Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When Senator Colbeck was introducing this disallowance motion, he said that the opposition had thought long and hard about it before they brought it forward. I hope they did, but I am very concerned because, if they did think long and hard, they must have understood what the impact of this decision was going to be. Senator McLucas has just outlined the process around which the Australian Labor Party went to the electors last year and put forward a plan for making a significant and strategic change to the way dental health was to be conducted in this country. After years of asking questions from the other side—and I know I had to ask many questions in question time about dental services in this country—in this and in the other place about the way dental programs were operating in this country, we spent significant time consulting people across Australia: people who were seeking dental health improvements, people who were victims of the previous lack of dental health in this country, and practitioners—and we all know the absolutely critical need for trained professionals in this area at all levels. After years of consultation, the Australian Labor Party went to the electors with a plan—a plan identifying the absolute importance of an effective, preventive dental health strategy for our country.

We did not hide behind any of the processes across the absolute need for interaction between all states and the federal government. Minister Ludwig went into great detail about what he described as the blame game. We had to acknowledge that over many years there has been a tendency towards blame in all areas of health—in particular, dental health. It was never anyone’s fault when people had dental health issues. It was never anyone’s own responsibility; it was always someone else’s. It was the states’ if you were talking to the Commonwealth; it was the Commonwealth’s, if you were talking to the states. There was a lack of communication, responsibility and accountability to the community.

The Australian Labor Party worked with the community to come up with a plan that first and foremost acknowledged the need for there to be a cooperative plan working with the state, territory and Commonwealth governments to identify the gaps in dental health in putting forward a solution. Out of that process, we went to the electors of this country with a plan that identified the need for cooperation and highlighted the priorities for dental care. It also went very clearly with an absolute awareness of the need for young people to have supportive dental care at an incredibly critical time—as Senator McLucas outlined, when they are starting to take responsibility for their own future health—to remind young people about the critical importance of dental health and to ensure that they get good threshold treatment so that they can then put in place cooperatively, with the dental practitioner of their choice, be it a public or private practitioner, a plan for future action.

We never pretended that the dental program we were putting in place was going to fulfil all expectations. We never made false promises. We never set up expectations that were not addressed by policy. Consistently during the election process would-be Minister Roxon spoke with numerous people who had interests in this area. Mr Rudd himself also had discussions with the community about what was absolutely essential in dental health. Out of that came what we have publicly committed to. A Rudd government is supporting up to a million additional consultations and treatments, targeted at those most in need. That has always been the process under which Labor operates. We actually seek to support those people in our community who are most in need of services, through our $290 million investment in our Commonwealth Dental Health Program. And 1.1 million eligible teenagers, young people, will now have access to preventive health checks through our $490 million investment in our kids’ teeth through what is now known as the Medicare Teen Dental Plan.

Senator Colbeck went on about confusion, about numbers that were being bounced around. He was talking about commitments over particular periods of time. That is always the way people try and hide behind figures when they are trying to build alternative processes and trying to attack other programs being put out. There has never been confusion in our policy. We have talked about a four-year commitment—not three, not two and not any other number—to allow the process to be implanted, to allow the opportunity for things to be given a proper chance to be integrated into ongoing systems. The tendency consistently is to put things into small boxes that are separated, to build up this divided process of health care. Dental health care is an integral part of overall health care. We should not be taking that away and looking at it in isolation. What we need to do, and what we have asked for over many years, is to build our health issues to be considered together so that we are looking after the genuine health and wellbeing of people. Where better to start than by ensuring that young people have effective assessment, effective consultation with trained professionals, so that they can understand the importance of dental hygiene, dental maintenance and how valuable and very vulnerable teeth are. I know from working with my own nieces and nephews, who are a little bit too old for this program now, that making them understand that the confidence that they have now, and the work that they are putting into dental health when they are young, will ensure that as they age they will be able to have strong and healthy teeth.

One of the most confronting periods in community consultations that I have had in the last few years was when I was privileged to be part of the community affairs committee poverty inquiry, which was held over the 2003-04 period. We worked as a community affairs group, with members from all sides of politics, and we talked with people in many places about what their main concerns were about their futures and they were indicating what their needs were. One of the top issues that came out from people across the country was their dental health. Consistently, people told us that as they aged they were finding it increasingly difficult to be well and healthy if they had problems with their teeth. What we heard from a number of teachers was that it was so important that young people had access to effective dental support while they were young so that they would understand that and would be able to plan that effectively as they aged. When we were working with Minister Roxon last year, and in the many public meetings she had, those same issues that were brought out in 2003-04 were reinforced when she was talking about the development of an effective policy for a Rudd Labor government and how we would be looking at the issues of dental health in an overall health plan.

The figures that Senator McLucas and Senator Ludwig read out in relation to the previous government’s commitment to health and the very small numbers of people across this country who were able to benefit from any support from previous Howard programs were extremely confronting. The numbers are there. We see that under the previous systems access to dental programs was limited very much by where you happened to live and by how wealthy you were. That crucial divide was reinforced in the area of health and access to support. What we are planning is an effective program that will pick up on equity of access, will support those who are in the most need and will be transparent, so that people will know exactly what is available and will be able to work with practitioners at the state level, having that confidence that their needs will be met throughout their whole lifetimes. We are starting by focusing on the Medicare Teen Dental Program, responding to some of the information that we have had about the critical importance of those years for people to understand this issue, as I have said. We are starting with that and then building, in cooperation with state governments, a focus on dental services for the foreseeable future.

