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

The member can be assured that these figures are current as of January 2008, so there is only one month of data that is not yet available. In four years to January 2008, 17 people only in the whole Northern Territory got help from this program. We know that hundreds of thousands of people will get help from our program in its very early days.

Of course there are difficult choices. Of course there are some people who will be disadvantaged. But we have made a decision that assisting probably two, three or four million Australians to get better dental health care over the period of this commitment and to get good preventative care, which makes sure that they do not have more severe problems later in life, is a good investment for our money. We are not afraid of that, and we are not walking away from that.

There is a question, however, that I know some members on this side of the House want clarified. This has been made publicly available. This was not in the dark of the night; this has all been announced. Any of the people who are currently receiving assistance under the previous government’s program will be able to continue to complete their treatment until 30 June this year. We are making sure that people who have been referred by their doctors to their dentists, who may have already had some teeth removed and who may be waiting still to have restorative work done, will be able to have that work completed by 30 June. We have notified the dentists. We have notified the doctors. We have had advice from the dentists that a three-month close-down period is an adequate amount of time for people to receive their treatment.

As of 30 March this year, new people will not be able to enter the program. This was an election commitment. We were elected clearly stating that we would close this program and institute what we think is a better targeted program which is going to help more people and particularly help more people who cannot get to the dentist because of cost. We make no apologies for doing that.

So I do not want to come in here and be lectured by an opposition who did nothing about dental care for 11 years, who at the last minute decided to introduce a program which was a spectacular failure, not servicing those people in the most need, and who then come in here and distort the numbers of people and pretend that suddenly they are the friends of those hundreds of thousands of people who cannot afford dental care. Week after week, we sat in this parliament and were lectured by the previous government, who said that this was all the states’ fault and they were not going to do anything about it. We are going to play our part in fixing this problem. We are going to do it with the state and territory governments, and we are going to do it with the support of families that we will be assisting.

I also want to make clear to the member opposite, who seems to take great glee in the fact that private health insurance premiums were increased by 4.99 per cent, that we take no joy in that fact. Of course we know that this hurts people. Any increase, in the current environment, hurts people. But my obligation under the legislation, as the Minister for Health and Ageing, was to assess what the minimum increase necessary was—something that the previous minister for health never did. He always just rubber stamped—tick and flick—and approved any sort of increase that was put before him. And, while the shadow minister is swanning around complaining about the premium increase this year, I might remind the member opposite that the cumulative figure of the increase in private health insurance premiums over the life of the previous government was 89.24 per cent. Again, do not come in here in opposition and lecture us on the period of your government, Shadow Minister. If you would like the average, the average from 2002 is 6.7 per cent.

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