Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 29 August, Labor and the Greens announced the closure of the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. It was proposed for 30 November but had a closure date of 7 September, only a couple of weeks ago. It has been a devastating blow in this country to people with chronic disease who need dental services. This was the only dental scheme for adults that provided treatment under Medicare. A dental benefits schedule for children is due to commence in January 2014. That is the subject of this debate. A national partnership agreement for adult dental services that will provide payments to the states and territories, the government claims, will start in July 2014.

There are a number of points to make in relation to this. The coalition's position, firstly, is that we support further investment in dental care not just for children but also for people who are suffering from chronic diseases. Under the old scheme, they would have been referred immediately to a dentist, to relieve some of that pain and to put them on a more sustainable path. A significant part of our concern in what the government proposes is that there will be a gap of up to 19 months between the closure of this Chronic Disease Dental Scheme on 30 November and when the new scheme for adults starts in July 2014.

The existing scheme has provided up to $4,250 in Medicare dental benefits over a two-year period for eligible patients with a chronic health condition. Patients who presented to a general practitioner required a referral from that GP to a dentist and the work was then performed to the satisfaction of the patient. There has been a significant cost in this program, largely because of the huge underlying demand for dental services in our community. The government has made much of the expense under this program but it is important to remember that over 20 million services have been provided, to over a million patients, over the course of the last five years. That says to all Australians that there is a demand and that demand, in part, has been met. We know that the Labor Party sought to destroy the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, not because of a lack of demand, considering that 20 million services have been conducted, but simply because they want to discredit and trash a scheme that was set up by Tony Abbott.

The Australian public might ask themselves: 'Who is Tony Abbott and what is Tony Abbott about?' Tony Abbott was the architect of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. It provides about $1 billion a year to people in desperate need of dental services. He was the architect of this scheme. He was the person who decided that these 20 million services needed to be provided to over a million Australians, because he wanted to see an end to their suffering of dental conditions. That is why the scheme has been a success. It is for that single reason—that Tony Abbott was the architect of the scheme—not that there is no demand or that the scheme was not justified, that this government has sought to close it down.

Despite the overblown claims by this government, the average claim under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, according to the department, was not $4,250 but $1,716. Recent estimates suggest that this figure has fallen even more, down to $1,200 per patient. Eighty per cent of people using the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme have a concession card. The government has tried to paint this as some sort of playground for the rich, for people who can access services under the universal Medicare scheme that we have for conditions relating to the rest of the body. They claim that the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme has been a rip-off because it has applied the same universal scheme as we have operating under Medicare. That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the targeting of the scheme, given that 80 per cent of the services were not provided to people of significant means; they were provided to people who held a concession card.

This government has an ideological and continuing attack on people they deem to be rich—that is, people with an earning capacity of over $70,000 or $80,000 a year. It determines these people are not worthy of support. Yes, those people have accessed this scheme, but only two in 10 of those who have received services in this scheme have been people other than those who hold a concession card. It would have cost more in the administration of this scheme to exclude that 20 per cent than it did to allow them to receive these services. That, to me, says a lot about what this government is embarking upon. Many of those people would have otherwise been forced to go without treatment or they would have been added to public dental waiting lists that already have 650,000 people on them. Consider that point for a moment.

Eighty per cent of those who accessed support under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme had a concession card. Had Tony Abbott's scheme not been in place, those people—the 800,000 or so who accessed support under this scheme—would have joined the 650,000 who languish on waiting lists this very day. The government says that there is no need for the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme or that somehow it is the playground of the rich or that somehow it is justified to close this scheme. But it would keep a 19-month gap between now and when people can access a scheme—although it would not be as generous as the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. Look to the facts, not to the spin, of what this Labor government provides.

It is estimated, on available information, that 16 million services have been provided to patients with concession cards through the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. Some patients will not be able to complete treatment when the closure is due to occur on 30 November. It may be a cancer patient who is part-way through treatment for their condition—and I will come to a very, very important example in a moment. Consider that this government in its design of this legislation has not even taken into consideration cancer patients or people suffering from chronic disease who may be part-way through treatment. They will suffer under what Labor proposes in its new arrangement and in the closure of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. They are patients who cannot afford the full cost of private care and they will not receive treatment for 19 months under what the government is proposing before this House today.

