Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely. For 10 years the Howard government did absolutely nothing about ensuring that the future needs of the dental profession were being met by our universities. That is why we have a shortage. But there is another reason why we have a shortage, and that is that when you pull $100 million a year out of a service then of course the waiting lists are going to grow. Had we invested that money over the last 10 years into the service, the waiting list today would not be so long and therefore the professionals who are out there today would be able to cope with the demands that are being placed on them. It is quite simple. You do not have to use an extraordinary amount of logic to work out that, if you had been servicing people for the last 10 years, you would not have had the accumulation of people on the waiting lists that we now know we do have.

But it goes further than that, and I am pleased that other members, including the member for Moreton and the member for Charlton, have referred to the James Cook University and the establishment of a dentistry school there. This government is aware that there is a shortage of dental professionals in the field. We are very much aware of that, and that is why there has been this investment in the James Cook University—again, to try to increase the number of professionals that are required throughout the communities wherever you go in Australia.

I guess the other matter is that, when it comes to the health checks, there is no reason why those health checks cannot be done by private practitioners. It does not have to be a dentist in the public system. They can in fact be done by private dentists, and I am sure that many of them will be. Whilst I am speaking on the Medicare Teen Dental Plan, can I say this: as a parent of children who are now in their 20s, I can well recall when my kids were in their teenage years. I can recall that it is in those years that young people tend to neglect their health needs the most when they should in fact do quite the opposite. Not surprisingly, the statistics show that between the ages of 18 and 21 is when young people generally have the worst and most dental problems. Why? Because at the time when preventive measures should be taken they are being ignored—for a whole range of reasons. I am sure that anyone in this House who is a father or a mother would understand how kids grow up and how they tend to commit their time to other things and neglect the things that perhaps they should not be neglecting. The reality is that that is when they ought to be looked at, and so the Medicare Teen Dental Plan is not simply a $150 payment that is going to create a check-up. What it is going to do is create the preventive action that will save those families money later on and ensure that those kids have much better health as a result of it.

Quite frankly, this legislation goes a long way to doing a lot for a lot of people. I commend it to the House, and I am pleased to see that, as I said earlier, this government has introduced it so early in its period of government.

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