Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No. I am certainly not frightened. I am not interested in some kind of rhetorical political question from the member opposite. He will have his opportunity in about four minutes and 48 seconds to make his contribution, and I think he should do so then.

Let me throw back to the issue I was talking about. Let them justify and explain why they are going to have a 13-month gap when children will not have any access to Commonwealth-funded dental services. Let them also explain why there is a two-year gap for adults, and let them also explain where the $4 billion is going to come from. I know that the member opposite is quite adept when it comes to financial matters and when it comes to the economy, so he might want to explain to the benefit of all of us—and I will be glued to my TV in my office as I hear the response—how this government are going to deal with the massive debt liability that they have left the Australian people and, what is more, that they are continuing to make worse.

As I said, the current $145 billion in net debt is on its way to $265 billion of net debt—this being a $4 billion example of an unfunded commitment. The reason is, as I said and as all Australians know, this government is just about political posturing. It is just so he can have a brochure that goes out during the campaign that says, 'Look how much we care about dental health,' but does not actually talk about the fact that those kids who will not have access to dental services, those kids who might be undergoing treatment now which is about to stop, incidentally are the same children who will be paying off your debt for the next 20 years. Perhaps if we had lower tax rates and if their families were not burdened with interest repayments in excess of $10 billion per annum to pay for the largess that your government has had over the last five years then the families would have a couple of hundred dollars extra a year to pay to go to the dentist. Ever consider that as a policy approach?

The reality is that there are alternatives. This bill is so bereft of detail when it comes to fee-for-services and rebates that it just underscores the complete haste this government has adopted in trying to introduce this bill into the parliament. It is all about pushing it through the parliament even though it does not have the fine detail in there. They have got the announcement and they have got the legislation to back up the announcement even though they do not have the funds and even though the program does not start for at least 13 months.

On every measure this is a step backwards. This is the reason why the coalition remain steadfastly opposed to it. As we indicated through our shadow health spokesman on a number of occasions, we would be very prepared to work with the Labor Party to amend the CDDS so that it had a more focused scope of operations. But no, the Labor Party rejected that point-blank. No doubt we will hear from Labor members about how the coalition is obstructionist, how the coalition is so negative and how the coalition does not want to make a difference. Although, in this instance, once again we see the rank hypocrisy of that because we laid out an opportunity to amend the current scheme. We put before the Labor government an opportunity to change the current scheme to make sure it was better targeted, to make sure we had costs under control to keep it sustainable, but instead Labor said, 'No, we will stop it on 30 November,' and they will start their new program in a year-plus time.

This bill ought to be rejected because it is bad policy. More than that, it is a betrayal of the trust of the Australian people.

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