Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the reasons that I am a member of the Australian Labor Party is the Labor Party’s belief in social justice—a belief that, in many situations, through collective action we can achieve things. That is not to say we do not protect the rights of individuals and understand that people sometimes make their own way through life. But I also believe that we should be involved in governments that understand that there is a need often to help those who are in disadvantaged circumstances, to recognise that some people, because of their lot in life and their life chances, do need assistance.

I am afraid that, after 11 years of the present coalition government, I just see too much that the government is not actually governing for all Australians; it is governing in its own interests, especially now in the run-up to the election. If I take an electorate like Scullin, for so many basic services Scullin has been neglected by the various Howard governments—whether it was the Howard-Anderson, the Howard-Vaile, the Howard-Costello or the Howard-Costello-Downer government. Under whatever guise you want to put it, it has become apparent that this is a government that does not understand the impact of many of its policies on regions. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, I think you have an understanding, coming from a rural region, of the need for a federal national parliament to discuss issues based on the way they affect the various regions of Australia, that we acknowledge that a policy cannot have the same impact throughout the whole of Australia.

The honourable member for Riverina got fairly agitated in talking about dental health. I just want to talk about dental health briefly, because this is an area where, if you look at the public dental health centres run by the Plenty Valley Community Health Centre and the Banyule Community Health Centre, you can see that there is a great disparity in the way in which people actually have access to a fairly basic service in regard to dental health.

At the dental health centre that is run out of the Plenty Valley Community Health Centre, there is something like a four-year waiting list for basic services. If you look at Banyule, for which I have more exact figures for general consultations and prosthetics, you will see that in general consultations there is a waiting list that equates to about five to six months. If you look at prosthetics, dentures and the like, you will see there is something like a four- to five-year waiting list, which is the norm in Victoria. In fact, the person who has been on the waiting list the longest dates back quite some years.

The member for Riverina tried to put the case to the Main Committee that (a) there was a four-year sunset clause on the previous Labor government’s contribution to public dental health and (b) because of the circumstances the coalition believed the Commonwealth budget was in they needed to take harsh action. Setting aside differing views about those arguments, the simple fact is that when we approach a budget in 2007 predicting a very large surplus—it is put together at a time when there is relative economic sunshine—we should be looking at the importance of some of these services for individuals. As the Australian Dental Association have said:

People who are disadvantaged by socioeconomic status experience greater levels of oral disease than those from more affluent groups.

They went on to urge the Commonwealth government to target funding to improve access to dental care for financially disadvantaged groups.

The success of the previous Labor government program indicates that for very modest amounts of money we can improve the dental health care of people. That then has an ongoing effect on their general health and is in turn a saving for the general health budget. I have often said in debate that I found it very strange that the argument was put that this was purely a state responsibility. At the same time, when we looked at the private health insurance rebate we saw that it had been calculated that the federal government was subsidising private dental care to the tune of over $300 million a year. This was an argument that was dismissed but recently taken up by health minister Abbott. He said that this was actually a virtue—that actually the Commonwealth was making a contribution to the progress of dental health in Australia through this $300 million a year in direct assistance to private dental health. I found it very strange that in fact an argument could be twisted so much to go from indicating that the government could have involvement to it being agreed by the government that they could have involvement but only involvement at the level of private dental health care.

We then saw the announcement in this year’s budget. I agree that it is appropriate for the budget to direct money to training dentists, to the establishment of the new regional dental schools and to creating opportunities for dental students to be trained and placed in areas of workforce shortage. But I think that that is very much business as usual. I will quote from the Treasurer’s budget speech. He said, ‘I am announcing additional Medicare funding of $378 million over four years for patients whose dental health is impacting on chronic medical conditions.’ It will be interesting to see what that actually does to waiting lists for public dental health, because it is a very narrowcast policy. Yes, it is aimed at people who are deserving of assistance with their dental health, but it does not go to the wider issue of those who are missing out on appropriate dental health not only because of chronic medical conditions but also because they are of a lower socioeconomic status. The other interesting thing was that the Treasurer could not help himself in his speech when he said:

... while primary responsibility for dental care lies with State and Territory governments, the Australian Government has responsibility for funding dental training and funding general health services through Medicare.