I spoke before of an example, and I want to bring the House's attention to a very, very serious case of a constituent of mine by the name of Mr Wayne Whitehead, who recently contacted me. I think his circumstances deserve recognition in this parliament. This is a man who is suffering and is in significant pain. He will suffer more when the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme closes. This government may be full of good intent but it does not have the capacity to deliver on programs—as we have seen, day after day, over the course of the last five years—and this is just the latest example. Mr Whitehead could well represent thousands of patients around the country in these circumstances. His own circumstances are that he has battled with throat cancer. Due to damage from radiation treatment he is unable to produce saliva or open his jaw normally. He needs frequent dental care and intensive and regular fluoride treatment. Mr Whitehead has been advised that an extraction will require major surgery in a hospital followed by specialised and expensive medical care. The cost of the procedure would be substantial, at about $55,000 for such an extraction and subsequent treatment. Mr Whitehead is on a disability support pension and he says:

… due to my ill health and the cost of daily treatment 3 monthly dental visits for regular check-ups would be prohibitive.

The minister and the Greens in concert need to explain why Mr Whitehead and countless others have to go through the stress and suffering caused by the gap between the closure of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme and the 2014 delivery of their proposals.

This legislation does not commence until 1 January 2014—bearing in mind that this relates to children. The bill makes very minor amendments to the Dental Benefits Act 2008, only changing the eligibility age of the current Medicare Teen Dental Plan from 12 to 17 years to two to 17 years. It does make other minor terminology changes to provide for a change from the Medicare Teen Dental Plan to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. The schedule of service fees and details of how the scheme will be funded are still not available. The government is rushing this bill through the parliament without having this detail, even though it does not commence for well over a year—in fact, after the next election.

The minister has acknowledged that services for most children will cost less than the proposed $1,000 cap—at least that is what the government modelling is telling them. Some children will require more services, and there is no provision to ensure they continue to receive adequate treatment, especially in the period before this bill commences. Available data suggests that well over 60,000 services have been provided to children under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, and it comes to an end on 30 November. Many children who are sick and suffering from chronic disease will suffer in pain during the 13-month gap before 1 January 2014 when services will be available to them, but at a much lower cap than the $4,250 available to them under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. These are children who are in the midst of treatment, who will not be able to have their treatment completed by 30 November. What does the minister or this Prime Minister say to those people, to those families, who have children suffering with severe pain? These are kids who had access under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme but cannot get access under this scheme. Why are they put in that position?

I bring you back to my earlier point, Mr Deputy Speaker, and that is that the government's intent to close the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was not about making it easier or making dental services more accessible for children and for adults; it was about making a political point because they want to be able to say at the next election, 'We closed down Tony Abbott's Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, and here we are champions of the new scheme that we have designed in concert with the Greens.' I say that Australians should see through what is completely and utterly a contemptuous act by a government desperate to return themselves to some sort of respectability in the polls.

This decision has not taken into consideration those sick children who have received treatments under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme—60,000 of them. We are not talking about one or two cases where assistance may be able to be provided. What do people do, what do families do, over the course of the next 13 months? For many of them, if they are in desperate situations, as obviously many of them are, they can only access treatment through what is an already overburdened public system where 650,000 people wait and languish to receive those services.

This Prime Minister and this minister need to explain to the Australian people what happens in those individual cases over the course of the next 13 months where kids are suffering, some of in silence but many of them not. I would say to those families: contact your local Labor member of parliament and contact your local Labor senator and say to those people, 'Why is it that your government is removing much needed assistance for my child? Why is it that this government has decided to close down the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme and not to start anything in its place?'

That is why yesterday, on behalf of Tony Abbott and the coalition, I announced that we would move to disallow the government's procedure in this parliament to close down the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, so that people can at least get support under that scheme or something similar in the intervening period—which is 13 months if they are children and 19 months if they are adults—until the government's new scheme can commence. That is the very least that this government could provide to people and children who are suffering from dental pain. That is what we need to ask of this government and it is the very least that it can provide to those people.

There are a couple of other points that need to be made as part of this debate. Australia has 5.1 million concession card holders and an additional 2.3 million people without concession cards, on low incomes, who could benefit from coverage, according to the government's own National Advisory Council on Dental Health, under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. The government's proposed number of services, even if delivered, as promised, by 2018, will be totally insufficient in meeting the demand that is going to be created under this proposal.

