Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Getting dental care for kids into Medicare is something that we, the Greens, achieved when we were in balance of power in the Gillard government in 2010. And getting dental care for everyone, for adults as well as children, is something that the Greens are continuing to campaign for, continuing to push for. Indeed, as Senator Askew's contribution just told us in great detail, the benefits of everybody being able to access dental treatment under Medicare are outlined there—huge benefits. It just makes sense.

Getting dental care for kids included under Medicare in 2010 shows the fundamental change you can see when you put a genuinely progressive party into balance of power. We know that that achievement has stood the test of time; hence this bill today that is extending free dental care for kids now down to the age of zero. In fact, what is very clear is exactly the same arguments as to why dental care should be included under Medicare, should be available for free for kids, hold for adults. The impact of poor dental care has massive impacts on people's health and on their ability to contribute to society. When we talk about our platform of putting dental care under Medicare, being able to go to the dentist with your Medicare card and get your dental treatment, when we talk to people out in the streets or on the doors, they say, 'That just makes sense, yes; that's what we need to do,' because people realise that the impacts on their lives by not being able to afford dental care are significant.

I remember when I was a councillor in the City of Maribyrnong working, supporting and representing a lot of people who were really doing it tough, living on income support, living in public housing. One woman I remember in particular. We got to know each other quite well, she talked to me about the issues she was facing and I was there advocating for her on council. Every time she talked to me she would hold her hand over her mouth like this because she was incredibly embarrassed about the fact that she didn't have any teeth anymore and couldn't afford to get dentures. She couldn't afford to go to the dentist. She was on a waiting list for public dental treatment, but it was going to be years off. The impact on her life was a feeling of embarrassment every time she was out in the street. She couldn't actually participate and feel proud of the way that she looked. She felt she had to cover her mouth like this every time she spoke, and that really got to me.

I have another friend who is long-term unemployed: a man in his late 50s. He told me he has just managed to get to the dentist and have a tooth removed, which has been aching and giving him the most amount of pain for well over 10 years. The waiting lists at the moment for public dental care are extraordinary. In fact, he saved up his money, living on JobSeeker, which is a really difficult thing to do, in order to afford to get a private dentist to remove his tooth. This is the impact that poor dental care has on people.

This bill we're talking about today is great; it's extending dental care for kids down to zero from two. But we need to be going far further. We need to be genuinely looking after the health and wellbeing of people, and that's what the Greens are fighting for, to actually say, 'Yes, if you are concerned about the wellbeing of ordinary people, we need to have measures like getting dental care included under Medicare.' The reality is doing that would actually fit into a broader push for social justice, for fighting poverty, and that's what the Greens will always be fighting for. It is why we are calling for the government to lift income support payments above the poverty line so that people don't need to be struggling, caught up in a world full of poverty. We saw what happened in the experiment during the COVID outbreak last year, when JobSeeker was doubled and suddenly people realised that they could afford to spend things on what the rest of us just consider the basics. They could afford to put food on the table for three meals a day, they could afford to put shoes on the feet of their children and they could afford to have the kids to go off on school excursions, so the need for government action is more urgent than ever to be not just extending dental care for kids down to the age of zero but to be taking real action on lifting people above poverty, real action on giving people the basic building blocks so that they can be living happy, successful, meaningful lives.

On the issue of the broader need for income support, I want to highlight a number of figures from a recent report from the Australian Council of Social Service, which puts so starkly the situation that so many in our community are currently in. Their report, Faces of unemployment 2021, finds that 80 per cent of people receiving JobSeeker payments, a record high of 826,000 people, have had to rely on income support for more than a year. The current figure is more than double the previous peak of 350,000, after the 1991 recession, which prompted a billion dollar investment in employment assistance, including wage subsidies and training. Among people on income support for more than two years, over half have a disability and almost half are over 55, underscoring widespread discrimination in the labour market against people with disability and older people. People's chance of securing full-time paid employment within the next year falls from over 50 per cent when they are unemployed for less than three months to less than 25 per cent once they're unemployed for over two years.

We have an inequality crisis in this country. That inequality crisis is something that can be fixed, because poverty is a political choice. Just as we could be making the political choice now to put dental care into Medicare so that you could get free dental treatment by showing your Medicare card, like you use your Medicare card at the doctors, we could be choosing to lift people out of poverty. We could be choosing to raise income support so that people aren't struggling like they currently are. We could be choosing, as our inquiry into the disability support pension has shown, to support people with a disability to get the support they need to live a good life. As the inquiry is showing, the government at the moment is leaving people behind. It's leaving behind people on the DSP, who are facing enormous challenges. Rather the trying to enable people with a disability to get onto the DSP, the government is actively trying to force them off it. These actions by this heartless, cruel and callous governments, leaving people in poverty, have a devastating impact. As Anglicare's Asking those who know report shows, what that means is not just that people can't afford dental treatment; it means that 44 per cent—almost half—of people on JobSeeker reported skipping seven or more meals a week and only 38 per cent said they felt supported by their government.

This is horrifying. It's not the Australia that I want to live in. It's not the Australia that most Australians want to live in. We can make that choice. We can choose to support people across the country, to lift income support above the poverty line and to put dental care into Medicare for everyone. These are the choices that we should be making. Instead of spending billions of dollars on subsidies to fossil fuel companies, cutting corporate tax rates and allowing billionaires to get off without paying any tax at all, we could be making a difference to the lives of ordinary Australians, allowing them to live a decent life, rather than having people in the desperate straits of living in poverty.