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

Exactly—the pensioners. I have to say that it would not only be the pensioners. I wonder how the dentists and the other dental health professionals feel about that when they hear it. Are they too not referred to as health professionals? Is dentistry not a health service in their eyes? I suggest that they would not be terribly impressed when members opposite suggest that people who study dentistry or nursing in the dentistry field are not considered equal to those who study other forms of medicine. I know a number of dentists. They study dentistry—therefore a medical field—and they do so for a number of years. It is one of those areas in which you have to specialise. The dentists with whom I have had experience I fully commend as absolute health professionals in their field.

There is another element to this business of where the states should be responsible for a service and where they should not. Again, it is interesting that the opposition members continually blame them for the state we are in when it comes to the number of people who are on waiting lists and that they supposedly are to blame for all the woes we face when we talk about dentistry. In my state of South Australia between 1996 and 2002, when some of the statistics escalated the most, we had a Liberal government in power. So I wonder whether the members opposite also direct their criticism at the Liberal government of the day when they throw that criticism at the state governments. I doubt very much that they do. They are simply using that excuse to try to blame the state Labor governments. As we have said time and time again, they play the blame game on a matter on which they themselves were extraordinarily negligent.

What we did see, though, is that in 2004 the Howard government started to panic on this issue because public opinion went against the government of the day. The opinion was that the federal government was not doing enough to assist people with dental needs. In particular, it was the pensioners who were raising the matter the most. So we saw the Howard government bring in some of its own legislation, referred to as the Commonwealth dental scheme, in 2004. But, as other speakers have said time and time again in this debate, the referral process and eligibility criteria were so complex and so restrictive that in my own state, over the four years that the Howard government scheme was in place, I understand that no services at all—and I stand to be corrected if members on the other side can prove me wrong on this—had been provided to children up to the age of 14; that is, absolutely zero. That was the take-up rate of that scheme for children under 14 in the four years that the scheme was in place. It shows how poor the scheme was and how miserably it failed. And because it failed—again, not surprisingly—come the 2007 election, dental health became a major issue which I well recall campaigning and doorknocking and speaking to community groups about on a regular basis. No-one has to convince me that dental health was a major election issue, because I was confronted with it on a regular basis by people I spoke with who were demanding that the federal government reinstate the Commonwealth dental plan and do more than what was being done. As a result of that, and as a result of a government that was beginning to panic because it could sense the mood of the people out there—and with an election looming in 2007—we saw the federal government amend its own scheme and make further changes to it in order to try to establish some credibility on this issue with the voters. It was too little and it was too late. By that stage, voters had had enough. By that stage there were too many people out there who had been waiting too long for assistance. They were not prepared to wait any longer, and they were not prepared to give the Howard government another three years to see what kind of additional scheme it was going to implement. They were not prepared to give the Howard government another three years of bringing in a scheme which, again, would probably not suit their needs. Not surprisingly, they voted with their feet in 2007.

I said earlier that I had met a number of people in the course of my campaign who drew my attention to their need for dental health services. Not surprisingly, when I was elected as the member for Makin the very first constituent who came into my office was a constituent who wanted assistance with respect to his dental needs. I am pleased to say that I was able to assist him and he was able to get the kind of support that he deserved, needed and had been waiting for for some time. That was the very first constituent I had come into my office. Since that time, I have had a number of others come in with similar problems, again, having been on waiting lists for too long and literally in dire need of dental assistance. Again, I did whatever I could for them. But what I can say to them now is that, as a result of this $780 million committed by this government, the waiting lists will be reduced and the services will be out there for them to access when they were not there in the past.

A number of the matters that I would have otherwise spoken on in this debate have already been addressed by other members. I am not going to repeat all of the issues that were raised by members, particularly on this side, in support of this bill, but I do want to respond to some of the issues that were raised by members opposite. One of the criticisms has been that we do not have enough dental professionals in the public system and therefore, regardless of how much money you throw at the system, people will not be able to access the services. Why don’t we have enough dental professionals in the system?

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