That was the lead-in to the announcement of the moneys in this budget. I simply say to those who are waiting for years to access dental health in an electorate like Scullin: this is very minor assistance in terms of you gaining access to appropriate dental care.

We then see headlines in articles and analysis of where programs are not adequately covering services—for example, that a suburb in the electorate of Scullin, Lalor, emerged as one of the federal government’s Victorian childcare hot spots. That came as no surprise to me because, through my office, we have done a Scullin price watch special survey on child care. That survey revealed the vast range of costs for child care. It indicated that at the top end we were looking at long day based care that was costing families $239 a week, or $47.80 per day. When you are paying that much for child care and you want to get into employment, you have to look for a pretty good job right from the start to make it all add up. I have no beef with the quality of child care in my electorate, but it is the cost and the accessibility. The survey also indicated that there were a number of waiting list constraints on people. For instance, one of the franchise childcare centres indicated that there was about a two-month wait; another centre—from the same franchise but at a different site—indicated that there was a waiting list of 20 to 30.

We really have problems when it comes to people being able to (1) access appropriate child care and (2) access affordable child care. When we look at the hot spot sites in Victoria, we see that they are Lalor, Tullamarine and Yarraville—northern and western suburbs. Again, one has to raise the question: is this a government that is actually governing for all or is it willing to put regions of Australia on the scrap heap because it does not believe they will contribute to the return of the government that has now indicated that it might—if it believes its own spin—have become a tired government that lacks initiative and imagination about the way it can tackle problems?

Another issue that I wish to raise, the carers allowance, is an issue that I have had some great concerns about not only because it is an example of the way in which the Prime Minister has of late been making policy on the run but also because the Prime Minister would make policy on the run without considering the ramifications that that would have on people who might believe that they were to be assisted by a policy change. The government has announced a review of the carers allowance. There was a very famous case running in March of this year that was being championed by Neil Mitchell on 3AW. On 23 March, when Neil Mitchell was interviewing the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister indicated that the government was going to make an ex gratia payment of $10,000 to the family that had been seeking assistance—and I quote the Prime Minister in this Neil Mitchell interview—‘to cover a period through to when the results of any review of the policy are going to be available’. Neil Mitchell then asked whether this was only for this particular family, to which the Prime Minister answered:

Yeah well obviously other people who might feel; I mean it’s an ex-gratia payment for their circumstances but there could well be other people in a similar situation, but we would have to deal with that on a case by case basis.

That brief discussion left the question dangling as to whether people who were getting the carers payment and not the carers allowance might be eligible for this $10,000—and there was a belief in people’s minds.

I was invited to discuss this with a number of parents at the Diamond Valley Special Development School about 10 days later. The important aspect of this was that the parents I was dealing with have older children of secondary school age with severe disabilities, and they have been looking after them for 12, 13, 14 and 15 years. It had started to unfold that this policy-on-the-run announcement by the Prime Minister was only going to be for families with children from birth to six years of age, and it was going to be limited to cases in which a catastrophic event had led to the disability. This came as a dreadful shock to the people that took on face value the sympathy the Prime Minister had given to the case of an individual family. They thought this gesture might apply to others.

I have seen some cruel things done by governments in the past, but in speaking to these parents I saw that the way this had been dangled in front of them was really a very cruel deception. When they rang Centrelink, of course Centrelink did not know anything about it. This was a classic back-of-the-postage-stamp announcement by the Prime Minister, and he should realise, given the length of time he has been not only leader of Australia but also a member in this place, that you cannot do that to people. You cannot lead them astray by letting them think there will be a flow-on benefit of a simple gesture, which was made, perhaps, because he could not think of any way to get out of it given the way it had been portrayed in the popular media. He cannot do this. He has to understand that he is not making one decision here and one there, but decisions that should be seen for all Australians.

In the run-up to the election we are going to get plenty of examples of where there is going to be strange funding. Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, I know that you raised the issue in the context of moneys being made available for roadworks. There is a program called the Strategic Regional Program—‘yet another pork barrel’, perhaps we should say. I was interested to read in the Australian that when they tabulated those seats that were going to get this money, I saw under ‘Labor seats, Victoria, Scullin,’ that we had been allocated $1 million.

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