Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for raising this matter. It is disappointing that other members are leaving because I am going to take the shadow minister through exactly what is happening with dental care. I found a quote that he gave not that long ago to the Medical Observer about taking on the role as the shadow health minister. He, rather frankly—and I totally understand; when I became the new shadow minister I had this feeling as well—said that he would ‘ask the stakeholders forthright questions about things I neither understand nor am fully informed about’. Fair enough, but what is clear is that he neither fully understands nor is fully informed about the government’s approach to dental care.

I am going to take him through exactly what we are doing and why, because I understand many people in the community are affected by this decision. I understand and very much sympathise with the position that the shadow minister raised of the individual who has had cancer and a whole range of treatments, none of which, I might add, would have been covered by the government’s dental program.

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