John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

That is wonderful to hear. Let me just point out a few of the other things that are coming to fruition which are so important to regional dental services. We put $12.5 million into the six major universities that teach dentistry in Australia. I am very, very pleased to find out that, finally, Griffith University have come to an arrangement with the bureaucracy as to how they will spend their $1.8 million. They are going to set up in the town of Brewarrina, which is a town in my electorate with a very high Indigenous population. My electorate has one of the higher percentages of Indigenous Australians, and we are very proud that we have well over eight per cent of the descendants of the original Australians in our electorate. Brewarrina does have a real issue with dental health, as do Bourke and the far west. I am just delighted that Griffith University are going to be spending part of their allocation in Brewarrina in western New South Wales. Every two months they will be taking eight students there for three weeks as part of their training to do dental work, and that is fantastic. I implore Greater Western Area Health to do their bit in the recurrent funding for that. It is all very well for the Commonwealth to fund this and for Griffith University to provide the transport, but I call upon Ms Roxon, the Minister for Health and Ageing, to fulfil the $250,000 promise our government made to Brewarrina to make this a permanent situation. I am just delighted that Griffith University are leading the way and are going out to western New South Wales—in this case to Brewarrina—to make that happen. If the Labor government want to put money towards young people’s health, that is fine. I think it is ridiculous to fund what is in the order of half the cost of a dental check. It still does not leave them with any money to pay for the other half or to actually get the necessary work done. To say that we wiped out a program for which there was an obvious need, as the member for—what was it again?

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