Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I could be forgiven for thinking that I had accidentally ended up in a state parliament. All I have heard for the last few minutes is the state opposition having a great time. This is the federal parliament. What I would like to know is why, every time dental care is raised in the federal parliament, all we get from the government is pure politics—politics, pure politics, and nothing but politics. Sure as hell, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth. It is about finding someone else to blame, pointing the finger, deflecting attention from their own failures, finding anyone else to blame—anything but taking responsibility for the parlous state of dental health in this country.

Many people ask me why a person would ever get into politics. I have to say that sometimes, sitting in this parliament, I wonder that myself. But my answer is quite simple: many in this parliament did not get into politics; we got into governance. Politics is a rather unfortunate necessary evil at times, but most of us are here for governance, for responsibility, for caring about this nation and for actually doing the job. But unfortunately, from the government, when it comes to dental care, we do not get governance; we get pure politics and only politics.

Let us have a look at the state of dental health while the government plays politics with this important issue. Advances made in children’s oral health during the early nineties are well and truly being reversed. Children at school now will need greater ongoing care than the generation who were going through school in the last decade. Demand by eligible people is expected to increase by around 30 per cent over the next 10 years, compared to about 14 per cent in the general population, and that is specifically because of the neglect by the federal government over the last 10 years. The neglect of children now will cost them, and us all, more in the future. All taxpayers will pay for the failure of this government to accept its responsibility.

Let us just talk about that for a minute. Is it a state or a federal issue? We heard the member for Fisher talking about the states taking on their constitutional responsibility. Actually, the Commonwealth Constitution refers to dental health as a Commonwealth responsibility. What about the federal government taking on its constitutional responsibility? Secondly, it was the federal government, the Howard government in 1996, as one of its first acts in this parliament, that made the choice for the federal government to withdraw from dental health and leave it to the states—a choice made by this government. And now it tends to blame the states for the choice that it made. This was a federal responsibility for the last years of the previous government. It was this government that chose to return all the responsibility but not the money to the states.

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