Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I start with a confession: I hated brushing my teeth as a child. But my parents made me do it, and I am very thankful to them for that. In fact, they generously spent quite a bit of money on orthodontics for me and my siblings. We also had the benefit of the school based dentist program—not at my school but one of the other local schools—that we were able to access. This was a good thing, and not just for my dental hygiene, because both of my in-laws are in dentistry. My father-in-law is an orthodontist and my mother-in-law is a dental hygienist; and now my wife's uncle is also my dentist, and his wife is a dental hygienist. I think my wife's uncle takes a sinister delight in my visits to see him as my dentist! I'm quite clear that, if my dental hygiene had not been so good, I'm sure I would have been struck off as soon as I started dating Annabelle.

The importance of good oral hygiene and dental health is much more than that. In fact, it is very much overlooked by so many in our community, and often even health experts. The reality is that dental ill health can lead to so many other health conditions that getting this right is of vital importance, and getting it right in the early years makes a critical difference to so many people's overall health outcomes. We have moved ahead in leaps and bounds in this area over the last few decades. I only need to think back to my grandparents, who didn't have their own teeth for most of the time that I knew them. It was quite a scary thing to find teeth in a glass next to their bed or to see them able to take them out; we shouldn't forget that as a demonstration of how much we have moved but, still, how far we have to go. It would be a brave member of this parliament who would ever disagree with something that the member for Macarthur said when it comes to health policy, and certainly, from my point of view, I echo his calls that it would be to the benefit of this entire nation if at some point we can find a way to see dental care covered as part of the Medicare program.

Looking at child dental health, I will admit as a parent that getting my son, now five, to brush his teeth on a regular basis, twice a day, is an uphill battle, but it's one that my wife and I take on because we know the importance of not only ensuring that he has good dental health but also instilling that habit to make sure that he will look after his own dental hygiene as he grows up.

To be fair, I've never met anyone who says to me that they love going to the dentist, and that's not saying anything bad about dentists. But people do tend to be scared of it, and sometimes that fear comes at an early age, or even, more often, they're not really sure because they don't have a regular experience of going to the dentist. They think about how it's a bit scary, it's invasive, it can be noisy, and there are strange things going into your mouth. You're not really sure what's going on, because you can't see what the dentist is doing. And sometimes that dentist likes to ask you a lot of questions when you're in no position to answer them!

But going to the dentist is vital, and practising good dental hygiene is a vital life skill, and teaching children is a vital parenting skill. Parents need to be teaching their children from the get-go, before a baby's teeth have even started coming through. It's never too early to be teaching good oral hygiene to our children, and these are behaviours that, once learnt, will stick with them throughout their lives and lead to them having not just better dental and oral hygiene outcomes but better overall health outcomes. The simple fact is that some parents don't actually know how to look after their kids' teeth, especially when kids are at a young age, and the cost, or at least the perceived cost, of going to a dentist does come across as being quite prohibitive.

The bill before us today expands eligibility for Labor's child dental benefits scheme by removing the lower age limit and opening up the Child Dental Benefits Schedule from two to 17 years of age to all children under 18, which means that kids, from infancy, will be getting access to the best possible oral health care. The thought behind making the scheme available to children from infancy is also to encourage positive dental experiences for both kids and parents—for kids to learn how to look after their teeth properly and for parents to learn how to help. If parents promote proactive and positive oral hygiene habits with their children from a young age, they will help prevent more serious dental decay in the children's baby and adult teeth as they develop. It's vital to instil these good dental hygiene practices in children at an early age to curb the stigma around dental practitioners and oral hygienists. This is only reinforced if a child requires serious treatment or intervention at a young age.

Yes, this bill will cost the taxpayer dollars, but oral health is one of the early indicators of other medical issues. Through early intervention, our national health system will ultimately be making savings by ensuring it can address these dental health issues as early as possible. Nationally, children's oral health really isn't that great. Here in WA, kids under the age of 10 have an average of 1.4 teeth missing, filled or affected by decay. We're talking about baby teeth. Kids between the ages of six and 14, with their permanent teeth, have an average of half a tooth missing, filled or affected by decay. These are teeth that are supposed to last for life. It's simply not good enough. So the changes in this bill will enable parents to get their kids to the dentist as early as needed and encourage a life of good dental health, which also means better overall health for the rest of their lives.

We need to be doing everything that we can to encourage good oral health in Aussie kids from the very beginning, for all those reasons, as well as the very core reason for me—having married into a family of dentists and having an even deeper understanding of the vital importance of good oral and dental hygiene and the overall health outcomes that come from having good oral and dental health and learning and instilling those good habits early. I commend this bill to the House.

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