Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

In Mr Turnbull's very first economic statement, he went after cancer patients and patients with chronic disease. Now, in his very first budget, as confirmed here at question time, he is after kids' teeth. There is quite literally no group of Australians, no matter how weak, no matter how poor, no matter how sick, that this Prime Minister will not attack when it comes to health funding. Why? Because the Prime Minister who promised so much is so weak that he cannot even consider serious tax reform, and he is forced by the extremists in his party and the Nationals to once again attack the weak, attack the sick and attack the poor by now attacking kids dental care.

Just when you thought that, after $60 billion in health cuts in their first two years—including a $57 billion cut from hospitals, which has been confirmed by Treasury; the GP tax; and prescription price hikes—they could not possibly get any worse, Mr Turnbull showed that, when it came to health cuts, Tony Abbott was a wimp. He went where even the former Prime Minister refused to go. In his very first economic statement, he attacked cancer patients and others with chronic conditions with his $650 million of cuts to bulk-billing incentives for pathology and diagnostic imaging. Now driven by the extremists in the Liberal and National parties, he is going to use his very first budget, as confirmed in question time today, to attack the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.

Labor's $2.7 billion dental program has provided one million Australian children with affordable dental care over the past two years. Many of these are children whose parents have never previously been able to afford dental care for their kids. Labor initiated the scheme, following alarming reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that 42 per cent of five-year-olds and 61 per cent of nine-year-olds had experienced decay in their baby teeth and 58 per cent of 14-year-olds had experienced permanent tooth decay. More than half of all Australian teenagers have permanent tooth decay. Why? Because in many cases their families could not afford to go to see a dentist. This was a shameful outcome in a country as wealthy as Australia, with a health system that in all other respects is the envy of the world.

So, in our 2013 budget, we announced a scheme to provide eligible children with up to $1,000 in dental treatment every two years to ensure that their teeth get checked and they do not suffer these terrible dental problems later in life. It has been an outstanding success. That is not my description; that is the verdict of this government's own health department. In its report released earlier this month—which, for some strange reason, the government has never sought to publicise and never put out a press release about!—it said:

In particular, the Panel noted the success of the CDBS—

the Child Dental Benefits Schedule—

in targeting the oral health of young Australians at an age where preventative measures can be most effective. It supported the right of every child to access dental treatment from both the private and the public sectors. The Panel agreed that it would make clear recommendations to Government to ensure the ongoing success and effectiveness of the CDBS.

However, the report did have some criticisms to make—not of Labor's scheme but of this wretched government that has sought to undermine the scheme by in fact hiding it from parents.

Think of all the times in the last few weeks you have seen a TV ad for the Prime Minister's catchphrase. Think of how many times you have seen that on a bus shelter and think of all those millions of dollars wasted on promoting a meaningless phrase by a Prime Minister who has proven to be anything but agile and innovative, let alone exciting. How many times do you think the Child Dental Benefits Schedule has been promoted on television or bus shelters anywhere in this country? Not once. How many times do you think the kids dental scheme has featured anywhere in this government's advertising program? Frankly, not once.

In fact, in the entire time it has been in existence under this government, it has been promoted in a single mail-out to family tax benefit recipients. No wonder that, when the government's review made 10 recommendations to improve the scheme, five of them—that is right; half of the recommendations—were telling the government to do more to promote it. Here again, I quote from the panel's report:

The Panel agreed that the CDBS has been poorly promoted, and noted that the current eligibility notification did not provide readily recognisable advice of an entitlement.

The plot here is so transparent it would have been knocked back by a reality TV program. They refuse to publicise the scheme; then they claim that it has not met the target because no-one knows about it; and then, when their own department says it is a success, helps a million kids and should be promoted more, they bury the report.

I am here today to tell every single member on the government benches that, if you thought the backlash in terms of the GP tax was a bit too hot for you to handle, what do you think is going to happen now with every single dentist in the country rallying behind this scheme and telling their patients? What do you think is going to happen? I have to feel a bit sorry for the backbench because they probably only found out about this happening in the same way the dentists did: they saw stories in the newspapers saying that this scheme was for the axe.

You would think that the backbench, after the GP tax, after the hammering they are getting on pathology and diagnostic imagery, after the cuts to hospitals, after seeing all of this month after month and after seeing that they are going to privatise Medicare payments in Western Australia—the paper up there has that front and centre—would be going to the health minister and saying, 'What are you doing? Having been hammered so much on health, having undermined Medicare and made it such an election negative, why on earth would you go after the Child Dental Benefits Schedule in the months leading up to an election campaign? Are you absolutely crazy?'

If you were a backbencher on the government side you would be shaking your head about why on earth they would go after this scheme. If you come for this program, which is providing, for the first time, affordable dental care for hundreds of thousands of kids, Labor will again stand in your way and we will have millions of parents standing there with us.

This is far from an isolated attack on dental care by this government. In its very first budget, the government ripped $390 million out of dental programs. There are more than 400,000 Australians today on public dental waiting lists, waiting to get their teeth fixed. In the 12 months prior to the Liberal government's first budget, those waiting lists started to fall significantly as a result of Labor's investment in public dental. That means thousands of people getting their teeth fixed and thousands of people no longer in pain—able to eat, talk properly and have good oral health—until this government came along and slashed that funding. What a joke!

We had the Prime Minister here saying, 'We want to support public dental better by cutting the successful child dental benefit scheme,' after slashing the public dental scheme and increasing waiting times on public dental. Really, you have got to be kidding! Then those opposite ripped some $225 million from Labor's programs to build dental clinics in regional Australia and in nursing homes. The Liberals and Nationals, who claim to represent regional communities, ripped money out of Labor programs to improve dental care in regional Australia. Because too many health cuts are never enough for the government, they backed that up again in the 2015 budget by ripping another $125.6 million from the Child Dental Benefit Schedule itself.

Now, once again, the government has the teeth of Australia's kids in its sights, confirming yet again that the Liberals only ever see health as a source for budget cuts. This confirms that after just six months on the job the member for Wentworth has been even more of a disaster for the health of Australians than the member for Warringah. He took Tony Abbott's $57 billion of cuts to hospitals and entrenched them in the budget. He took Tony Abbott's GP tax and added another $2.1 billion of his own in cuts to primary care. He has gutted crucial health workforce training programs by $595 million and ripped another $146 million out of prevention. Now we hear that he wants to come after the Child Dental Benefits Schedule program. We will stand in his way. Only Labor cares about the health of Australians. Only Labor cares about Medicare. Only Labor will defend, strengthen and protect it.

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