Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to continue where I left off last night in responding to the government’s claims that the Health Insurance Amendment (Medicare Dental Services) Bill 2007 will somehow properly respond to the dire need to improve dental health in this nation.

I have to say that I am not of the view that this government has the wherewithal or the political will to address this challenge. One of the reasons this is not within the capacity of this government is that for more than a decade now there has not been any interest or inclination by the Commonwealth to attend to the growing queues in every electorate across the land of people who are looking to get their teeth fixed or to maintain the health of their teeth.

There has been little or no attention paid by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and Ageing or any minister of this government who has held portfolios related to this very important area of public policy since 1996. We can argue, if we like, about the semantics of whether a policy or a program was abolished, axed, withdrawn or expired; the fact remains that this government, upon election on 2 March 1996, set about removing the Commonwealth dental plan that had been put in place by the previous government. And from that point on, for years hence, the government has denied that it has any responsibility whatsoever for mitigating this crisis in our health system.

I am not one to suggest for a moment that the state governments do not have a role, but I do not find it at all logical or rational for every government member to blame state legislatures and state providers of services as if they do not have a role. As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out in question time, there is a constitutional provision that refers to the Commonwealth’s capacity to undertake provision of dental health care. There is history, where previous governments—prior to the election of the Howard government in 1996—undertook the care of dental health and outlaid enormous amounts of Commonwealth funds to ensure that queues would go down.

In the electorate of Gorton there have been increasing queues. I now have constituents who have been asked to wait more than two years—indeed, they have been asked to wait for three years—for basic dental care. That is why I think it is important for this House to consider the weight of the announcement made by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister today of the dental health plan that Labor would like to introduce if elected.

A Rudd Labor government would fund up to one million additional dental consultations for Australians needing dental treatment, by establishing a Commonwealth dental health program. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition today pledged to invest up to $290 million to a Commonwealth dental health program—one of the first programs to be abolished by the Howard government 11 years ago. As the shadow minister indicated during the debate on the matter of public importance after question time, this is the first instalment of Labor’s Commonwealth dental health program.

It is important to note, and it was conceded by the Minister for Health and Ageing, that there are 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists around the country. A 2007 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report concluded that 30 per cent of Australians reported avoiding dental care due to cost, 20.6 per cent said the cost had prevented them from having recommended dental treatment and 18.2 per cent reported that they would have had a lot of difficulty paying a $100 dental bill. Over the last 11 years, this government has withdrawn $1.1 billion in dental services. Under the federal Labor plan—and, as I have indicated, it is part of a series of announcements that will be made from this point on—up to one million Australians will finally receive much needed dental treatment.

Last night in this debate I indicated how important it was for us to prevent problems in other health areas by tending to people’s dental health. It is important to realise that there is a correlation between a person’s dental health and their overall health. Therefore, not only would we be looking after people in need of care; we would be preventing consequential health problems that are occurring now because of neglect. The neglect is because of the lack of provision of services, and the government has to take some responsibility for the failure, for its abrogation of providing services in this area.

Tooth decay ranks as Australia’s most prevalent health problem. Of the Australian adult population, 25.5 per cent have untreated dental decay. During the last year, one in six Australians aged over 15 have avoided certain foods because of problems with their teeth. Fifty-thousand Australians a year are hospitalised for preventable dental conditions. Between 1996 and 1999, five-year-olds experienced a 21.7 per cent increase in deciduous tooth decay. Between 1994 and 2005, the hospitalisation rates of children aged under five for dental conditions increased by 91 per cent. Between 2000 and 2005, there was a 42 per cent increase in children being treated in private hospitals for dental cavities.

In 2004 the Howard government made dental care available through Medicare to people with chronic illnesses, but, as we know, the scheme has assisted only 7,000 people, at a cost of $1.8 million over three years. One of the problems we have with the government in relation to this area is that it has never seen this area of public health as a matter for concern. For 10 long years, we have had the Prime Minister and the minister for health denying any responsibility for the need to attend to this matter at a Commonwealth level. But in the shadow of an election, when the government is having some internal problems, when the government is seeking to convince the Australian public that it is fair dinkum about the future, it announces a policy on this—a policy without proper consideration, a policy that has been introduced against the backdrop of the government refusing to accept, up until now, any responsibility whatsoever for dental health. You have to wonder about the genuineness, the sincerity, of the government’s intentions in this area when it announces such a policy prior to an election. It throws millions of dollars—yet to be spent, of course—at a problem that it said for one long decade was not its problem to fix.

I am very sceptical about the interest that this government shows in people in my electorate who have dental problems. As I have said before, people are sick to death of hearing the two levels of government blaming each other for the deficiencies. It is now time to end the finger pointing by one government against another. It is now time for governments at every level to commit to fixing this particular problem.

I am yet to be convinced, from the efforts of the minister for health today, that the government is fair dinkum. It looks like a deliberate stunt to get past the next ballot. The government hopes to be re-elected, and it is a 50-50 proposition that it will be re-elected. It worries me that, having failed for so long now to concede that it has responsibility in the area, the Howard government might not implement this policy—one that is deficient by comparison to Labor’s—if it were to be re-elected.

This is just another example of the way in which the government has responded to the agenda that has been proposed by Kevin Rudd and Labor generally over the last 12 months. The government has sought to catch up with Labor in the area of climate change. It has sought to respond to issues in the area of industrial relations. Indeed, it has sought to introduce a fairness test into its extreme and unfair workplace laws. But it has not clearly convinced the owners of Spotlight, who today in the papers have announced that they are entering into a collective union agreement because they can no longer understand the policies of the Howard government.

What we have in the area of dental health is a government not serious about concerning itself with the concerns of those that have been affected, not seriously convinced that it has responsibility in the area of dental health. I think the voters of Australia will know that and will challenge the government’s intentions in this regard. (Time expired)

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