Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to deliver my speech first. If the member wants to wait and ask a question at the conclusion of that, I will be happy to answer it then. In the two years following the introduction of the Commonwealth dental program, eligible cardholders who received publicly funded dental care reported less frequent toothaches, waited a shorter time for a check-up and were more satisfied with the dental care that they received.

But in 1996 the Howard government was elected and immediately set about dismantling that dental program which had helped so many Australian families. It did not just slash the funding for the program; it abolished it entirely. One of the Prime Minister’s first acts as Prime Minister was to abolish a program which made health care more accessible for Australian working families. It was a sign of things to come. Of course the move had predictable effects. We now have around 650,000 Australians on waiting lists for public dental care. That is over half a million Australians who are waiting for their teeth to be fixed. Many of them are in pain, some suffer infection, some suffer tooth loss and some of these Australians cannot eat solid foods. Some have difficulty swallowing and some have trouble speaking.

These dental issues are serious issues which have serious health implications. They also have serious social implications. Dental problems can affect your appearance and speech and can affect mental health and quality of life. Many Australians with severe dental problems suffer social anguish, no less real for perhaps being a little less obvious. There are people in Australia who have difficulty going out with their friends for fear of being laughed at because of the state of their teeth. They cannot go out to dinner. They choose not to go to their friends’ place because they will not be able to eat dinner and some of them choose not to engage in their favourite social activities for fear of embarrassment.

Just a few weeks ago I spoke to an elderly gentleman who loves to dance. He loves to dance almost more than anything and yet his teeth prevent him from doing so. He is embarrassed by the state of his teeth, so he does not want to dance despite the fact that dancing is the aspect of his life that brings him the most joy. He has been waiting for 2½ years for treatment. Here is a clear example of how health problems can easily lead to other challenges in life. We cannot allow the government to pretend that dental health and general health are not related. Teeth cannot be separated from the rest of our bodies or from our peace of mind. Cut a person off from his hobbies and you cut him off from his support networks. It is the role of government to do all it can to help Australians who need our help—Australians who need but cannot afford dental care most certainly fall into this category.

Labor is not the only voice in this debate about the acute need for the Commonwealth to play some role in dental care. Highlighting the poor oral health of people on low incomes, ACOSS has now called on the federal government to ensure that all people on concession cards have access to a free basic course of dental care every two years. The Health Services Union recently launched its campaign for Medicare to cover the cost of dental treatment for Australians aged under 18 and over 65 as well as low-income earners. The Australian Dental Association, in its prebudget submission to Treasury, has called for a Commonwealth funded oral health program to increase access to care for those who are economically disadvantaged and in need of dental care.

Labor is currently examining a range of options to help working families get the dental care they need. We are committed to establishing a Commonwealth dental program to provide the assistance and support that the community needs. ACOSS, the HSU, the ADA—all, like Labor, recognise the need to improve the oral health of the Australian population. We all recognise the need for the Commonwealth to take a leadership role. We may have different approaches, but we all recognise the fundamental responsibility for the Commonwealth to play a role in improving the dental health of all Australians. We will work with these organisations to keep the pressure on the Howard government to act in this area.

Do not think for a second that the fact that this government has allowed over a half a million Australians to languish on public dental waiting lists does not have a dramatic flow-on effect for the rest of the health system. The longer you wait for care for small treatable dental problems, the more likely you are to see those small treatable problems develop into large, less treatable, more intransigent dental problems which might lead you to the hospital gates. It is no coincidence that between 2000 and 2005 the number of six-year-olds admitted to private hospitals for rotting teeth rose by 95 per cent. In other words, the number of six-year-olds with dental problems serious enough to have to be treated in hospital almost doubled in those five years. Over the same period, the number of children under 12 admitted to private hospitals for rotting teeth rose by 42 per cent. These children are suffering more than they need to, in many cases because they did not get preventive treatment early enough. Not surprisingly, this has flow-on effects for the adult population. The oral health of Australian adults is ranked third worst in the OECD. Young adults aged 18 to 24 have on average about five teeth with untreated decay. This demonstrates a crazy degree of neglect in a largely preventible area of health.

Labor believes that all Australians deserve to have the dental care they need when they need it and in enough time to prevent small problems becoming bigger ones. But that is not the case right now. For many Australians it is not the case for at least two reasons. Firstly, public dental waiting lists are horrendously long. Over half a million people are on waiting lists, some for many years. That is unacceptable and I have made that point clear already. Secondly, thousands of Australians simply cannot afford to pay for the dental care that they need. For a low-income family without private health insurance, dental care is expensive; for many working families, it is simply unaffordable. This is a government that claims that it cares about families. It pretends to be sticking up for family values and then fails to come through for families any time that it actually matters—in this case, when a child is suffering from tooth decay. We need to look after those Australians. In doing so, we will not only help suffering Australians; we will also save our public health system many millions of dollars by avoiding serious diseases that could have been treated earlier.

Making sure that low-income families can get the dental care they need when they need it is not only the compassionate thing to do; it is also economically responsible. But the Prime Minister has two responses to the dental crisis facing Australian working families. The first response is to blame the parents. On New Year’s Eve, instead of saying that, as leader of the Commonwealth, he was prepared to do something about the parlous state of dental care, the Prime Minister lectured parents on the need to stop their children from drinking bottled water. Fluoridated water is an important preventive measure but it is not the whole of the matter. We must acknowledge that not all parts of the country have access to it. Drinking fluoridated tap water would certainly help many people in the future, but it will not solve the dental care accessibility crisis or the dental care affordability crisis, and it will not do nearly enough to tackle the waiting lists which are keeping hundreds of thousands of Australians waiting years to have somebody do something about their aching teeth.

The Prime Minister’s second response to the dental crisis is to blame the states. This is an approach that we are becoming very familiar with it. He does it on health, he does it on education, he does it on water. Any time there is a problem that he could have or should have acted early on—and he has now been in government for 11 years and is looking pretty tired on these issues—he simply blames the states. Just a couple of weeks ago he said again that he believes that dental care is not the responsibility of the Commonwealth government and that the waiting lists around the country are entirely the fault of the states. It beggars belief that his decision to cut $100 million a year from dental services has had no effect on waiting lists. This is the blame game that we have come to know so well, and it has several clear steps: the government fails to do something that it should have done, a problem becomes apparent, the government denies the existence of any problem and, finally, the government blames other people for its own failings. In this case, the Prime Minister is not content with having just one scapegoat; first he blames the states and then he blames parents as well.

A couple of weeks ago Tony Abbott agreed with his Prime Minister, saying that dental care was the states’ problem, not his. But at the same time he acknowledged that dental care was inextricably tied to other health issues. These two statements, placed side by side, just cannot make sense. Labor’s point is that dental care cannot be easily separated from other health issues and, as such, it makes sense for the Commonwealth to take some responsibility for dental care. This is just another example of the government’s illogical, inefficient approach to health care. Despite overlaps, inefficiencies and 11 years of problems in the health system, they resist calls for reform and instead resort to blaming others for what are clearly their areas of responsibility. Tony Abbott also has his facts wrong—

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