Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) too many people in Australia are not able to access essential dental healthcare, and are living with preventable diseases and oral conditions;

(b) additionally, Australia is experiencing a mental health crisis, and the ten psychology sessions available under the Better Access Scheme are not enough; and

(c) dental and mental healthcare is essential and should be accessible free of charge to everyone; and

(2) calls on the Government to tax the big corporations and billionaires so that we can make dental and mental healthcare free under Medicare.

This motion calls on the government to tax the big corporations and millionaires so that we can make dental and mental health care free under Medicare. As the cost-of-living crisis bites, more and more Australians simply cannot afford a large dental bill or access to mental health services. You shouldn't have to choose between paying the rent and seeing the dentist or a therapist. Forty per cent of Australians are avoiding the dentist due to cost, and thousands of children are being hospitalised each year for preventable oral problems.

Meanwhile, people are rationing therapy sessions to spread out the 10 subsidised sessions—cut down from 20 per year by the Labor government—over the year. A quarter of people who need mental health support are delaying or just not seeing a psychologist due to cost. That's hundreds of thousands of Australians suffering for no other reason than our heartless government.

The old parties tell you that putting mental health and dental cover into Medicare is too expensive.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is nonsense. The government can afford it. Everyday people can't. We're paying hundreds a year just for teeth check-ups and hundreds more if something needs fixing. For those needing frequent psychological visits, you'll be thousands out of pocket.

These same major parties are on a unity ticket to spend hundreds of billions on nuclear submarines, tens of billions of fossil fuel subsidies that make the climate crisis worse and tens of billions in investor subsidies that make the housing crisis worse. It shouldn't be this hard to make the health of Australians a priority. It's a no-brainer.

Almost 40 per cent of Australians aged between 16 and 24 experienced a mental disorder in the last 12 months. Young people are suffering the most from this cost-of-living crisis, but Labor is abandoning young people who need mental health help. They cut subsidised mental health sessions from 20 to 10 per year. This is just the subsidy we're talking about. It doesn't even cover the full cost. They also make you jump through extra hoops to get the last four sessions of the ten—you need another referral from a GP, which will cost you unless you're lucky enough to be bulk-billed, which is getting rarer and rarer.

The narrative that mental health is not the government's responsibility is so purposely ingrained that it's considered completely normal that government agencies routinely just tell people to contact Lifeline if they're in distress or in crisis—Lifeline is a charity reliant on volunteers that is already completely overwhelmed and unable to help everyone who calls. Just bring mental health into Medicare and make it free for everyone.

Medicare is broken in Australia. We do not have a universal healthcare system. Mental and dental health are excluded from Medicare, and public hospitals are absolutely overwhelmed and underfunded. To top it all off, our amazing GPs on the front line cannot keep up. In my electorate of Ryan, it's pretty much impossible to find a GP who will and can bulk-bill. If you're lucky, you might pay $40 to cover the gap, but in many cases it's much higher than that. As a result, everyday Australians are forced to cover these giant holes in Medicare.

Meanwhile gas corporations like Santos can get away with paying just $15,000 in tax on an income of $6 billion. Everyday people are having to make impossible choices between feeding their kids or seeing a doctor, but Santos are paying less income tax than most full-time workers in Australia. This broken system has serious consequences—consequences for people enduring long-term health problems because they couldn't afford to see a GP when first suspicious of a problem, consequences in our hospitals due to a lack of preventive health care. But Labor clearly prefer things getting materially worse for everyday people to taxing their corporate donors to pay for the health care of all Australians.

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for the motion?

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion moved by my neighbour the member for Ryan. As the member for Ryan well knows, Medicare is actually a great Labor accomplishment, and I will always defend and promote it and acknowledge the radical thinking of Whitlam a half-century ago and then the pragmatic efforts of Hawke to make this scheme a reality for all Australians now. The government recognises that many in our communities face significant barriers to accessing affordable dental services, but, as a sensible government, we have to make sure we get good policy right, and it must be economically sustainable. For some reason, the member for Ryan forgot to cost the policies she just spoke about, but I'm sure the member for Brisbane will go into the costing details when he speaks. Obviously, if slogans, sound bites and memes were all it took to implement effective policies, our country would have no problems left to solve.