In 2008, Labor proposed the Commonwealth dental program, which it never delivered. The program promised one million services by providing funding to the states and territories, and it was revealed in Senate estimates that the Commonwealth did not assess the capacity of the public dental workforce to provide the projected services, and the number delivered might have been significantly less than that promised.

The number of services to be provided over the full six years under Labor's recent proposal is only 20 per cent of what the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme provided last year alone. The government say that in the design of their scheme, even though in net terms they are training no new dentists, clinicians or technicians, they are going to open the gates to several million more Australians come 1 January 2014, or 1 July 2014, depending on which part of the scheme you are talking about. And they will have people lining up on the doorsteps of dentists around the country, where apparently millions of places are sitting vacant right now! Somehow the government argue that this is a well-designed scheme and somehow, even though they are not going to increase supply between now and 2014, it is okay to have millions of additional services being required from people.

Does anybody hear an alarm bell ringing about the design of this scheme? Has anybody thought back to the pink batts, to computers in schools or to school halls? Do people think that the government possess the capacity to deliver the most basic of design when it comes to programs? I would have thought that the government could have given away free pink batts with some success, but they did not. They burnt houses down and people died as a result of that program. They wasted billions of dollars and there is a huge tail liability in that scheme because they now have to remove the defective pink batts from people's ceilings around the country at a significant cost to taxpayers.

Yet the government say they are going to design a scheme. Again, they are full of good intent, but look at the detail of what they provide. They say that with no new dentists we can bring millions of people into dental surgeries across the country from 1 January. There will be no phased implementation and no increase in the workforce between now and 1 January 2014, and somehow we can provide services to all of those people! There will be no increase in the price that dentists charge, even though they have people lined up out the doors!

Do people seriously believe that this government will get the design right? Think about the school halls program, where they had the same good intent—the same superficially attractive proposal—where they said, 'We will put money into schools.' Nobody would knock that back, but this government spent billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on overpriced school halls that, in the end, did not deliver what this government promised. This government squandered the opportunity to deliver significant infrastructure, because in the process it spent money lining the pockets of people who were greedy and saw a purchaser in distress. Those greedy people saw this government coming, and school halls were built well over price and the benefit was not delivered to the school, the students or to the taxpayer. That is the track record of this government when it comes to those two programs.

Look at what else this government has done. In relation to the provision of solar panels this government completely mucked up the delivery of that program. This is a government that started with billions of dollars in the bank, and it wasted every single dollar. It was not the government's money but taxpayers' money. Not only did it waste that money, it thrust us into unprecedented debt. This government talks about a surplus, and it has talked about a surplus for five years, but this government has delivered the four most significant deficits in our country's history. And it continues to ramp up debt on a daily basis in this country. Yet it asks the Australian public to believe that it can deliver a dental scheme from 1 January 2014.

Let's ask why the government is introducing legislation today, without the detail attached to it, for a scheme that will not start until after the next election. There are only two possible scenarios. The first is that this government has no intention of delivering this scheme, and it wants a policy that is superficially appealing to the Australian public, because, like the coalition, the Australian people want to see more money put into dental services. But the coalition do not want to see money wasted without people getting the services that they rightly deserve.

That is the first scenario: this government has said one thing and they intend to do the opposite after the election. That may well ring a familiar tune with the Australian public, because this Prime Minister said before the last election that there would be no carbon tax under a government she leads but she did the complete opposite when she got into power. So this government should not be taken on their spin but on their track record.

If people want to look at what the government will be like if they are re-elected at the next election, look at what they have been like over the last five years. They have squandered money. They started with good intent in policies but they have not been able to get the design right and not been able to deliver what they promised to the Australian people. That is the first scenario. The second is that they have rushed this in for political purposes but also because they believe they can implement the scheme, perhaps with some significant design feature changes which they will sort out if they get elected at the next election. Either way, people need to be deeply suspicious about what the government is offering up.

