Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Howard government’s neglect of this nation’s dental health for the past 11 years is nothing short of scandalous. The decaying state of our dental health system under the coalition is matched only by the decaying state of Australians’ teeth. The Minister for Health and Ageing’s answer to the dental crisis is, once again, that standby of the Howard government—blame someone else. But in taking aim at the states and territories he is conveniently ignoring two things.

Firstly, it was the Howard government that scrapped Labor’s Commonwealth Dental Health Program in 1996, ripping $100 million a year from Australia’s public dental system. The state and territory governments have more than doubled their investment in public dental care over the past decade, but the impact of the Howard government’s decision is still being felt today, with 650,000 Australians languishing on public dental waiting lists. In my own electorate of Bendigo there are more than 6,500 people waiting for treatment, some of whom have been waiting over three years.

Secondly, the minister and the Prime Minister seem to have forgotten that the training of dental professionals is a Commonwealth government responsibility. Like workforce shortages in other areas of the health system, the neglect of this area is chronic, despite plenty of warnings of the consequences. For example, as long ago as 1998 the Senate Com-munity Affairs References Committee recommended a national oral health training strategy, which the Howard government has failed to act on. The recent increases in oral health training places at universities, while welcome, are far too little and far too late.

The tough guy health minister seems to have no regard for battling Australians’ dental health. The health minister, the member for Warringah, is the Doc Holliday of Australian politics—the legendary psychopathic, gun-slinging dentist who administered his dental treatment without anaesthetic and, like the minister, who inflicts his health and dental policies on battling Australians without any anaesthetic, enjoyed inflicting pain on people. But, rather than being a gunfighter, the health minister fancies himself as a street fighter and is also proud of his prowess as a boxer. According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the health minister was awarded an Oxford half blue for his participation in that sport during the time he was at Oxford. It was only a half blue as boxing was not considered an appropriate sport to warrant a full blue—or perhaps the minister’s opponent was not considered a worthy opponent, as he later went on to become the director of choreography at the London ballet. Rumour has it that the ballet dancer sat the minister down with a single punch—

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