Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Congratulations to the shadow health minister for the beautifully read speech and congratulations to the person who wrote it. But, in reality, if she actually visited a dental surgery she would know that in this country we are getting little more than a lube and an oil check for those dental checks. That is one of the great challenges with Labor's model. The reality is that Labor's great idea of free dental has banned the use of bridges and other advanced dental techniques that are needed to fix the very teeth that the opposition health spokesperson is talking about. What is the point of having a Labor-designed dental scheme that bans the use of bridges and other important developments, such as crowns, for a child's teeth? How do you look an Aboriginal child in the eye and say, 'We're quite happy to scrape your teeth and to give you a fancy mouthwash and a floss, but if you need a bridge or a crown, sorry, that is not provided by the Commonwealth'? That is patently ridiculous. We need a dental scheme that will look for those with the most serious oral conditions and look after them.

I have already told you this week about Tasmania, where, if you have the effrontery to have a job, you are banned from dental health care. I can see Tasmanian members in this chamber now, and I have visited those cities where a young woman with an entry-level minimum-wage job with a mouth full of oral cavities is told, 'You are not eligible for state Labor support.' That is appalling. I can confirm for those listening in the gallery that our $155 million campaign, the national partnership agreement for dental care, is locked in place for 178,000 Australians. On top of that, there are the $200 million transfers to all states and territories, signed off last November.

We know that there is only one party in here that has an absolute inability to work with private dentists, and it is not this side. We know that there is one side of politics in here that ripped away the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme from those who needed it the most, and it was not this side. Let us be absolutely clear—

See this speech in context