Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer to my question of the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care. I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Indigenous Australians (Senator McCarthy) to a question without notice I asked today relating to dental care.

I asked about dental care because, as people might know, two million Australians last year could not afford to go to the dentist, and 80,000 of those folk ended up in hospital because they hadn't taken a preventive dental action that would have prevented them going to the hospital. So I ask the government: when are you finally going to recognise that the teeth are part of the body and that going to the dentist should be the same as going to the doctor? You should just be able to show your Medicare card and not your credit card in order to get that important health care that you need.

The minister initially talked about going to the GP—not that people shouldn't be able to go to the GP for free, I might add; that's what the Greens would like to see—but didn't actually address the issue of dental care at all. In answering my subsequent question, the minister rattled off some small amount of support for the public dental system that she said was basically the problem of the states and territories. In answer to the final part of my question, the minister said, 'Well, we support private dental by doing a private health insurance rebate, and what dentists charge is up to them.' Well, what is covered by Medicare is up to the government, which is why the Greens are pushing for dental care to be included in Medicare.

In 2010, when this Labor Party last needed the Greens to form government, we insisted on including dental care for kids in Medicare, and that's been such a successful program ever since. So many families are grateful for that and are getting their kids the preventive dental care they need. But we want to finish the job. We want to see everyone in Australia able to get the dental care that they need, and, in a cost-of-living crisis, it's probably the first thing that drops off everybody's budget. On the point of budget, one in three big corporations pays no tax. We know that from the annual tax transparency disclosure statement that the ATO issues. We know that one in three big corporations pays no tax, and we know that a nurse or a teacher pays more tax than those one in three big corporations, which is obscene. Those massive corporates are raking in millions and billions of dollars worth of profit, and this government, just like the last, is letting them get away with avoiding paying their fair share of tax.

If we made the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, you could actually afford to fund the things that people need and expect from their government, like decent health care and putting dental care into Medicare. Don't stop there—you could put mental health care into Medicare. Don't stop there, either—you could make seeing the GP free. You could get rid of that bulk-billing co-payment and make sure that consumers can actually get health care, because, as I said, in this cost-of-living crisis it's not just dental care people are foregoing; they're also foregoing visits to the GP. They're not taking that preventive healthcare action that might actually keep them out of hospital in the long run. If we made those big corporations pay their fair share, it's not just the healthcare system that we could improve; we could fully fund our public schools. We could make sure that every child, no matter where they live in the country, gets a top-quality education. We could even pay teachers and nurses more, like the Greens think they should be. They're overworked. They're underpaid. Multinationals are paying less tax than teachers and nurses.

We look forward to keeping a Dutton prime ministership out. We don't want to see that side of politics. We are going to work to keep Dutton out, and we're going to work to force Labor to act on the things that actually make a difference in people's lives. Part of that is making sure those big corporations pay their fair share of tax, precisely so we can fund things that make people's lives easier and protect the planet: fixing dental care and putting that, along with mental health care, into Medicare; people seeing the GP for free; fully funding hospitals; fully funding schools; and fully funding the climate transition so that every household can afford to have solar and battery power to not only address the climate crisis but to keep their energy bills down. This is the kind of vision that I think people want from their representatives. And, if we made those big corporates pay their fair share, this is the sort of thing that we could fund for people. I'm baffled that no government wants to have the vision and the courage to do those things, because it would actually help people, it would help the economy, it would help the climate, and it would make sure that people are not just getting screwed over by the inequities of the current system, which sees big corporates dictating policies—making generous political donations to boost their profits—and everybody else getting screwed.

Question agreed to.