Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, like my Labor colleagues, am speaking on the Health Insurance Amendment (Medicare Dental Services) Bill 2007 to oppose it. Surely that must be unusual, because it increases some benefits for people who access the government’s dental program. ‘Why is this so?’ you might ask. Our fellow Australians who are suffering from halitosis, gingivitis, ulcerated mouth, abscesses, chronic infection, sinus pain or, more particularly, the inability to chew properly—which leads to malnutrition—will not necessarily be benefited by the government’s dental health provisions. In fact, to get your teeth fixed you have to have a chronic disease and your dental problems need to impact on that chronic disease.

At present we have a waiting list of 650,000 people across the nation. That is a staggering figure: 650,000 people on our dental waiting lists for public dental treatment. Question time was most illuminating. The Minister for Health and Ageing, when he was talking about Labor’s new policy, said that we were stealing $100 million. What are the facts? The facts are that when the Howard government came to office it decided to abolish the existing pensioner dental health program. In its last full year of operation, that program assisted over 600,000 people and was costing $100 million a year. What happened? It got abolished, or it was not re-funded—whichever makes you feel most comfortable. For 11 years, the Commonwealth has been saving that $100 million. You could say that the people of Australia have been robbed not of $100 million, which is what the government accuses the opposition of, but $1.1 billion.

The Prime Minister is always fond of saying that this is all the responsibility of the states—‘It was ever thus, and they’re not doing their job.’ What is the truth? What is the reality? That is what the Prime Minister said in this parliament, but what is the truth; what is the reality? The state and territory governments, after the abolition of a highly successful program which helped our fellow Australians, have doubled the money that they spend. Notwithstanding that doubling of the money, we still have waiting lists of 650,000 people. It is an outrage; it is a scandal.

How many people have been assisted by the Commonwealth’s program? It has complex criteria. To become eligible, you have to be chronically ill, not with teeth problems but with other problems, and your teeth have to impact on that illness. In three years, some 7,200-odd people have benefited from this program. Contrast that to what Labor was doing. In the last full year of the pensioner dental health program, over 600,000 benefited—that was in one year. This current program has benefited 7,000 people over three years. The measures in this bill are not designed to add to or increase the number of people who are going to take it up. It is not as though we are going to go from 7,000 over three years to 70,000 over three years or 700.000 over three years. It is not going to increase, because of the complex eligibility criteria associated with the government’s dental health scheme.

As my colleague the honourable member for Lowe mentioned, we have announced a new program. I am pleased that we have for this reason: whenever I go to pensioner groups in particular the one question I get asked all the time is whether we are going to do something about dental health. Are we going to do something about the disgraceful length of the queue for those waiting for attention for their teeth? I am really pleased to say that, yes, we are. I was always confident that we would, and we are. We are not assisting 7,000 over three years; we are not assisting 70,000 over three years; we are not assisting 700,000 over three years. We are providing, for one million consultations over three years, $290 million. Whichever way you want to play the figures, that is going to impact hugely on people in that queue.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, if you have halitosis, gingivitis, an ulcerated mouth, sinusitis, chronic infection, pain or more particularly the inability to chew properly and you are eligible for public dental health treatment, this is going to benefit you. You do not have to have a heart problem. You do not have to have high blood pressure. You do not have to have any other chronic disease to benefit from Labor’s initiative—that is, one million consultations over three years.

I am pleased. In my electorate there used to be only one public clinic, the one at Mount Druitt Hospital. It is named after the late May Coupe, who did so much with the ladies auxiliary at that hospital. I have been there and I have seen the empty dental chairs that would be able to be fired up with this initiative. Blacktown Hospital, which I have now inherited, also has a public dental clinic. I must confess I have not trooped around to have a look at it, but I am going to be highly motivated, given what the Prime Minister and the minister for health said today about who is robbing who. I am going to have a look at Blacktown, but I am very confident that there is spare capacity there. The only time that it really ran at capacity was when Labor was in government and we had the pensioner dental health program. It is going to be good news for my electorate.

I suppose the most disappointing thing is that, if you look at any of the statistics about dental health, we are going backwards in Australia. Tooth decay ranks as Australia’s most prevalent health problem. The government is not interested unless you have another associated problem. But tooth decay is our No. 1 public health problem, and this legislation is not going to have an impact on that. Twenty-five per cent of Australia’s adult population has untreated dental decay. How can a government be proud of that? I oppose the government’s bill but I fully support the announcement that Labor made today.

Debate interrupted.

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