What is the position of the coalition? The starting point, as I said in my opening remarks, is that we want to see further investment into dental care. We want to make sure that it is done efficiently and productively. Why? Because we want to make sure that we get the maximum number of services delivered to those most in need. In the end, we are the guardians of taxpayers' money and it is incumbent upon us to make sure that people who deserve the services get the services at the lowest possible cost. That is what we are charged with, and that is what this government has lost sight of.

This government has closed down the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme not to replace it with a scheme that starts from 1 December but to say to the Australian public that, even if you are suffering from a chronic disease, even if you are a concession card holder and you are in the most desperate of circumstances, you will have to wait up to 19 months to receive any assistance at all. The minister will say, 'We've put more money into the public dental waiting list, and somehow we'll work through that list.' Some people at the moment wait five years or more on the public dental waiting list. If they are waiting five years or more, and there are 650,000 people on that list as of today, how can people seriously take this minister at her word? Are people who are receiving treatment today under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme somehow going to jump the queue of 650,000 people over the next 19 months? This minister has no credibility.

In the end, in wasting money, this government has decreased the capacity of our nation to deliver a more effective health system. When this minister talks about the extra spend in health, what she is saying is that she has employed more health bureaucrats. I think health bureaucrats are well intentioned and I think many of them do a wonderful job. This government, having spent all the money and plunged into debt, has now arrived at a crossroad, where the choice is to continue to spend money on recurrent bureaucratic positions or to reapply and redirect some of that money to front-line services. This government has a decision to make, and future governments will have a decision to make, about whether to continue to bloat the health bureaucracy in this country or to apply that money to the doctors, nurses, dentists and allied health professionals across the country who are trying to make a difference in people's lives.

The idea of an infrastructure or a bureaucracy is to deliver services efficiently to the people they serve, and in our case that is the Australian public. Over the last five years, where have the government spent money in health? They have spent it on the creation of 12 new bureaucracies. They have not spent it in front-line areas. They have not spent it on providing advances and opportunities to our researchers and to people who are delivering amazing interventions on a daily basis. This government have taken a deliberate decision to divert money away from the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme and to put it into their ever-growing bureaucracy.

The Australian people understand that. They understand that because it is what Labor did at a state level. It is what Labor did in New South Wales and Queensland in particular. They bloated their bureaucracies to a point where the recurrent spend became unmanageable. And what happened? People could not get into emergency departments. People waited hours and hours with sick children in emergency departments. Older Australians, concession card holders, pensioners, and self-funded retirees on small, fixed incomes saw services drop off in public hospitals because Labor decided to increase the number of bureaucrats in the system and take money away from doctors, nurses and core services.

After the next election, if the coalition is elected, we will make a deliberate strategy to return support to front-line services, to doctors, to nurses, to those people who are seeing patients and those people who are making a tangible difference in people's lives. That is what the health portfolio is about. It is not about making yourself feel good because you have new buildings, new motor vehicles and new infrastructure which requires billions of dollars more each year to feed.

The government should be about providing support to people who are sick. They have taken their eye off the ball, and there is no more egregious example than the area of dental health. People received millions of services under a system that was designed by Tony Abbott, a system which made an intervention into people's lives and changed their futures. That is what the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was about. If the government sought to close it down and implement their own scheme immediately after the closure then people might understand. But to leave a 19-month gap during which people cannot access adequate dental services, and particularly where people are already suffering from a chronic disease, is a cruel blow by this government. It underscores the point that we make—that the government, when it comes to health, have taken their eye off the ball. They have adopted the state Labor strategy of spending money not on doctors and nurses but on bureaucrats, and that is why this country has been plunged into billions of dollars of debt.

The government should say here and now, in this place, to the Australian people what will happen over the next 19 months, when this void will appear in people's lives, when treatments that are partly carried out will not be finished. What happens to those people? I ask the following speakers from the Labor Party, who would have been receiving the same correspondence that I have from around the country from people who are suffering from chronic disease and who are petrified at the closure of the scheme: what do you say to those people? How could you look those people in the eye and say that you provide no services to them, not because you have intent to implement a better scheme but because you want to close it down for your own raw political purposes? I think the Australian people will make their judgement at the time of the next election, and so they should. It will be a damning judgement on a government that has failed in so many areas, this just being the latest. (Time expired)

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Dental Benefits Amendment Bill 2012 that will service our community, especially the most vulnerable. I am always happy to take advice from anyone, including those opposite, but, let us not forget, in 1996 the very first act of the Howard Liberal coalition government was to cut the Commonwealth dental scheme. We all remember that; every single one of us remembers that. That was the first act of the Howard government—to cut the Commonwealth dental scheme, which saw the list of people waiting for dental procedures and dental care skyrocket to 750,000 people with over two years on the waiting list. So now we hear them come into this House, preach to us on dental care and tell us what it means to them.

