Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

That is a very important point that you make, Senator McLucas, because before the election, in the Weekend Australian on 1 December, a spokesman for Minister Roxon said that Labor ‘yesterday stuck by the party’s commitment to an overall dental health budget of $800 million this term’. Not over four years or any other period; they committed to spending $800 million over the term of this parliament. Now, at this point in time, they are anything up to $186 million short of that commitment with their forward costings.

As I said, they have had four costings so far for their Teen Dental Plan. After it went down to $324.5 million in the accounts put out for the February estimates, there was a press release put out a few weeks later which said it would be $360 million. Then, in the budget papers, we find that it will be $345 million over the three years prior to the next election. So that is in fact the fourth costing that Labor has put out for the Teen Dental Plan.

We know that they had no conversations with the states prior to the election about how this scheme might work; we know that they are still negotiating with the states about how it might work and how it might fit into their programs. There are teen dental programs in every state. There is no understanding of how this program might interact or how in fact the states may decide to move out of some the services that they are currently providing. In the light of the complete confusion of the government with respect to the provision of dental services—complete confusion and a complete lack of knowledge about how their new programs are going to interact with the system—they seek to remove a program that has demonstrated demand, has support from the industry and is clearly providing much needed services. They have provided no sense of how they intend to keep their election commitment to spend $800 million. We are prepared to help them; we can help them by ensuring that this program continues into the future.

We do not believe it is acceptable that people who are currently on this program can effectively just go back into the public dental health system in the states, although only 10 per cent of the dentists who operate in the overall dental health system are in the public system. The government are expecting the people who are currently on this program to effectively just roll back into that system. We do not believe that is acceptable. This program provides people with chronic illnesses and significant issues to get over $4,000 worth of services over two years. We believe, quite fairly in my view, that it is a very responsible action on behalf of the opposition to deny the government the opportunity to close down a program. Yesterday we put in place some review programs to review the teen dental program. So there is an opportunity for the parliament and the community to satisfactorily scrutinise the operation of the teen dental program. The government have just passed off and said, ‘Look, if you want to know how well it’s working, just look on the website.’ But that will not tell us what the interaction will be with the states and their programs. It will tell us nothing of that. We have already started to see the government’s record in actually putting information on websites; that was demonstrated in question time yesterday.

There is a really concerning trend that is coming through with respect to the government’s actions. You really have to wonder whether they are moving down the path of nationalising health. We have seen concern with respect to registration expressed through the medical profession. We have seen the attacks on private health insurance. We have seen the government renege on promises at the Mersey hospital in Tasmania—in fact, through that process, they almost showed no faith in the private system. They are funding all their dental programs through the states. The medical profession are actually now talking; they are concerned about where this government is heading with its overall health program.

As I said at the outset, we do not take this step lightly and it is not a political stunt, as has been claimed. We see very good reasons to maintain this program which, as I have said, is being used and has strong demand. If the Rudd government had moved to replace the enhanced primary care dental access scheme with something which allowed the same sort of access then we would be likely to support it. But that is simply not the case. However many lies and mirrors the minister may use when she tries again to spin a different line to the media and the public, we believe that our actions in this particular case are well founded.