Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House of Representatives) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I am very pleased to speak on this bill. I thank the member for Ballarat for having moved an amendment to the second reading on my behalf.

We are, as other speakers from the opposition have indicated, supporting this Dental Benefits Amendment Bill 2021. It's an important extension to a great Labor legacy—a legacy which, over the course of the eight long years of this government, has been threatened repeatedly by a Liberal Party that has never supported this reform fully. And that's of a type with this government, that for years and years and years fought the Labor Party in its introduction of Medibank and then Medicare.

This reform, under the Gillard government and led by the member for Sydney, who was then the health minister, was a great reform, and it's delivering great health outcomes to millions of children and teenagers across Australia. It was a reform that was introduced after solid, evidence based consideration by the Dental Advisory Group that was chaired by the formidable former public servant Mary Murnane. And that came on the back of some very disturbing evidence from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare—that great institution, the AIHW—which showed that as many as 42 per cent of five-year-olds had decay in their baby teeth, as many as 61 per cent of nine-year-olds had decay in their baby teeth and, in a permanent feature of poor oral health, as many as 58 per cent of 14 year-olds had decay in their adult teeth, something that would continue to dog them for the remainder of their lives.

We know that systemic support for dental care has been patchy across Australia. Medicare does not cover dental services, as is well understood by all members of this House. So really, in order to have a guarantee of access to dental care that you don't pay for out of your pocket, you need private health insurance, which is expensive and which is not financially available to many low-income families in Australia. Public dental schemes, including school dental schemes, have been patchy over the last couple of decades and so a number of recommendations were made to the Gillard government—particularly to the member for Sydney, who was the Minister for Health and Ageing at the time—to establish one of a range of options to ensure that children and teenagers would be set up for good oral health over the course of their lives.

That gave rise to the birth of the Child Dental Benefits Scheme. In August 2012 the Gillard government introduced that reform package to the Australian people. A key part of that package was this benefits scheme, which ensures that children of families who receive one of a range of benefits—particularly FTB, or family tax benefit part A, but also the parenting payment, the double orphan pension, the carer payment or other benefits—do have access to what was a thousand dollars of government funded dental services over a two-year period. That has been indexed recently by the government to $1,013 over the course of two years. That covers a little bit more than one half of all children and teenagers in Australia. One half of children are from families who receive one of those eligible payments and more than 70 per cent of Indigenous children and teenagers in Australia have access to this great scheme. It's a scheme that has shown its worth; it has delivered almost 40 million services over its short life of less than a decade to over three million Australian children and teenagers. That's something of which the Labor Party is enduringly proud, and the member for Sydney should be proud in particular.

It's important to note, though, that although we welcome this bill, the fact that the Child Dental Benefits Scheme remains in place is a great tribute to the efforts of the member for Ballarat and others in the Labor Party who have fought repeated attempts by this government over their eight long years to abolish or to cut the scheme. We know that under Prime Minister Turnbull, when the current Prime Minister was the Treasurer, they intended to cut the scheme entirely. That was fought by the Labor opposition, led by the member for Ballarat, who was the shadow minister for health and ageing at the time. Great credit to her and the Labor team; they fought off that original intention by Prime Minister Turnbull and the current Prime Minister, who was Treasurer at the time, to abolish the scheme.

But they weren't to be deterred entirely, because then they brought before the parliament a proposal to cut by 30 per cent the payments which would be received by children and teenagers under the scheme. So, instead of $1,000 of services available to children and teenagers over the course of the two-year period, it was proposed by the current Prime Minister, who was then Treasurer at the time in 2016, that they would only receive $700. It was a cut that would impact about 20 per cent of the children and teenagers who were receiving such extraordinarily important dental services under this scheme. Again, can I pay tribute to the member for Ballarat for having fought that cut and having defeated it.

Finally, the current Prime Minister, who was then the Treasurer, withdrew that cruel, insidious cut—on the eve of it being defeated, frankly—in the Senate, through a motion of disallowance that would have put the thing to bed anyway. We're glad they've finally seen the light and haven't, for three years at least, tried to abolish or cut this scheme. That is important and, again, just shows how important it is for the Labor Party to keep pushing these schemes, because the Liberal Party have never been comfortable with Medicare, and they've never been comfortable with this scheme, which is providing such great dental health benefits to our children and our teenagers.

To the credit of the current Minister for Health and Aged Care, though, he has undertaken a review of the scheme, and that review has come up with, I think, a very constructive suggestion, which is to lower the eligibility age threshold from two years down to one year of age, recognising that good dental health can start earlier than a second birthday. Those statistics I talked about earlier from the AIHW about the levels of childhood baby tooth decay at five years of age demonstrate that you can never start too early on ensuring that our children have good oral health. The review recommended, as I understand it, that the eligibility age be reduced from two years to one year. The government, after discussing this review recommendation with stakeholders, has taken their view onboard that it would simply be better to remove the lower age threshold altogether, so that babies, provided they meet the eligibility threshold by way of government benefit, would have access to this scheme from birth. We see this as a welcome extension of a great scheme, and we are very happy to support this bill.

See this speech in context