John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

of Medicare funded dental treatment at a dentist every two years to people with chronic and complex conditions like diabetes, heart disease or cancer who are referred by their GP to a dentist under a care plan. It includes dental assessments, preventative services, extractions, fillings and other restorative work and dentures. It was estimated to cost $384 million over four years.

That program is due to start in a few weeks time, and the Labor Party have promised to abolish it and they are going to rip almost $100 million out of dental care for older Australians. They are not going to replace it with their program; they are going to give $290 million to the states. If you look at the way in which public health is managed in this country, why would anybody give Morris Iemma or Anna Bligh or what’s-his-name, John Brumby—they change so fast these days I lose track—or Mike Rann, and so it goes on, Commonwealth dollars and take those dollars away from Australians in need of dental assistance?

Here is another example of how the Leader of the Opposition operates. He says: ‘We won’t have a program—that’s too hard. We’ll abolish our program. We’ll take $100 million out of it and we’ll hand $290 million to the states.’ Let me say: that is no way to run this country. It is no way to run this country to abolish a Commonwealth program, take $100 million along the way and then hand $290 million to the states with no guarantee that the states will spend the money wisely, with no guarantee that waiting lists will be reduced and with no guarantee that the dental health of older Australians will be improved. I think it is a disgrace that the Labor Party voted against a program that is going to bring improved dental health to hundreds of thousands of older Australians, and the Labor Party stands condemned for such a policy.

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