I want to make some comments, if I may, in relation to this response. I suspect that the minister in his response is basically going to be very critical of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. Despite its assistance to so many thousands of people who have been suffering persistent and complex dental conditions, this is a scheme that the Labor government has been trying to shut down ever since it came to power. Its first attempt was back in May. A legislative instrument failed and the Senate did not vote for disallowance of the determination. Another attempt was made thereafter. When they could not achieve the change legislatively, they tried a different tack. They decided to embark on what can only be described as a disgraceful campaign aimed at discrediting the scheme.

The scheme has been very successful, as I have said, but the government, aided and abetted by their Green alliance partners, will close the scheme on 30 November. No new services will be provided after 7 September. It has been an enormous success and I want to take the Senate to that in a moment. It has been the only dental scheme that has provided treatment for adults. It has provided $4,250 in Medicare dental benefits over two years for eligible patients with a chronic health condition. We have seen approximately 20 million services provided since 2007 to over one million patients. It is so typical of those opposite: they have deliberately gone out of their way to try and dismantle this program. Why? Because it was established by Tony Abbott as the health minister. Therefore, it has been a success. Like for many other things, Minister Roxon and now Minister Plibersek, because this was a Tony Abbott initiative when he was health minister, say, 'Let's just shut it down.'

Let us look at some of the furphies that those opposite have been peddling, apart from the pursuit of dentists. I will come to that; that was part of the Senate inquiry. Despite claims of supposed blowouts in the scheme, the average claim per patient, according to Department of Health and Ageing figures, is actually $1,716, well below the allowable $4,250. Indeed, some more recent estimates suggest that the average cost per patient has fallen to below $1,200 per patient. I reiterate and put on the record once again that the coalition did offer to work with the previous health minister to refine and improve the scheme and look at ways that we could make it better, including looking at processes where we could provide high-cost items, such as crowns and bridges, and of course this was rejected.

It is reported that about 80 per cent of the services under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme have been provided to concession card holders, and a high percentage of those are older Australians. It should be noted that Medicare is a universal scheme that all Australians pay for through the Medicare levy and the taxation system, but the evidence suggests that the dental services have been predominantly utilised by low-income Australians. So we have those opposite—indeed, as recently as this week—purveying the furphy that somehow it is about millionaires. It is not about millionaires. On their own statistics, low-income concession holders have been the beneficiaries of this scheme. Many of these people would otherwise have been forced to go without treatment or would add to the already 650,000 people on the public dental waiting list.

What happens after 30 November? It simply shuts down. Many people will not be able to afford the full cost of private treatment, and, like most of the things that those opposite are promising, the new scheme is not going to start until well into 2014. What happens to those patients? As I said, many of them are concession card holders and are in the middle of very complex treatment. Are they going to have to pay for the rest of their treatment themselves? We already know that many of them do not have the funds to be able to do that.

In the remaining time, let me make some observations. I have to say that, during the inquiry that was undertaken to review the private member's bill put up by Senator Bushby in this place and by Mr Peter Dutton in the other place, we really did see the length to which the government was prepared to go to dismantle this scheme. The bill that Senator Bushby introduced into this place sought to redress an injustice. Indeed, this response follows the motion that Senator Di Natale put up on 21 March. Having said that, it was very clear that there was an attempt to denigrate the scheme. Very clearly the evidence that was given demonstrated that the audit process not only caused inordinate delays, particularly in relation to the communication of outcomes; the distress caused to patients and families and the undermining of reputations of dentists was absolutely appalling. The Australian Dental Prosthetists Association made some observations. I will not go to all their evidence but they made the observation that their members were left in limbo, with the fear of possible financial ruin. One submitter indicated that family members of deceased patients were contacted as part of the audit. That was the extreme length to which the government was prepared to go to discredit the scheme.

The issues revolved around a series of very minor oversights by dentists, where they had failed to comply with minor issues, and it was very clear from the evidence that many dentists had never been involved in a Medicare-like system. This was the first time they had been involved and so there was a lot of evidence given that clearly demonstrated that there were innocent oversights; yet, somehow, that was perpetrated as some grand fraud on the Commonwealth. I say to those opposite, having gone through this whole debacle, through the Senate processes and what we are now seeing—because of course we are now having many people contacting their local members as a consequence of this shutdown—I think you are going to find it very difficult to get dentists. It will be once bitten, twice shy after the way that many of them were treated so appallingly by the government as a consequence of this process. In my view, you will not be able to meet the promises you are making today about your new scheme.