Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the disallowance motion moved by the shadow minister for health and also to support the comments of the members for Boothby and Paterson. For those here in the gallery today, you might be confused about what this disallowance motion and this debate is actually about. It is not about two different schemes. It is about what happens in the transitional period between them.

Two weeks ago, if any of you sitting up there in the gallery, your son or daughter or your elderly parents came down with the chronic dental disease, you could go to your GP and get a referral to a private dentist through Medicare. Medicare would fund $4,250 worth of treatment spread over two years. That was open to every Australian two weeks ago. That scheme is now shut, closed. It has been replaced with nothing for 18 months. Your children will not be able to access Labor's new scheme until 1 January 2014. For adults it does not start until 1 July 2014—over a year and a half away, after the next election. And this new scheme is completely unfunded.

What this disallowance motion is all about is what happens in that transitional period. What the government is saying is that in the transitional period, after the scheme is cut, you will longer have that access. Put simply, if you are suffering dental pain, if you have an abscess on your tooth, if you have chronic dental disease then take an aspirin, go to a queue that is 650,000 people long at the public dental hospital, and wait in pain for a year and a half. This disallowance motion is about making sure that does not happen and to make sure that the Chronic Dental Disease Scheme continues until the start of this new scheme.

We heard from the minister about how great her new scheme is. If it is so great, why do you not start it straight away? Why are you waiting a year and a half until it starts—after the next election? If this new scheme is so great why does it not start today?

There is another issue with cutting off the scheme. We have to remember that many people are halfway through treatments on the existing scheme. That scheme closes down at the end of November, within 12 weeks. This shows a fundamental failure of understanding of how dental treatment works on behalf of this government. Many patients need treatment under the Chronic Dental Disease Scheme that goes on for many months. What this does is cut patients off in the middle of their treatment and they will be a unable to continue or to finish that badly needed treatment. They will be left stranded, up the creek without a paddle. The minister goes on about the rorts that need to be cut out, and says that that is why the scheme must finish almost immediately. That is fair enough. If there are rorts they should be wound down, but we need to put this 1,000 in context. The minister talks about 1,000 complaints but she fails to mention that the scheme has provided two million services of care—the 1,000 complaints represent less than one per cent. So for less than one per cent this minister is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and making 100,000, 200,000 or maybe 300,000 Australians suffer in pain for up to 18 months.

If the government say that it would cost $1 billion for this scheme to continue surely the government can find the savings. They come into this House and we ask them, 'Where is the money coming from for the $120 billion-worth of promises you have made over the last several months?' They give us the answer, 'It will come from savings.' Surely they could find savings of $1 billion to keep this scheme open so that Australians do not have to put up with pain and suffering for the next 18 months.

It is also important to note that the current dental scheme, which the government finds so objectionable, provides 80 per cent of its funding to those on concession cards. Those concession card holders are now being asked to wait—to go to the back of a queue of a public dental scheme and wait for 18 months. I do not think, in my short time in parliament, I have seen a disallowance motion of such importance, that can save such pain and suffering for so many hundreds of thousands of Australians.

I would like to think about the effect that the psychology of cutting the scheme will have on the economy. As we know, if any Australian came down with a chronic dental disease two weeks ago they could go to a GP, get a referral and go to a private dentist to have that fixed. For the next 18 months people cannot. They are left on their own. What is that going to do to the economy? Think of the millions of Australians who will now live in fear that if they suffer chronic dental disease they will not be covered by existing arrangements, because this government has taken it away.

We saw with the carbon tax and increasing electricity prices that people are frightened to spend money out in the retail shops because they do not know what their electricity bill will be. The same thing will happen with this, because consumers will be concerned that if they come down with chronic dental disease in the next 18 months this government will shaft them—they will take the existing Medicare benefits away from them and leave them with nothing. So this will have another detrimental effect on the economy: people will be frightened to spend because they do not know how they will be able to afford that dental care in the next 18 months if this government is ripping the existing scheme away from them.

This is an opportunity for those on the other side of the House to make a stand within their caucus. Those opposite should stand up in caucus even if they agree that their new dental scheme is great. I am sure all of those opposite do think it is great—and it is a legitimate debate to have about the two schemes—but they cannot leave hundreds of thousands of needy Australians shafted. Needy Australians will be posted up the creek without a paddle for a period of 18 months. Surely there are at least a few people on the other side of the chamber who are not prepared to see this happen to their constituents.

The Independents have a decision to make here. Hopefully they will realise that we need to do something in this transitional period and support this motion. We cannot allow a situation where hundreds of thousands of Australians will suffer acute dental pain for 18 months—where this government can say, 'Take an Aspro and go and wait at the back of a queue of over half a million people.'

If this government can find any savings let them find the savings to keep the existing Chronic Dental Disease Scheme going. Or they could just tweak it a little bit. Modify it, but do not take one scheme away and then leave a gap of 18 months until the next scheme starts. That is what this debate is about, and we hope that at least some on the other side, or the Independents, will support this motion that will stand up for the needy people in our community who will need dental treatment over the next 18 months.

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