Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

truly public patients in the dental area, you must target low-income workers, the disadvantaged and children who would never be taken to a dentist. Labor's scheme ignored those children. These are the children in all our schools now who do not get taken to a dentist and who need good preventive oral health. Our scheme will allow state governments to deliver exactly that. Those children will be seen before they need a dentist. The scheme will perhaps send a dental van with oral therapists to a school to intervene and train young people who have never seen a toothbrush let alone a dentist.

I cannot emphasise enough that this is a public scheme that will matter to every public dental patient in Australia. It is a scheme that Labor could not get right. Every state government will have twice as much of their current funding locked in and legislated for the long term.

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