Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the sentiment and effect of this matter of public importance. It is a lay down misere that the government have failed to take responsibility for the health of all Australians. They admit that they refuse to take responsibility and we heard the minister say that primarily the people to blame are the states, as he always does. As we hear so often, it is a constant passing of the buck and blame game. They refuse to take responsibility. They admit that they do not want to and that nothing that any number of Australians say and nothing that any number of Australians are forced to endure as a consequence of inadequate federal involvement in the funding or provision of health services will change their minds. Changing their minds is probably off limits on some issues—and the Howard government call Labor a bunch of fanatics.

What do you call a bunch of people, the Liberal Party, who are obsessive about not bending to demonstrable public need for that which will alleviate pain and suffering? What do you call it when a government prefers to see pain and suffering endured by hundreds of thousands of Australians—most of them elderly and of limited means—rather than compromise their conviction that it is the states’ fault? It is pain imposed with principle—a very limited apology and a pretty sick policy given the circumstances—and it is totally unjustifiable and indefensible on any even vaguely humanistic grounds. It is possible to work in politics and public administration with such focus on ideals, rules of law and abstract notions of what should be happening in the best of all possible worlds such that members, let alone ministers, can lose touch with the consequences of their ideology. It is possible, in some cases probable, that ministers and their deputies can lose whatever connectivity they may once have had with the very real and relentless efforts of government policy on individual lives.

Today I would like to increase the government’s contact with the experiences of Australians—the real people, who do not have $1 million in assets or a portfolio of managed funds or family trusts and who do not have a spare $100, let alone the spare thousands that may be needed to secure adequate health care in today’s Australia. People’s experiences, as we know, speak more loudly and more clearly than any political doubletalk or smoke and mirrors. These are the circumstances that people are forced to endure every day, year in year out, and they present the substance that MPs should be listening to, identifying the way forward. The minister asked what we would do. Listening to the people who talk to you every day out there in the real Australia would be a good starting point.

Mr Ted Crowder, a retired toolmaker in his late 70s, has been waiting for his dentures to be readjusted and fixed for a number of years. He featured last weekend in the Sunday Mail. The title of the story was, ‘Forced to be a DIY Dentist.’ Here is a copy of the page, and if any of the members are interested I am sure that the minister’s office or the library could get you copy. The picture shows Mr Crowder with his wife, Maureen. She does not look happy at all and you cannot blame her when they have been waiting for years and years for dentures. In fact she looks pretty upset, and you cannot blame her. Mr Crowder has shrinking gums, consequently losing the fitting of his dentures. He was told in 2005—that is more than two years ago—that he needed new dentures, but he continues to wait for treatment not only for new, adequately fitting dentures but no doubt also to remedy the ulcers that have appeared in his mouth through the misfitting dentures that are continuing to cause him pain and distress. Such is the discomfort of Mr Crowder, who, as I said, is a retired toolmaker, that he resorted to becoming a do-it-yourself dentist, taking his dentures out to the toolshed, pulling out the tools that he used as a toolmaker and tailoring the dentures with files and other items from his toolbox so that they can better fit into his mouth and gums and by some chance offer him a little bit of comfort. It is incredible when you think about it. A private clinic would charge Mr Crowder $1,500 to $2,000 for new dentures—money that he just does not have. Perhaps he is lucky to at least have his tools and his trade.

We have all heard recently in the media, on Today Tonight, about an elderly woman who also took matters into her own hands, regarding not dentures but rotten teeth. This woman was not able to secure the treatment that she clearly saw herself as needing. She had rotten teeth and gums. She resorted to self-administering some pain relief—with, conceivably, some antiseptic—and, with the use of an adequate amount of whisky, she resorted to self-supplying her dental instrument, a pair of pliers, and maybe a bit of cotton wool for the aftermath. She resorted to self-treatment by ripping out her our own decaying teeth—one by one. Rip! Can you imagine the pain?

This do-it-yourself dentistry is gaining in prevalence under the federal government since the abolition of the Commonwealth Dental Health Program in 1996. Another constituent of mine, Mrs Hargraves, is another case in point. She was given an appointment for new dentures in 1996. She was told at the time that the staff did not have much time. A mould was taken of Mrs Hargraves’s gums very quickly, virtually as she was being ushered out the door because of the waiting list. The dentures were made up and sent to her in the post, without any appointment for a fitting. And of course they do not fit, causing incredible pain to her gums. She has been refused an appointment to have these misfitting dentures tailored to her gums because, she was told, she had already had her appointment—she has had her chance at dental health and she is not going to get another one until some time in the distant future. That was more than 10 years ago and she has had misfitting dentures ever since. I am not aware of Mrs Hargraves having any formal training in plastics or cabinetmaking or toolmaking but she has resorted to developing her own skills with abrasive paper or sandpaper, as it used to be called, to sand down these dentures so they can fit a little better in her mouth and not cause pain and hurt. So, like Mr Crowder, we have an elderly individual forced into the toolshed to try to customise her misfitting dentures with whatever garden variety equipment she can find to hand. She is being a do-it-yourself dentist to minimise goodness knows what pain from ulcers and sores in her mouth and perhaps be able to eat properly for her general wellbeing. One can only guess what condition her gums are in.

I have another example. I received a letter from a Mrs Roma Thompson which I would like to read into Hansard:

Dear Mr Georganas, thank you for the opportunity to add my name to the petition for dental care. I have been waiting several years for dentures, and having been told not long ago it could be another three years was not good news. I am eighty-five years of age and another three years—who knows? Another lady of the clinic at the same time was also told three years waiting time and she was ninety years of age. I would think the waiting time would be much longer now as it was last year I was there.

Another woman has been advised that, despite her deteriorating lower gum, despite her denture being hopelessly ineffective, falling out of place and continuously being very difficult to manage, and despite her being at very high risk of soon having to live without any bottom teeth at all without long overdue dental care, she will not get an appointment until 2011. The waiting list, the number of years of poor dental health that people are being forced to endure, as well as enduring the effects on their overall health as best they can, is often well over five years. But even a short wait can be too long. Another constituent, Lona Wilson, went to the dentist nine months ago for a temporary filling. The filling fell out almost immediately. She now has to wait in excess of another year to see a dentist, enduring extreme pain.

Through this current term of office I have received letters, emails and surveys from hundreds upon hundreds of people, primarily elderly people, who have been forced to wait year after year after tedious and painful year for dental care. Many of them are still waiting. Why? Because when it comes to Commonwealth dental care this government does not care. If it did, something would have been done about it. The budget initiatives that the minister spoke about will do very little for the 650,000 people on that waiting list. Over recent weeks we have had thousands of petitions from the electorate of Hindmarsh tabled in this place in support of proper Commonwealth public dental care, and there certainly will be more to come. People are hearing about the petition on the grapevine and calling my office even months after it was distributed— (Time expired)

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