Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise this afternoon and comment on the report Bridging the dental gap: report on the inquiry into adult dental services. There is a list of recommendations and information in this report that I do not need to go into. But I would like to comment on some of the things that came out of this report upon the investigation of the committee; in a nutshell, it would probably be the need for cooperation between the federal government and the state governments and private providers to make sure that we have a network of dental services as far across the nation as we can and that we also get the services to where they are needed.

I was very pleased that the committee came to my electorate. Actually, the only hearing that this inquiry held outside Canberra was in Dubbo. What was interesting about our day in Dubbo was that we actually saw some of the issues whereby people are suffering from lack of dental services. We heard great evidence from the Aboriginal Medical Service at Walgett. We heard from the prosthodontist Peter Muller. Peter is very passionate about serving the people of New South Wales. He spoke about the changes since the cessation of the chronic disease scheme and how that has impacted on his clients. He also spoke of his frustration in terms of being able to service those clients as well as he might, and the difficulties that these clients have in funding the treatments. Many of the people he deals with are in a bad way with their general health because of their lack of suitable dentures with which to eat.

The other thing that was of interest to the committee when it came to Dubbo was the work of the Flying Doctor. Their plane, which is affectionately known in the west as the 'tooth fairy', is now delivering dental services right across western New South Wales. It has been a major step forward for the people of the west to have those services delivered, and there is a need for ongoing funding for that service. But probably the highlight of the day was seeing the work Charles Sturt University is doing in its School of Dentistry and Health Services at the Dubbo campus. We were able to see students and dentists working side by side delivering services to members of the community while these students were actually undertaking their training. It is a magnificent facility. It was funded in the last days of the Howard government and constructed in the early days of the Rudd government. Those young dentists are trained in the bush and have a good experience there. They probably have a superior training opportunity because of the ratios of staff to students and the fact that they will probably stay in that area. There is also a private clinic operating from the same facility.

So I do endorse this report. There is a lot of information in there about the relationship between the state and the federal government. This report also touches on the need to elevate the status and responsibility of dental hygienists and raises the possibility of a trial for Medicare provider numbers for hygienists. Certainly I would not like to see, as a stopgap measure, hygienists and dental nurses replacing dentists in country areas. I think that people in the country are entitled to the same level of service as everyone else, but I think that there is an argument to be had for some funding for hygienists to work throughout the school network in a preventative way. There is certainly a lot of scope to improve that.

I thoroughly recommend this report, and I acknowledge the work of the secretariat. This was possibly one of the fastest reports that I think the health and ageing committee has ever undertaken and printed, and hopefully the minister and subsequent ministers in following governments can use this and look at implementing a program that will fill in the gaps and ensure that people right across the country do get the adequate services that they need.

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