No-one pretends that this is going to be an easy issue. No-one pretends that one single program is going to be able to respond to the critical needs across our community. I think that has always been a danger. The responses we have had from the Howard government, the now opposition, show that they seem to think that promoting one program alone will respond to all the issues that are important. That is such a temptation when you are governing by media response or by getting out a good headline. Dental health will not be serviced by one program alone. What we need, as I have said, is the integrated, systematic planning which our dental health program is beginning to put in place. It is not there yet. It will take significant, targeted approaches over a minimum of four years to have the first building blocks in the ongoing plan, and then with the expectation that to really get the best value across the community you will be looking many years into the future. You do not solve issues of neglect that have been entrenched in the system for over 11 years with a first-round program of a four-year schedule.

When I was in the opposition and asking questions about dental health, there were consistent issues about needing to respond effectively. The program that Minister Roxon has put forward is a strategy to do that. There has been a transparent public process to put in place, with clear access to money, a program over a period of time, and now we have the opposition coming in and telling us that they have given considerable thought to the importance of the step that they are taking in blocking—disallowing—the regulations that will allow that to occur. It makes me think that there has been considerable thought given to the action that is being put before the Senate today. There has been considerable thought, but it is not about the effectiveness of our dental programs; it is ensuring that the opposition will now be able to impose their will on what is going to happen into the future. They will be able to stall the effective planning of the programs that have been passed in the lower house. They will be able to stall the strategic implementation of programs that have been on the public record since before the election. They will be able to stall and divide. Once again, the idea of building up an effective long-term strategy will be stopped by people who for 11½ years could not come up with a response to these issues.

I remember when the community affairs committee was looking at the then program, towards the end of the previous government’s term. We had a consideration of maybe one day or half a day of that particular program, and a number of questions came up: how would the program work? Would people have access to it? Is it the best way of operating? We had that ‘intense’ one-day consideration of such an important piece of legislation—very similar to some of the considerations we will be forced to have over the next week on trying to stall further budget initiatives. But, after that came through, what we were asking was how the wider community was going to benefit from this program. We had statistics about the number of people with chronic illness who may be able to benefit, and there was great discussion about where that fitted into the overall scheme. As people from this side of the house have said, we do not deny that some people did benefit from the previous program. But before the election we said that in our plan we were balancing the needs and the processes, and we never pretended that the former scheme was not one that we had doubts about. We thought it was too complex and we also had issues about just how many people would benefit from it.

Today we are facing a disallowance motion—on the record; we can see how it works. It will be an attempt to stop at this stage the effective budgeting for the dental programs which have been on record—about $780 million that the Rudd government is wanting to invest in dental health over the next four years. Those programs have been built around making sure that they are put in place as quickly as possible. We have already gone out to the community and given people an expectation of who will be able to benefit. I know that in my office in Brisbane people have been ringing up to find out exactly how this particular program will be put in place, in terms of how young people will have access to this process. What we will say now of course is, ‘Because of considerable thought by the opposition, it will now be delayed, probably’—if the vote goes that way. Considerable thought of the opposition has determined that this program will be delayed. And why? What are they asking, in terms of the process? They are asking that the programs that they want are put in place, not the programs that Nicola Roxon led ministry is wanting to put in place, has spoken to the community about, has talked to practitioners across the country about and has set up a strategic plan for the future for.

So, because of this considerable thought, we will go through a process now where there will be a blockage of the area and the delay will occur. And who will that hurt? It will hurt the people, the families, who have been without access to this kind of dental support for many years, who now believe that this will allow them to pre-plan and get into their lifetime plan of looking after their dental health. That will be delayed. Then we will go through this process of willy-nilly, argy-bargy discussion, at the very heart of which people will be hurt. That does not seem to me to be the result of considerable thought.

I remember particularly the people with whom the community affairs committee spoke from the area around Newcastle in 2003. A lot of young people came from schools to talk to our committee about poverty. I remember clearly that people said they just wanted their young people at that stage to have the security of knowing that they would have strong health support. In particular, they wanted to have dental support. I can see their faces while I am speaking; I know that sounds a little strange, but when I had heard about this dental health program—which actually responds to this need that was identified so many years ago—I was really pleased. Those young people are now midteens. They would be at the stage where they would be able to benefit from this program that the Labor government has put on the table. They would be able to be part of the solution, not just the complaint. And now we are able to put in place a process that, in years to come, would mean that we would not be able to read out the appalling statistics about how few people—and how few young people—had been involved in effective dental planning and effective dental services.

In these debates I have always said that it is not particularly valuable just to say, ‘This is what you did, this is what we are going to do, and we are better than you’—I am actually on record as saying that. But it is very disappointing when you actually come to a point where there is a genuine option—a plan that is on the table looking at the critical issues of dental health in our country, focusing on young people—and the ‘considerable thought’ of the opposition, which is just what I believe it is, is leading to a blockage, political advantage and a political point being made. I am disappointed. I think that the people who will be damaged by this decision to delay these processes are not the people who are sitting in this chamber; they are the people who actually expected more. Those people had an expectation that there would be a response, finally, to the very critical issues of dental health. They will not have that expectation met immediately—and there was an expectation that it would be put in place almost immediately. In the planning process there was the expectation that this would be able to be negotiated effectively and that there would be the opportunity for a genuine teen dental health program and also the continuation of a cooperative arrangement between states and territories, with the focus on our health and, in this case particularly, on having strong dental health into the future.