Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Dental Benefits Amendment Bill 2012 and it is good to be talking about dental care. It is a particularly important thing in my electorate. I have often noticed constituents who have had significant tooth decay and how that has affected their lives, their job prospects, their social prospects and just their everyday quality of life. It is obviously an important issue to both sides of this House.

One should not forget the history of this. Dental care is a state responsibility in the main and the first intervention by a federal government into this area was by the Keating government. In the last few years of the Keating government a significant package was announced to reduce state waiting lists, which were blowing out at the time as the state governments reduced funding for dental care in the community. Traditionally it was one of their responsibilities but, sadly, it is one that state governments have neglected over time.

Increasingly it has needed the intervention of federal governments, and the Keating government was the first to announce a significant investment in trying to reduce those waiting lists. That has been the traditional way of dealing with this issue. It is an unfortunate fact of life that that scheme was cancelled by the Howard government in its first year of office, along with a lot of other promises that were important to my electorate like the expansion of the main north road and a few other things in South Australia which were important at the time. What then followed was a decade of neglect when state governments across the board often did not spend enough money on public dental health care. The federal government was less than interested as well, until former Prime Minister Howard hit the twilight years of his time in office and the boom started to roll in with all the money.

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