The Albanese government has committed to the long-term goal of incorporating dental health services into Medicare. Health Minister Butler and the state and territory health ministers have all prioritised dental health reform and finding reform options. While we've committed to expanding Medicare to dental health services, we are proactively investing in critical areas to support dental reform today. As part of last year's budget, the Albanese Labor government announced $1.7 million for a dental services costing study to determine an efficient price for public dental services. The results of this study will inform the future funding model. We also announced $400,000 for a new dental national minimum data set to collect nationally consistent activity and waiting times data. We have also contributed $215.6 million to assist states and territories to deliver dental health services for those experiencing crisis—and I've seen it at the QEII hospital in my electorate.

Federal Labor governments always do the grunt work of delivering meaningful change for the Australian people. I've no doubt that, when we do expand Medicare to dental services, the Greens political party will try to claim credit for the work of Labor. I saw them try to co-opt Whitlam and Hawke to their brand as soon as they died. I remember that. It was disgraceful. This is what the Greens political party do nowadays. They are the party of passing off. Some might call it stealing or plagiarism. For example, Labor commissioned the Universities Accord report back in November of 2022 as part of our commitment to higher education reform. Again, the Greens political party jumped on the Labor bandwagon and claimed our homework as their own.

This motion from the member for Ryan—which isn't that important, obviously, because she left the chamber after introducing it—also references mental health services. Sadly, the issues facing the mental health sector do reflect the broader issues in our under-pressure health system, a system that Labor is working to repair, to address. Our recent budget allocated $361 million over the next four years to expand the range of free mental health services, ensuring that Australians who need help get help. The government is providing free mental health services, including psychiatry, psychology and GPs—an important frontline service—through a series of walk-in Medicare mental health centres and bulk-billing support across the country. We have also invested in Primary Health Networks and general practices to fund mental health nurses and other allied health professionals who can provide more specialised care for patients with complex needs.

Labor has a strong record when it comes to dental and mental health services. I particularly note our Strengthening Medicare reforms, which have seen billions of dollars in new investment, and bulk-billing rates rising, after years of neglect. Our budget committed to the rollout of 58 Medicare urgent care clinics in 2023, to relieve pressure on the health system, and this year we've committed to another 29, right across Australia. We've tripled the bulk-billing incentive. We've frozen the cost of PBS medicines, ensuring that every senior will pay, at most, $7.70 for the medicines they need.

In politics, there are show ponies and there are work horses. While Labor gets on with the job of delivering progressive and significant change for the Australian people, the show ponies will run around shouting out their slogans. They'll blockade electoral offices, causing havoc to NDIS people that live in my electorate. They'll chant their slogans out the front of my office. But one-trick ponies are no fun to ride at all. I'll always back the Labor work horses when it comes to looking after the Australian people and our healthcare system.

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I was elected to this place, I was working a retail job and one day noticed that I had a pretty bad toothache. Already, I was nervous about going to the dentist because of the cost. Even with private health insurance, a trip to the dentist can set you back a lot of money. I went, and was told I needed two fillings. Not ideal, but manageable. I knew there would be a decent price tag associated with the fillings, so I needed some time to save up.

Flash forward a couple of months, and I was elected to this place. I got my first pay and immediately went straight back to the dentist. But I was too late. What had been fillings were now root canals, at a cost of thousands of dollars per tooth. The other option to me was to have these teeth pulled out. I remember sitting in the dentist's chair for a solid minute, contemplating this decision. My income was about to determine whether or not I got to keep my teeth in my head. If I had not been in a position then to afford the root canals, I would have had to either borrow money from my family or lose these teeth altogether.

I know I'm not alone in this. So many people are having to put off going to the dentist because they just can't afford it. This often results in dental problems getting worse and more expensive. We are talking about access to basic health care, and Australians are being let down by a government that won't do anything to fix the problem. There's hundreds of billions of dollars for nuclear submarines, but when it comes time for grand visions of public health and improving peoples' lives we are always told that it would just cost too much. Everyone should be able to use their Medicare card when they go to the dentist, just like when they go to the doctor. There is absolutely no reason why health care should stop at your teeth. It is time we put dental into Medicare.

Accessing mental health care in this country is too expensive and too slow. Prevention and early intervention are key pillars of a strong mental health system, and we need to be doing more to help people before their mental health deteriorates and before they reach crisis point. Everyone deserves to have access to good mental health support. Unfortunately, our system makes it harder for low-income individuals to receive proper care. We cannot go down the path of the United States, and put being healthy behind a paywall. This doesn't give people an equal chance at a healthy life. With mental healthcare costs becoming more and more unaffordable, we are increasingly becoming a society where only those who have enough money can access mental health care.

