Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Two issues have been of great concern to me over a long period of time. One is the shortage of aged-care beds and the other is the number of people on dental waiting lists. I thought I would share with the House some of the figures from the Hunter region, which takes in part of the Shortland electorate. As we all know, there are 650,000 people currently on dental waiting lists, which will be rectified by the Rudd government.

In 1996, when the Howard government closed the Commonwealth Dental Health Program, I was the state member for Swansea and I was able to see firsthand how that impacted on all those people who were on the dental waiting list. Prior to the removal of that program, no-one came to see me, in my capacity as the state minister, to complain that they could not get dental treatment. But overnight people moved from being able to get the dental care they needed to having to wait. That list of 650,000 was the legacy that was left to the people of Australia.

In the Hunter currently there are a number of people who are waiting for dental treatment. Under code 3c, which is quite a high level of need and deals with people in extreme pain who need to be seen immediately, there are currently 75 people waiting. There are 108 people waiting under code 4. There are nearly 2,000 people—1,739—waiting under code 5. There are 1,348 people waiting under code 6. Under code D there are 11 waiting and under code E there are 3,838. I might seek to table a copy of that.

In addition to that, looking at aged care, there are 32 people who are waiting for aged-care beds in the Hunter region at the moment. Of those, 12 are taking up acute care beds. I welcome the fact that Labor will deal with this with its 2,000 transitional beds—$158 million over five years—and the 2,500 permanent beds that will be created by the $300 million loan that will be given to residential care providers at a zero real interest rate. (Time expired)