In opposition, I asked many questions about dental care and I always got the same response back, whether it was from the Minister for Health of the coalition at the time or whether it was from the Prime Minister. The answer was like this: 'It has got nothing to do with the federal government; it has got nothing to do with us. Go to your mates in the state Labor government; it is a state responsibility.' That is all we heard from the other side. In 2007, as the doom and gloom was overshadowing them, they decided that they should try and do something about this particular issue. What did they do? They came up with this cobble-wash scheme that was meant to cost $80 million per year. It is now costing us $80 million per month and giving dental care to millionaires and not giving the care that is required to low-income earners, to the unemployed, to pensioners and to a whole range of other people. So I am very pleased and very proud to be in this House today promoting this bill and speaking in support of this bill.

We were elected in 2007 and again in 2010 on a platform of recreating a federal dental scheme. We have a mandate that is as clear as can be and we have the electoral authority to deliver reform on the provisions of dental services in this land. If you look at the Hansard from when we were in opposition and from when we were in government, and at the promises that were made, it was about delivering a dental scheme that was equitable for all in this nation, not just for millionaires. However, we have been obstructed every step of the way by those who know only one word and that is the word 'no'. We hear it continually from those opposite on so many issues. And with mind-boggling predictability we are going to hear it again on this particular bill.

The fear campaign from which Labor took office five years ago continues and we see it again today. The Abbott scare campaign is trying to convince people that Labor is going to deprive people of a dental service. Well, the only people that have deprived the Australian public of a dental service were the opposition coalition when they were in government in 1996. They came in and axed the Commonwealth dental scheme, requiring people to wait up to two or three years to have their teeth fixed.

Labor has proposed and has been pursuing something very different to those opposite to increase the availability of dental services. As I said, the poorly designed coalition scheme that we sought for years to replace subsidised treatment of the millionaires while depriving age pensioners, welfare recipients, Australian battlers around the nation and low-income earners. It subsidised elective cosmetic work while people with the most need could not get assistance. As I said earlier, Tony Abbott said it would cost $90 million per year but it is costing a billion dollars a year or $80 million per month and people still cannot get treatment they require. It was a scheme that was poorly designed and that led to waste and dissatisfaction, with over 1,000 complaints lodged from those who were able to access the scheme but were not satisfied.

There has been free money from the government to dental practices, and taxpayer funds were gouged by billions of dollars each and every year. Treatments have been of low value and poorly performed or have remained inaccessible to those who need them most. Something has to change. The system needs to improve but improvement is anathema to the opposition, who prefer a culture of fear, as we have seen continually in this House.

This opposition scare campaign has cried out with false alarm, as we heard from the previous speakers—false alarm that Labor plan to deprive people of available dental services. As I said, the only people who deprived the Australian public from dental care were the former Liberal government, which cut the Commonwealth dental scheme as a first act as a government. And that is the cynical mockery of their fear campaign. They say Australians should be scared that Labor will direct dental services away from millionaires to those who most need them, those who find it most difficult to afford them. It has been just one of a continual string of cynical Orwellian ironies where the coalition says positive change is negative change, where an increase in services means a decrease in availability and where the Abbott coalition strive to convince the people to fear the very changes that will most benefit them.

Today, as I said, I am very pleased and proud to speak in favour of this legislation, which will deliver Labor's expanded dental benefits scheme—this government's version of a Commonwealth dental scheme—which will allocate vastly increased services to children and funding for expanded state services for adults in need.

As a result of this package, which was announced by the Minister for Health in late August, 3.4 million Australian children will be eligible for funded dental care through the expansion of the government's current child focused dental scheme. Currently, children aged 12 to 18 can access dental care. With this bill, almost 3½ million children aged two and over will be able to access the care they need. That will be a good start in dental hygiene, and will set the path for fewer problems in the future, costing governments less money. Funding will be provided to the states to provide around 1.4 million additional dental services for adults on low incomes such as age pensioners, concession card holders and people with special needs.