Countries with universal healthcare systems have healthier citizens. When community members are healthy, there is a higher likelihood that people will be happier, jobs will be done better and our communities will thrive. Simply put, a truly universal healthcare system makes our communities better off. Prevention and early intervention can also prevent higher costs down the line. When individuals living with mental illness cannot afford to access the health care they need, people will hit a crisis point and present to emergency departments in hospitals instead. We know that preventive healthcare costs our health system less in the long run and reduces patients' risk. Getting people access to preventive health care when, or before, they need it is not just good for individuals but good for society and good for our economy.

With the rising costs of living, the housing crisis and climate anxiety, Australians need mental health support more than ever, and they need a government that will address the root causes of the surging need for mental health support. What that looks like is getting dental and mental health into Medicare; putting caps on rent increases; a huge build of public, affordable homes; no new coal and gas; lifting income support above the poverty line; and wiping all student debt. This is what will alleviate the financial strains causing surging mental health issues. But until the government wants to do any of that, the least they can do is to bring dental and mental health fully into Medicare.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Access to dental care is critically important for people's health. Our government acknowledges that there are barriers to accessing affordable dental services and we are committed to the long-term goal of expanding Medicare to dental health services.

I want to begin with a story from very early in my political career—in fact, from when I was running for preselection here in Canberra. When I was calling around Labor members to talk to them about supporting me, I spoke to a woman who had noticed that I had said that expanding public dental care was one of the things I cared about. She had got to a point where her teeth were so bad—and she couldn't afford to get them fixed—that it meant that she didn't leave her house. She was an active Labor Party member who wouldn't even come to the forums or to cast her vote in person for that preselection, for that reason. That was absolutely heartbreaking—that someone in our community would come to that point because of their inability to pay for health care. We talked a bit about the issue, and she said she was aware, of course, that there was funding for children to access dental care publicly. She said, 'I understand how important this is. As a single mother of four now-adult children, I understand why it is really important to help children to get dental care.' It just really struck me that this woman had given so much, not just to her own family but to our society, in raising four children, and yet we, as a community, couldn't guarantee her a standard of health care that meant that she could continue to participate in her community. We can do much better than this. And that story will always stay with me.

It is incredibly important that we do expand public access to dental care. As I said, this is something that our government is committed to in the long-term.

I also want to acknowledge the work of dentist Dr Buuloc Lam in my electorate, who was recently awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in recognition of her humanitarian dental work internationally and in local charities in our community. Dr Lam runs a dental surgery in Braddon and, over the past 10 years, has regularly travelled to rural Vietnam and Nepal to provide humanitarian dental services. In just a single day during a trip to Vietnam in November 2019, Dr Lam and her colleague provided dental examinations for 68 children at a school. But, during the COVID pandemic, when Dr Lam could not travel overseas, she began providing dental care and funding support to Karinya House for mothers and babies in Canberra, Companion House and Sanjiwani Australia. Dr Lam's work has made a difference to so many lives here in our community. I just want to congratulate her again on that really important humanitarian work that she does, which shows just how important this access is.

Health ministers have made dental policy reform a priority and are considering funding reform options. In the 2023 budget, the government announced $2.1 million over two years for immediate developmental work to underpin long-term reform of funding for adult public dental services, and this work is ongoing.

Our government is also continuing to work with state and territory colleagues to improve dental care for all Australians. In the 2023-24 budget, the government announced funding of $215.6 million over two years to support states and territories in delivering these services. Additionally, the government funds the provision of basic dental services for children from low-income families aged up to 17 years, through the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Since its commencement in 2014, the CDBS has provided $3.1 billion in benefits and delivered $51 million worth of services to 3.5 million Australian children.

The Albanese government is strengthening Medicare with more Medicare urgent care clinics, more free mental health services, higher Medicare rebates for many common medical tests and over $160 million for a women's health package. In this budget, we have built on the previous budget's record investment with a further $2.8 billion to strengthen Medicare with more Medicare urgent care clinics, more free mental health services and a recent investment over four years to expand the range of free mental health services so that Australians get the right level of care for their level of need. Labor is the party of Medicare, and we are the party that is going to be there for people who need government support the most. That is an incredibly important thing that we must never lose sight of.

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.