John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to a report in the Inner West Courier, published on 15 May 2007, a resident from my electorate of Lowe wondered aloud what thousands of my constituents are asking privately about the state of dental care in Australia. Phil Divola stated:

I cannot understand why senior people in this land where we’re supposed to be of plenty, have to turn around, cap in hand, to get the treatment that we ask for.

Mr Divola’s comments are timely indeed. Thanks to the tax-paying men and women of Australia, including in my electorate of Lowe, this high-taxing federal government is rolling in our money. It is a government that frolics in billions of dollars of budget surpluses, which consist predominantly of money paid to the government by ordinary Australian taxpayers. Yet many of these taxpayers and pensioners, who are doing it tough in this age of high petrol prices, high food prices and high housing prices, still have to turn around, cap in hand, to get the basic necessities, including education, medical treatment and, like Mr Divola, dental treatment. These are basic necessities that we rightly expect from a government rolling around in our money.

One of the first steps undertaken by the Howard government in 1996 was to abolish the very successful Commonwealth dental scheme—a scheme which had helped reduce public dental waiting lists. Now, 11 years later, Australians are paying the price. The facts are simple. A report by the Australian Council of Social Service has identified over 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists. The names on these lists seem to have been etched in stone. Australians have been waiting on these seemingly motionless lists for an average of 27 months. This is completely unacceptable, but it only scratches the surface. The report also identified a further 40 per cent of adults who have gone without dental care because of the prohibitive costs involved. If these facts were not sobering enough, we are facing alarming rises in the levels of tooth decay amongst our children. As the state of our teeth gets poorer, there has been an equal and opposite reaction from the dental care system so that treatment is now less accessible. That is outrageous. What is the minister’s response to all this? The Minister for Health and Ageing is quoted as saying:

The government believes that it has already taken sufficient action in this area.

If the minister is talking about eroding the public dental health system, he is certainly correct. The government has taken sufficient action to erode it. Despite having overarching responsibility for health care and grabbing whatever power it can from the states at every available opportunity, the health minister insists that dental care remains the purview of the states. He has told members of the public time and time again that dental care is the responsibility of the states. Perhaps the minister could take a cursory glance at our Constitution, section 51:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

(xxiiiA.) The provision of maternity allowances, widows’ pensions, child endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services …

Rather than wasting our money on government advertising, I ask the health minister to spend it prudently on matters for which he actually has responsibility, including dental care. Many Australians are often the silent victims of the constant blame shift and feuding between the states and the federal government. We need leadership to be shown in those areas where leadership clearly does not exist. After all the minister’s hot wind and bluster about dental services being a state responsibility, it was pleasing to see money allocated to dental care in the 2007-08 federal budget. But the money has been allocated in such a way that very few people with dental problems will get what they need. Under the government’s initiatives, patients will need to go through the rigmarole of showing (1) they have a condition with complex care needs (2) they have a dental problem which significantly adds to the seriousness of their medical condition and (3) they are receiving care from a GP under a written management plan—all this just to get a tooth fixed!

The government’s Chronic Disease Management program, under which this dental funding will be allocated, is so poorly designed that very few people have used it since its inception in 2004. There is nothing in the government’s budget which will address the crisis in dental care and public dental waiting lists. There is nothing in the budget which will establish preventative dental care services or an education campaign for children and their parents. Rather than wasting millions of our dollars spruiking government’s policies, why doesn’t it launch an advertising campaign on dental care and dental hygiene? The government has sat on its hands for 11 long years. It may sit on them a little longer so that it can make cunning, cynical announcements on dental care in the lead-up to the next federal election. We will never know. I call on the Howard government today to immediately restore the Commonwealth dental scheme. I call on it to immediately invest money into getting people off public dental waiting lists and into a dentist’s chair. Only that way will those on public dental waiting lists be able to eat and talk without discomfort and avoid the more complex health issues that come with untreated dental problems. The government must act today. (Time expired)