Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Cowper and the member for Solomon say, 'Hear, hear!' because they know how important it is for rural and regional areas to get a coalition government in place. As I say, the federal Labor government is promising money almost cruelly, raising the expectations and hopes of people with a disability with the National Disability Insurance Scheme—money that the Productivity Commission says is a minuscule amount considering what is actually needed to properly fund such a scheme. And with the Gonski education overhaul, we see the minister for education promising all sorts of things, but the government is very low on funding delivery.

There is nothing worse than a toothache—we all know that; we have all had one. In America at the moment—and this is relevant to this particular disallowance motion before the House, because at the moment we have a presidential election in America—one of the biggest stories going around is about a fellow by the name of Kyle Willis, a 24-year-old father who died from a condition which started as a toothache. I downloaded a story from the web which is very relevant to this motion. It speaks of the fact that Mr Willis is dead because he did not have health insurance; he is dead because he could not afford a simple antibiotic to kill the infection in his mouth. Yet there are still people in America who think the health-care issue is something that President Barack Obama made up to steal money from hardworking Americans' pay cheques.

The difference between America and Australia in many ways is that we have safeguards in place. We have safety nets in place. We are so privileged, we are so lucky, to have systems in place to help those who most need it. We now have a very good disallowance motion, which I support, before the House. The bill before the House is going to strip away people's dental health services, and we cannot afford that.

Poor Mr Willis was unemployed and he could not afford a visit to the dentist. He could not pay to have a wisdom tooth removed, which in the United States costs $400, based on national averages for extraction costs, because he did not have insurance. He was just another American guy. One in four Americans under the age of 65 do not have dental insurance, and that includes people who have regular health insurance. That bothersome wisdom tooth went beyond dentistry when his lack of money kept him from getting it taken care of. He went to the emergency room but he did not have health insurance. That is an average American story, and we do not want that to be an average Australian story. We do not want to have cruel stories, disastrous stories, of people saying that their friends and relatives suffered so greatly because this mean-spirited government took away money in a vital dental services system.

This is not about preserving rorts. This is about oral health in this country, particularly in regional areas such as Cowper, Port Macquarie and New England. I certainly trust that the regional Independents, who say they care about regional people and the constituents they serve, will come in and support us on this disallowance motion, because it is important. The coalition supports investment in dental health. The government has announced the closure of the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, effective 30 November, and the replacement schemes are not due to commence until 2014. To anyone out there needing this assistance—and I hope they are listening to the audio from parliament—and to the people in the gallery, I say: 'If you've got a toothache, get it fixed now because after 30 November you will have to pay for it out of your own pocket because of this mean-spirited—

See this speech in context