing and bandy around the word ‘free’. In life there is no such thing as ‘free’ and it is particularly galling that government finds it politically expedient to pretend that there is.