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

Just quickly to wrap up the debate, the government went to the election promising they would spend $800 million on dental services. They later confirmed that they would be, but they have now admitted in this debate that they will not be. The way that they have argued in this debate has been completely predictable, as I said, in my initial contribution, it would be. Senator McLucas and Senator Ludwig made comments about young people accessing care for chronic dental disease, but their Teen Dental Plan will not address one single chronic dental case. It will provide a clean, a check and a scale. So, despite the fact that they have had four different costings for it and despite their protestations during this debate today, it will not address one single chronic dental case. It is to provide check-ups—that is all it does—and then if a problem is found you join the queue. They talked about this plan being over four years. They ignored the fact that it was enhanced in the coalition’s last budget and they ignored the fact that its take-up has meant that it has provided over 300,000 treatments since its enhancement—and if it is so difficult to get into why is it providing such significant treatment and why is it so popular with the public? As I said in my initial contribution, we did not take this action lightly. It was seriously considered. Senator Moore is right: the provision of dental care does need a broad range of measures. We in opposition are ensuring that one measure of that broad range of measures stays available to the Australian public.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Colbeck’s) be agreed to.