Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If the member for Boothby would look at the bill, maybe he would see the massive support we are providing for children in this bill, and then he might actually consider the bill and vote for it. It is disappointing that he will not vote for helping children get appropriate dental care. He seems to be opposed to this in Noarlunga, and I am sure the residents of Noarlunga would be very upset if he is opposed to increasing the number of dental chairs from six to 24, which is expected to provide 32,000 appointments for adults and children each year. This is an important boost. Importantly, we will provide the services to those who need it the most: those on a modest income.

We have heard a lot today about the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, which the Liberal Party is so proud of. The now Leader of the Opposition introduced that scheme while he was health minister. As I have tried to illustrate, income plays an important role in whether or not you can get access to health care. When armed with these facts, you would think that when the Leader of the Opposition was looking at the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme he might look at the equity in dental care. That equity being: perhaps means test this? Perhaps means test this to ensure that the public money is being directed to those who need it most.

Of course, the now Leader of the Opposition—the then health minister—did not means test this program, and this provided another important inequity. That was that if people had a chronic disease then they could access a significant amount of money to get dental treatment. If you were poor or on a modest income, and did not have a chronic health condition, you could not access any money from it. It was poorly targeted and not means tested, so public money was going and, indeed, as the program continued there seemed to be increasing problems with the program.

Of course, first there was the cost blow-out; a complete cost blow-out that the then Leader of Opposition said would cost around $90 million each year. It ended up costing $1 billion each year. And there were still so many people who did not have a chronic disease waiting on the public dental waiting list because they ignored the public dental waiting list, and ignored the people that need it the most. So first of all there was the poor targeting: $1 billion targeted very poorly, not means tested and available to people on a very high income.

The scheme was also poorly managed, receiving 1,000 complaints and with reports and evidence of wide misuse of the scheme. This includes some practitioners ordering dentures that did not fit, unnecessary crowns or other work and charging up to $4,250 for doing very little work. We often hear the opposition talk in this place about using taxpayers' money responsibly. Unfortunately, they do not have a very good track record on this. They might talk a lot in this place about using taxpayers' money very wisely but, unfortunately, while in government they failed to deliver this, and the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was one of those.

Unfortunately, it has been left to this government to fix it up and actually to ensure that the money that is spent by taxpayers on public dentistry is done in a way that ensures that those who need it most do get access to it. We announced a policy of shutting this scheme down. We believed straight away that this money was poorly targeted and that it was being, quite frankly, rorted in a lot of cases—therefore, we felt very strongly about it. To those on the opposition benches who say that this is such a surprise: this has been our policy for a long time and we are now delivering on that policy to ensure that that money is used responsibly, that that money is not wasted and that that money is actually directed, as I said, to those who need it the most.

The bill before the House today is the first step in our dental reform package, which really seeks to bridge accessibility issues. These reforms build on the work that the government has done so far to turn around the impact of the coalition government's cuts to the public dental scheme when they were in government. Quite frankly, there is the fact that the coalition ignored the dental health of children when they were in office. It provides $2.7 billion for around 3.5 million Australian children, who will be eligible for subsidised dental care under the children's dental scheme, Grow Up Smiling. That will commence on 1 January 2014. As well, we are providing $1.3 billion for the states and territories on 1 July 2014 to expand the services for millions and millions of adults in the public system who are low income earners, to ensure that they do have access to better oral health care. I was speaking also to the dental service at Noarlunga, and they are now embarking on being able, with the injection of money from the Commonwealth, to engage in preventative check-ups to ensure that they do not let problems just go into emergencies—go into chronic problems—but are actually having preventative check-ups to stop the problems from occurring.

This does build on the work that we have— (Time expired)

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