Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's an honour to be able to follow in this debate my friend and colleague the member for Dobell. She has vast experience in this area as a clinician and a pharmacist and in public health. She has enormous knowledge and insights that are of great use to this parliament in our decision-making. So thank you to the member for Dobell.

I've listened carefully to a number of the contributions this morning. Whilst many of my colleagues before me began speeches with some of the trauma experienced as a child in those trips to the dentist, that's never, fortunately, been an experience for me. Indeed, I think the only thing that really gives me great fear is always trying to remain one step ahead of the consecutive coalition governments that have sought to unpick universal health care in Australia.

It is baffling to many of my constituents that oral health was somehow seen to be completely detached from the entire body health and therefore was never part of the original attempts in Australia, in those early days of getting universal health together, to include it in Medibank, which then transformed into Medicare. Notwithstanding the fact that this bill is a step in the right direction—that's why Labor are going to be supporting the bill, although I will be standing to speak in favour of the amendment—we can never ever take for granted in this country that universal health care is not going to be steadily eroded. Indeed, every coalition government to date has sought to unpick the universality of Medicare. I was elected to this parliament in 2013, and I remember very well the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott's efforts. He implemented the Medicare freeze. He extended that Medicare freeze, and it has been ongoing over the last eight years, making it extremely tough for GPs to make ends meet in terms of the cost of managing practices these days. He also introduced a proposal for the co-payment. At one point it was going to be $7 and then it was going to be $5. We were successful in stopping that from happening. Labor joined with the community at large in their outrage that such a proposal would be brought to the Australian parliament.

The reality is that people are actually making much larger co-payments today, even though that legislation was defeated. By stealth, the government is chipping away and extending those Medicare freezes. People are paying enormous amounts of money to access quality health care in Australia—and that is not okay. The member for Dobell spoke about the lack of access to GPs in her region. This was made much worse by this government today. I'm not talking about the historical matters in terms of ongoing attacks to Medicare; this is happening right now. My electorate of Newcastle was one of 14 areas nationally that were targeted by the Morrison government to remove bulk-billing incentive payments. It was astonishing, in my view, that the Prime Minister started last year, 2020, the year of the massive global pandemic, with a fresh round of cuts to Medicare bulk-billing. The loss of that incentive payment is estimated to have cost Newcastle and the Hunter region some $7 million. Doctors were talking to me about having to make really significant decisions as to whether they could keep their doors open. We lost GPs as a result of that, and GPs' surgeries closed their doors. This was at the same time as our community was trying to deal with a pandemic, which, as you can appreciate, caused enormous pressures for GPs.

Those comments about the ongoing attacks on universal health care by coalition governments go to the amendment moved to this bill. The government has to do much more to address not just dental services but access to other health services. That includes access to general practice, as I have just discussed, in outer metro, regional and rural areas. It is terrific that Labor has been successful in getting a Senate inquiry into those matters. As the member for Dobell and other members have said, out-of-pocket expenses are unaffordable for some Australian families. Very few GPs in the city of Newcastle bulk-bill anymore. It is extremely rare to find a bulk-billing doctor. If you do, I suggest that you hang on to them for dear life because they are few and far between. Those out-of-pocket expenses are now forcing families to make really significant decisions. I've had mothers talk to me about the fact that they're making choices when they have to take several children, perhaps, to the doctor. Mothers are having to do without things in order to ensure that the children are able to have good health care and their medications are paid for. Some are having to make decisions about whether school excursions take place or prescriptions get filled. That is a terrible state of affairs. The history of Medicare is that it was born out of the fact that so many Australians were forced into bankruptcy in order to pay their medical bills, particularly hospital or surgical costs. That's why Labor worked so hard over so many decades to ensure that we would have a top-quality universal healthcare system and it's why Labor will fight tooth and nail every day to protect Medicare. We created Medicare and we will always fight to defend and protect Medicare.

This expansion of Labor's Child Dental Benefits Schedule is a great initiative. It has been long in the making, I would suggest. Opening up the scheme to make children from birth through to two years of age eligible is a good thing. We know that. The outcome of the fourth review of the Dental Benefits Act was tabled here in parliament on 23 July 2019—two years ago. It recommended lowering the eligibility age to one. I am pleased that the government, in this bill, has gone beyond what the review recommended because feedback from all of the stakeholder groups made very clear that we might as well bring the eligibility age to zero, to birth. Stakeholder groups said that that would make better sense and would be a better outcome in terms of equity. I welcome the government's acceptance of that stakeholder feedback in the review by removing the lower eligibility age restriction altogether. There's no need for that restriction anymore. Its removal will enable all children under the age of 18 to access the scheme if they meet the Child Dental Benefits Scheme means test requirements.

I know that all of us on this side of the House think that is a very welcome move. By lowering that eligibility age restriction, it's estimated that an additional 300,000 children aged between zero and two will become eligible for this program each year. This will kick in on 1 January next year, and it is estimated that 15 per cent of children in this newly eligible age group will access the scheme every year. That is a good thing because we know how important oral health is for the health and wellbeing of us all. If children have an introduction to dentists that is not traumatic, that is a good thing. Children having more opportunities to engage with oral hygienists and dentists, whether in their school communities or in private practices, should be applauded. It is socialising children to dentistry and helping them to overcome their fear and trauma.

The pain and distress that comes with any kind of dental issue is so horrible. You only have to cast your mind to the last time you had any kind of dental incident. You would almost do anything to have that tooth pain, abscess or gum disorder—whatever it might be—dealt with as a matter of great urgency. I'm very fortunate that I haven't been in excruciating pain when it comes to my dental work. I have a fabulous dentist who has been religious in seeing to my dental health every six months for many more years than I care to remember. He has instilled in me a very strong sense of the need to have regular oral health checks. I've got to say that the whole new profession of oral hygiene, which I don't recall as a child, where you now get to see a hygienist before you get anywhere near the dentist, is also a great addition.

But these are expensive services to access if you don't have a reasonable income or don't have private health care. I'd have to say that in my part of the world many people are choosing not to take private health care right now. They are not seeing value for their dollars. But they do want strong universal health care in Australia. I will certainly back them on that on every occasion.

I realise that this might be the last time I get to speak in parliament for a period of time—I'm not sure. The city of Newcastle is in lockdown and the ACT is going into lockdown at 5 pm this evening. It's an uncertain time. I want to give a big shout-out to my community in Newcastle. I know that there's a lot of anxiety in the community. There's a lot of really deep frustration and anger that the lockdown hasn't been as effective as we might like it to be. I have pharmacists at Doc's MegaSave Chemist trying desperately, having been approved but still not being able to get across the final hurdle, to be able to give out AstraZeneca vaccines. I've taken this issue up with Minister Hunt to try to get this expedited. Having had all the Pfizer vaccines from our community stolen to send to Sydney last week, which we're now desperately trying to bring back, it seems crazy that we're struggling to even get AstraZeneca out there. It's not good enough and I ask the minister to help.

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