Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Health Insurance (Dental services) Amendment Determination 2012 (No. 1), dated third of September 2012, made under subsection 3C (1) of the Health Insurance Act 1973, be disallowed.

The coalition is committed to extra investment into dental services. Tony Abbott and I have taken the decision to move this disallowance motion because we want to stand up for people with chronic disease in this country who are in need of dental services but are being stopped by this government from receiving those dental services.

By way of background, the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was authored by Tony Abbott, who was then health minister in 2007, because he sold a desperate need for Australian is living in pain to receive services that the states were not providing. The success of the scheme has resulted in 20 million services being provided since that time to over one million Australians. The program has cost about $1 billion a year but that money has gone to help people who are in desperate circumstances. These are people who are living in significant pain, and they are not just adults; there are children as well. The government, by closing this scheme down and not commencing their own scheme until 2014, creates a gap of 19 months for people, where no services will be provided.

The minister will say to the Australian people that they have put extra money into public dental waiting lists administered by the state and territory governments around the country. But we know that 650,000 people languish on those lists as of today. And the suggestion that somehow people who have a chronic disease and are in need of dental services—people who can access services under the Abbott scheme today—could somehow turn up to the public hospital and receive equivalent services in the same time is a nonsense.

We have started to receive a flood of emails from people around the country who are captured by this government's mean spirited decision. These people include cancer patients who are part-way through dental treatment plans and have been told by their dentist that because of this change by the government their procedures will not continue, that their treatment plans are no longer funded and that they will live in abeyance and in pain until July 2014, when the government's own scheme commences.

It is important, also, to make the point that even when the government scheme commences it does not commence with the same generosity of the Abbott scheme. The Abbott scheme provided $4,250 to those eligible patients who had been referred by a GP to a dentist. Over a two-year period they could have that work performed up to that amount of money. For people who have contacted us this has been a life changer. I say, today, to the Prime Minister, the health minister and, most importantly, to the Independents, that they need to reassess their support of this crazy arrangement.

The government will say that the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was somehow the playground of the rich because it was a universally accessible scheme—exactly the same way that Medicare operates. If somebody goes into a public hospital today with a heart attack, asthma or a broken leg, regardless of their earning capacity or their wealth they can receive treatment. The equivalent was provided under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. But when you break down the number of people who accessed the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme it becomes very apparent that this was not a scheme accessed to a large extent by people of means, in any case. In fact, 80 per cent of people who accessed the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme were on concession cards. It would have cost the government more to try and exclude the 20 per cent of people who did not hold concession cards than it would have been to provide the services for them under the scheme. So the government fails on that argument.

People will say, 'Well, why on earth would the government close a scheme down that is targeted at assisting those most in need: people with chronic disease—the most severely ill in many cases; people who are suffering severe dental pain?' There can only be one conclusion, because the government has resisted changes to this scheme over the course of the last five years despite saying that there were problems with the way in which some claims were being made. They refused to modify it. They refused to try and strengthen the system to try and exclude difficulties that they claimed were taking place, and now they seek to close it down altogether. I believe it is simply based on political motive.

It is based on political motive because this scheme was set up by Tony Abbott and they want to be able to trash the scheme and go to the Australian people claiming that they have a fantastic new scheme in 2014. But as is always the case with this government, their scheme, firstly, is poorly designed and, secondly, is unfunded. That is the hallmark of this Rudd-Gillard period of government: they cannot get the basics right. This government may have good intent in this space but they have not been able to deliver for those Australians who are most in need. I ask people who are suffering in significant pain, and parents who have children suffering in significant pain, please, to contact not just us—because we will continue the fight—but your local Labor member of parliament and Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott, who are facilitating this change today. Say to them that closing the scheme down and having nothing in its place for 19 months is bad policy. It is bad policy, and it is bad in terms of health outcomes. As part of the coalition's position, we do not hold the numbers in the lower house, so we have made approaches to the Independents, to Mr Wilkie, Mr Oakeshott, Mr Windsor and Mr Katter, to ask for their support for what we think is a reasonable position. We want to make sure that the 19-month gap is closed. That is all we are asking. If the government has an idea of wanting to restrict the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme but provide some support through it over the next 19 months, we would very happily to support that position. If the government has a reasonable compromise to put so that people would not live in pain over the next 19 months, put it on the table so that we can arrive at an arrangement that is in the nation's best interests.

But that is not what this government is proposing—and not for health reasons but for their own crass political purposes. When we contacted Mr Wilkie, he had the decency to say he had already made up his mind, that he was going to support the government. He was happy for people suffering from a chronic disease to go without those dental services during that 19-month gap. That is a decision for him. Mr Katter also had the decency to advise me that he intended to support the coalition's position because he did not want to see people suffering in pain over the course of that 19 months.

That of course leaves us with Mr Oakeshott, the member for Lyne, and Mr Windsor, the member for New England. Despite my office making contact with both Independents, they refused to get back to us, even to discuss a compromise position. If the Australian public wanted any demonstration of the way in which Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott slavishly follow every twist and turn and deviation of this government they need look no further than this bill before the House today.

This is bill is trying to address an anomaly created by bad government, and the Independents have the capacity to stop it. The Independents have the capacity to say to this government, 'Put in place some sort of interim measure which would allow dental services to continue for people most in need.' That is what we are asking for in this disallowance today. We want to make sure that this parliament provides some sort of relief for those who are most in need. Yet this government and the Independents complicit with them have a tin ear for those constituents, who no doubt are contacting them saying that they are partway through a treatment plan with their dentist and the work is now going to stop, or that because of chemotherapy they have had to delay the dental services that they are desperately in need of but now will not be entitled to because this government is closing the scheme.

Why will Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott not even entertain some sort of a compromise deal to provide relief to these people? It is because they are essentially tied to this government like no Independent has been to a government in our nation's history. I call on the two Independents to come into this House and explain. Explain, Member for Lyne and Member for New England, why you are facilitating this bad policy by this bad government? Why are you resisting those calls from needy people who are suffering from a chronic disease, and from parents who are in despair because they cannot afford services for their children unless they are provided under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme or some iteration of that scheme?

This minister says those people can have some relief on the public dental waiting list. That is a nonsense, Minister. There are 650,000 people on that waiting list, and some people are waiting five years under that scheme. It shows how dreadful the Labor governments have been at a state level over the last decade, ramping those numbers up because they waste money, as this government does, on health bureaucrats instead of on front-line services. That is the hallmark of Labor governments in the health space. They spend money on bureaucracies and on bureaucrats and not on doctors, nurses and patients.

Why does this minister say that over the next 19 months chronically diseased patients needing dental services can get relief on public waiting lists when they cannot? Why, Minister, are you offering that false hope and that false promise—

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