Let us look at those numbers: 1.4 million. When we look back in the Howard years, there were 750,000 people on the waiting list who had to wait over two years. Providing 1.4 million services will ensure that that waiting list comes right down. And if those opposite were to form a government next election—shock, horror!—I bet you one of the first things they would do is cut the current scheme, leaving people high and dry, and we would see those figures escalate, maybe well over 750,000 and up to the million mark.

Further, outer metropolitan, rural and remote areas will receive additional capital and workforce to provide the services where they are needed. This package relies on federal funding complementing state funding. So, as with many things negotiated between tiers of government in this Federation, state governments will have the choice—and I suspect New South Wales and Queensland will take it—to sabotage the dental services of their own residents, as we have seen with the cuts in those states over the previous few weeks. I fear this will be the case with this particular scheme in Queensland and New South Wales, where services are being absolutely stripped on an almost-daily basis. And, as we heard, that is the entree of the real thing if the coalition ever forms government.

But I can assure you that, at least in South Australia, the federal government will cover, through this program, a much greater number of children of families of limited means. This will make already budgeted funds and an additional 1.4 million dental services or appointments solely available for adults who need the most assistance. This creates a package of services for those adults in need of dental care while providing preventative work for children to prevent dental problems becoming a major long-term issue.

I welcome this package of reforms, as all of us on this side do. We welcome these reforms because, for far too long, dental care has been separate from health care—yet one cannot exist without the other. Without good teeth or dentures, without oral health, we cannot have good dietary habits and good nutrition; and without good nutrition, other health problems are as good as certain. This is an area of policy very close to our hearts on this side. We campaigned on it when we were in opposition, we campaigned on it in 2007 when we were elected and it was a promise in the 2010 election. So we are delivering on what we told the Australian public. I personally campaigned on this issue as a candidate and an opposition MP, year after year, and received full support from my constituency toward the Commonwealth ensuring the provision of a decent level of dental services and dental care for those who need them most in our community. As I said earlier, this issue was raised by me and many others, many times in opposition, and the answer always came back the same—that it had nothing to do with the then Howard government. That was the response we got: it was a state issue.

When conducting surveys in my electorate, dental care was the one issue which received the greatest support from senior residents, specifically residents on the age pension, a pension that was worth much less then than it is today, thanks to Labor's reforms. But, even with a substantial increase in the age pension, the cost of dental care is more than many can afford, especially those with the greatest dental problems and those who require the greatest and most costly dental work. Labor have done what we have been able to get through the parliament since forming government in 2007. We have injected very substantial funds, through the budget process, in helping the states reduce the waiting lists for the state based services while trying to redirect federal funding being wasted, year after year, billions of dollars after billions of dollars, on the Leader of the Opposition's flawed chronic dental system.

With this bill we have the start of a new package of dental reforms which will deliver the services with willing state governments to meet the needs of both young and old and those in most need. It is a duty of this place to provide the assistance where it is most needed, to provide services that are most critical and to help Australians improve and maintain their health and their lives, with that objective—a healthy Australian population in clear sight.

This bill will start operation on 1 January 2014. For many decades the history of the dental health of children in this country was that it was improving. But since the mid-1990s we have seen a reversal of that. Since the late 1990s the prevalence of children with dental problems, and the mean number of teeth affected by dental diseases in children, has increased. A recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report showed that 45 per cent of 12-year-olds had decay in their permanent teeth and almost 25 per cent of 12-year-olds had untreated decay. If a decline in oral health of children becomes established, children will require increased services in the future. So it is very important that we see the investment in our children's teeth as an investment in the future, as an investment in good oral hygiene—and we know that poor childhood oral health leads to poor adult oral health and has wide- ranging impacts on general health and wellbeing, including increasing the demand on our health and hospital system.

This bill is a very important one and I am proud to support it. It is a bill I have campaigned on for many years and I hope those opposite will consider agreeing to it, because at the heart of it are pensioners, people on low incomes and children. It is extremely important that this bill is supported for the benefit of dental care.

Debate adjourned.