Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Well, yet another delusional rewriting of history from the Greens political party. I can recall, in 1998, the first occasion where I played some sort of leadership role in a local campaign, campaigning on dental. Labor has always been clear that dental and public dental is immensely important for the people that we represent. Dental health makes an enormous difference to people's overall health. It is ludicrous to argue, as Senator Steele-John has just done, that this is somehow owned by the Greens. 'We did it'—another one for the Facebook page of the Greens. 'We achieved something,' notwithstanding the fact that they were not in government. By now everybody surely understands that the only way to get progress on social justice is in fact to elect a Labor government. The endless attempts by the Australian Greens political party to undermine the Labor Party for their own narrow political and electoral interests does not serve them well.

Labor won't be supporting this amendment from the Greens. Yet again we have a situation where the Greens are coming up with an amendment that would have a significant cost and, for the reasons I just explained, stands no chance of passing in the other place. Do you know why? Because what we need for real reform is a Labor government. We need a Labor majority. This is another Greens stunt that has no realistic chance of ever becoming law. As my colleague mentioned in the second reading contributions, Labor supports this bill as an extension of Labor's legacy. We are glad that the government came around from its previous attempts to cut or abolish the scheme and are now proposing to expand it. We shouldn't stand in the way. We shouldn't delay this welcome reform of the Child Dental Benefits Schedule by supporting something that has no chance.