Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to follow the member for Sydney in this debate. I know that, as minister, she was totally committed to ensuring that all Australians had access to quality dental care. She was totally committed to ensuring that, in Australia, we had proper preventative dental health. It is really sad to see that the reforms that she brought in are being slowly whittled away by a health minister who has absolutely no commitment to dental health for all Australians. This legislation is abrogating responsibility for dentists who did not abide by the regulations at the time. It is not reintroducing the Chronic Dental Health Scheme, because those on the other side of this parliament know that it was a poorly targeted and highly costly scheme. Twenty per cent of the recipients—those who went along and accessed the Chronic Dental Health Scheme—could well and truly afford to pay for the work that they had done.

It was a scheme that was fraught with problems. There were pensioners on low incomes that actually had problems being able to access the scheme. It was very bureaucratic, and, to some extent, I do understand how dentists could have inadvertently breached the guidelines. When you are looking at dental health and the major dental health initiative being introduced by this Minister for Health, you find it is a measure that will allow those who breached the guidelines of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme to be absolved from having to pay back the money that they obtained from the government by not correctly following the guidelines.

I want to place on record the need for the government to recognise the importance of dental health to a person's overall health. It has been a traditional approach by those on the other side of this House that wherever they can they abrogate any Commonwealth responsibility for dental health. Dental health is part of a person's overall health and the government needs to learn this, the minister needs to learn this. It really worries me when each and every day we come into this place and we hear about another cut and another attack on our health system.

I strongly argue that the best dental health programs are those that prevent dental health problems, programs like the Child Dental Benefits Scheme, a program that this minister has put on notice, a program that will prevent dental health problems for children into the future. When they are adults, it will reduce the cost to the health system into the future. But this minister does not get it. He does not understand the importance of the Child Dental Benefits Scheme. It shows that he does not understand the issue, unlike the previous Minister for Health, the member for Sydney, who spoke before me in this debate.

When the member for Sydney was the health minister, I was chair of the Committee on Health and Ageing. She asked the committee to do an inquiry into dental health services and the committee brought down a unanimous report, Bridging the dental health gap. When we spoke to the Department of Health during that inquiry, they acknowledged that the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme provided worthy dental services to some persons. It did. I can identify some people in my electorate who were definitely helped by the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, but it was poorly targeted and had a range of problems with its implementation and administrative requirements. That can be seen partially by the fact that we are here today debating legislation about dental health that will abrogate the responsibility of those dentists who breached the guidelines.

The Chronic Disease Dental Scheme failed the people of Australia and now we have a government that has already ripped $400 million out of dental health and I believe is set to rip more out, instead of making a commitment to the long-term reforms that were put in place under the previous government when the member for Sydney, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, was the Minister for Health. I might go through some of the things that were included in that package: $2.7 billion over six years in the Child Dental Benefits Scheme. That is under threat. The minister signalled it is under threat.

I would like the minister in his summing up to guarantee this House that he will not touch the Child Dental Benefits Scheme, acknowledge in his speech the importance of preventative dental health. I do not think you could have a better targeted program than the Child Dental Benefits Scheme.

There will be $1.3 billion over four years from the national dental partnership. One of the first acts of the Howard government was to rip money out of dental health. Here we are again in this House with a minister that is hell-bent on ensuring that he rips money out of dental health—$400 million already and I am sure that is only a signal of things to come. Previously, the Howard government put money into private health insurance as opposed to putting money into delivering direct dental health services to Australian people.

There will be $225 million over four years from the flexible grants for dental infrastructure in outer metropolitan, rural and regional areas. That was designed to reduce barriers to accessing dental services for people living in those areas. The Committee on Heath and Ageing that I chaired went out to many areas, to rural New South Wales to the electorate of Parkes. When we went to that electorate, we saw how important it is to make sure that those communities had access to dental health services, that those communities had access to dentists. There were $77.7 million for the Dental Relocation and Infrastructure Support Scheme to help doctors relocate into regional and remote areas. The fact that the government is walking away from these initiatives shows their total lack of commitment to dental health.

In relation to the report, I would like to note the assistance and the advice that the committee had from the Department of Health. I know that they were very instrumental in helping the previous minister develop much of that scheme. It is really very sad that we are going to be in a situation in future where things like money to alleviate pressure on public dental health waiting lists will be gone, watered down or reduced, that the capacity to expand the workforce will be gone, watered down or made totally ineffective, that oral health protection activities and the pro bono dental service provision money—all these things are under threat because of this government's actions.

The bill creates a waiver provision for the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. It makes a number of amendments to the operation of the child dental benefits scheme. It really demonstrates just how poorly targeted that scheme was, how it failed to address problems in the dental scheme, how public waiting lists, infrastructure, workforce distribution and child dental health suffered. These were issues that the then Minister for Health, the now Prime Minister ignored. These were issues that he failed to address. This Minister for Health is moving to where the Prime Minister was when he was the health minister, ignoring the needs of all Australians, ignoring the need to put in place strong, preventive programs. As I said earlier, I am waiting to hear his reply in which I hope he will give a rolled gold, iron clad commitment that he will, under no circumstance, do anything to whittle away the child dental benefits scheme.

It is so different from the vision that Labor had for dental health when we were in government. We had a vision to implement a better and fairer dental care system for Australians, one that is affordable and focuses on prevention in order to deliver future improvement to Australians' oral health. It is about cutting dental healthcare costs in the future. That is the vision we had when we were in government. This minister and this government have a vision to allow those dentists who were trapped by the unworkable bureaucratic scheme—the child dental benefits scheme, which was put in place when the Prime Minister was the Minister for Health—to abrogate the responsibility to pay their debts.

In the calendar year 2013, over 200,000 public dental patients received treatment because Labor funded public dental health waiting lists. We had a blitz on those dental health waiting lists. I can see that under this government we are returning to the same old approach to dental health—ignore it. There is a failure to acknowledge that dental health is important for the overall health of the person. I call on the minister to make a commitment that dental health will be adequately funded in Australia.

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