Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Getting dental into Medicare for kids is one of the great Greens balance of power achievements. Because we had the Greens in the balance of power in the shared parliament back in 2010, we said that one of the reforms that we need in this country was to get dental into Medicare. It is crazy that dental is not in Medicare. Why is it that if you break your jaw you can get treated on Medicare but if there's a problem with your teeth you can't? We know that so many people around this country have avoided going to the dentist because it is too expensive. Other medical treatments that you can get when you use your Medicare card are in the excellent great Australian Medicare system, but not dental. So, when we were in shared power, when people put the Greens into the balance of power in both houses, we said, 'Let's get dental for kids into Medicare,' and in that parliament we got it. As a result, since this scheme commenced, over three million children in this country have been able to go to the dentist and their parents have been able to pop on the Medicare card at the time of checkout and get dental funded by Medicare.

This isn't just a great health reform; it's actually a social justice issue as well because, if people don't have great teeth, it affects the rest of their life. Think about it. If you have two candidates going for a job sitting in front of you and one of them is without great teeth because they haven't been able to afford to go to the dentist, it affects their job prospects. It doesn't just affect the health of your teeth and your mouth; it affects the rest of your body as well. So many diseases come because people haven't had their teeth looked after. They get problems. They get an infection in the bloodstream and that goes through and affects the rest of their body as well and they end up in hospital. Crazily, if you end up in hospital as a result of a complication that comes from your mouth because you didn't go to the dentist, you can do that hospital visit on the public health system. So wouldn't it make sense to have dental in Medicare from the start to prevent people getting sick as a result of preventable diseases?

For health reasons and for social justice reasons—and for fairness reasons, because it is just too expensive for so many people to go to the dentist and, especially, to take their kids to the dentist—the Greens got dental into Medicare by working with the Independents and Labor in that shared power of parliament, getting a reform that benefited the whole country. But we can't stop there. We've got to get dental into Medicare for everyone. I am very pleased that in this bill what we're doing is extending this scheme that the Greens secured so that young children between the ages of zero and two are now also going to be covered by the Greens scheme. That is terrific. That is really good because, if you start this early, not only are you going to end up with children and adults who have better teeth but, actually, if the economy's your bottom line and the dollar's your bottom line, you are going to relieve a burden on our health system, because there are going to be fewer people with diseases down the line.

It is terrific that the Greens scheme that we secured is now being expanded upon. But what we need to do today, tomorrow and at the next election is get dental into Medicare for everyone so that, just as you use your Medicare card when you go to the doctor, you can use your Medicare card when you go to the dentist. It is affordable to do this not only because we're going to save a lot of money in the long run, because there will be fewer people ending up in hospital, but because it's what happens when you have a country where you make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax.

If we put a tax on billionaires' obscene wealth, we can get dental into Medicare for everyone. We need to do that because the billionaires and big corporations in this country are making out like bandits. Did you know that during the pandemic, while the rest of us were all locked down and over a million people lost their incomes and many other people had to rely on forms of social security, Australian billionaires increased their wealth by a third, mining billionaires more than doubled their wealth and Australia's billionaires grew their wealth during the pandemic faster than billionaires in any other country? They've been making out like bandits, often thanks to this government giving them millions of dollars in JobKeeper payments that they didn't need. One billionaire, with his corporation, took JobKeeper payments from the government and then went and bought a private jet with the millions that he got thanks to this government's largesse.

No, we need to make the billionaires pay tax. The Greens will put a six per cent tax on billionaires' obscene wealth and make the big corporations that are making superprofits pay a superprofits tax as well. Then we can help fund getting dental into Medicare for the rest of the population. Ask most people: do you think it costs too much to go to the dentist? Yes. Do you think it's great that you can use your Medicare card for kids to go to the dentist? Yes, and thanks to the Greens for securing that. Should we get dental into Medicare for everyone else? Yes, we should. Can we afford it? You bet we can, when we make the billionaires and the big corporations pay their fair share of tax.

As I said, this isn't just a social justice issue. We know that it's people on lower incomes who are the ones who aren't going to the dentist as often as they need to, because they simply can't afford it, but it's not just people on low incomes. It's First Nations people. It's people in regional and rural Australia. It's people who live further from the services that they need and can't afford to pay for the increasing cost of going to the dentist. We know it's a social justice issue to get dental into Medicare for everyone else, but as I said, it's also a health issue. It's going to make our country better off when fewer people end up in hospital from preventable diseases.

The good news is that getting dental into Medicare is actually really close. If there were an election held today then, looking at the current polls, we would be on the verge of turfing out this terrible government. This terrible government of climate deniers and turbocharged inequality would be gone. Why would they be gone? Why would we be on the verge of getting dental into Medicare for everyone? It's because they won the last election by only two seats—828 votes. That's all that the Prime Minister is hanging on to majority government by. We can kick them out with a very small shift in the public vote—the polls suggest that's what's going to happen—and put the Greens back into balance of power in both houses of parliament again. We'll finish the job and get dental into Medicare for everyone else, make the billionaires pay their fair share of tax and make Australia a more equal place where everyone can go to the dentist, slap their Medicare card on the reception desk at the end and pay for it as part of our public health system.

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