Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to see that ending the blame game lasted about 11 milliseconds under the new regime! The dental care plans of 1996 were concocted by desperate Prime Minister Keating at the time, when we had reached that economic abyss, that dropping away abyss of $10 billion budget deficits. He dreamt up a tokenistic dental plan. For those on the other side who have probably long forgotten how small that plan was, it was only a fraction of what it cost to deliver dental services in this country. He, nonetheless, went ahead with it while he was looking at gaping budget deficits. Of course, it was not continued, because we had to get Australia’s economy back on track, and that was done over 12 years. Those on the other side will also have probably forgotten that in that dental plan we saw costs shifting straight out of the state dental programs as the federal money came in. So the extra dental services barely registered a blip on the waiting lists. Then remember that, while I cannot quote the Constitution, saying who is responsible for dental care, what we really had were state dental programs, Member for Kingston, run by the South Australian government with their emblem on it. Were you looking, while you were speaking, at who was providing the services? They were state government dental professionals. As they went around to the schools in dental vans, they had the South Australian emblem on the dental trailers. It was so obviously a state government service. In Queensland I saw it firsthand as they wound up the services.

I was called on Monday by Mrs J. from Cleveland, who said, ‘I used to get emergency state dental services at Redlands hospital but I’ve been told the rules changed.’ While our Prime Minister is flagging the ‘teeny’ dental plan, which involves a spit and polish and no serious treatment provided by the government for genuine dental needs, your state colleagues—your Labor mates—are simply winding up the state services. They are doing that as Mr Rudd comes in waving the flag for the new federal government. We have services disappearing at Redlands hospital; emergency services are vaporising. If you have a shattered molar, you simply join the months-long queue and hope something happens. I have got news for you: a waiting list on a state hospital service is usually a holding pattern. You either stay there forever and get gazumped by more urgent cases, you go private or you pass away. That is the reality for some of these waiting lists. We see that in Queensland reported in the public hospital stats, which were all fudged before they were released by the state government in the Queensland public hospital performance report 2006-07. Elective surgery lists at the Gold Coast have virtually ground to a halt.

I am effectively wasting my time here reading out the achievements of the last 12 years—of the safety nets in PBS and MBS, of the huge shift of everyday Australian families to private health insurance. That is something that you have shown no support for. Of course, you nod to survive politically that you support PHI but you have never demonstrated any commitment to that policy. You did that in 1996 when we had the incentive scheme, in 1997 when we had the 30 per cent rebate raised to 40 per cent for seniors and in 2000 when we had Lifetime Health Cover. Minister for health, that is what shifted ordinary Australian families. It shifted 44.8 per cent of them—nearly 50 per cent of West Australians, and I can see the member for Stirling nodding, and 44 per cent of Queenslanders—to private health because they simply could not trust your colleagues at state level to run a health system. This blaming we all agreed was going to stop, but in the end the enormous injection of GST revenues did not register a blip in services at the state level. You may not have any experience in business. I notice that the member for Werriwa has disappeared, but he has some background in small business. The internal rate of return for giving federal money to your state colleagues is effectively zero. It will be very hard for you ever to get up here and justify the performances of your state governments when it comes to dental care.

The options for people really were to get private cover or to go away. That is effectively how they were treated. Many of you simply coalesced up from your state regimes to find a seat here when you realised there was a chance of being in government. But, in reality, where did you come from? You came from state regimes that would not support basic state dental care. We have those same issues in Indigenous Australia. We have really missed the point: most of the money that was not being delivered through Medicare services—as the minister for health will know—was part of COAG agreements with state and territory governments to ensure that dental services were delivered in the Northern Territory, not through the chronic disease item as you have described but through many other services. If you had been to Indigenous communities, you would know that dental services were being delivered. We have an enormous challenge coming to this parliament in the following days, where pornography is about to be returned and broadcast to the prescribed Indigenous communities. That will have a significant impact on the intervention. It is a very serious matter and it is one that you are supporting. (Time expired)

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