Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Dental Benefits Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. A strange sense of deja vu comes over me as I again have to fix another one of Labor's bungled attempts at finding their elusive surplus. When the Labor government decided to axe the coalition's Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme we lost a great service. That scheme provided over 17 million services to approximately one million patients from 2007 to 2012. It provided $4,250 in dental benefits over two years for eligible patients with a chronic health condition. Then Labor cut the plan and had no backup system until 2014. It put those with chronic dental conditions out into the wilderness with no plan in place—and Labor preaches its concern and regard for the health of our nation! To this I say: rubbish, absolute rubbish.

Labor's alternative was just another program that did nothing but plunge the disadvantaged people into even worse circumstances. Dental care should be a basic right as an Australian citizen. Constituents in my electorate of Paterson, who cannot afford any more cuts in funding, wrote to me in droves as they discovered that a basic service like dental care was taken away from them. Pensioners make up a large percentage of my electorate and they are most likely to have other health issues that can get worse without regular dental check-ups and treatment. Parents with young children were told they would need to wait at least 13 months until they could get their children's growing teeth examined. Working families living in remote rural areas, who do not have immediate access to a public dental hospital, had to incur lost time, travel costs and invariably accommodation costs for what should be a given service to taxpayers. The disabled and the unemployed are already working within tight budgets and tough situations, especially the disabled where every aspect of their health needs to be carefully managed. These disadvantaged people had already endured other cuts by Labor when searching for a surplus—a surplus that was never achieved. The Labor government failed yet again. The Labor government failed to service those most in need—the chronically ill—yet they preach their commitment and their concern to the disadvantaged of this great nation.

The purpose of this bill that we are debating today is to restore sanity to the system. We have an opportunity to help those dentists who were so overwhelmed with patients that they did not have the opportunity to do the paperwork. The Dental Benefits Legislation Amendment Bill of 2014 will waive debts for dentists who, under the former Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, did nothing more than make minor paperwork errors and who have been waiting for way too long for an adequate resolution. The Chronic Disease Dental Scheme was set up in 2007 and provided access to benefits of up to $4,250 over two calendar years for patients with chronic health conditions. Eighty per cent of people who accessed this scheme were concession card holders. It was the country's biggest investment ever into dental care and in 2012 the former Labor government closed it down. For what purpose? Political gain. Another failure to add to the former Labor government's cap.

The scheme included a technical reporting requirement. Dentists needed to provide treatment plans to GPs along with a quote and a treatment plan to patients prior to commencing treatment. The former Labor government sought to use dentists' technical oversights as a means of discrediting the scheme. They introduced a change that saw dentists who did not meet all of these reporting requirements pursued for repayment of the full amount of the Medicare benefits paid under the scheme although in most cases the dentists had met all other requirements of the scheme and, importantly, had provided much needed services to the patients. It should be all about the patients and their health care.

I understand that some believe this scheme was scrapped due to an abundance of dentists who committed fraud and did not comply with the other legal requirements of the program. This was clearly not the case. The majority of dentists provided services in good faith and treated their patients with the care they needed. They will now be rewarded for their service. It was yet another shameful act that a former Labor government used as a political power play.

The Council of Australian Governments Reform Council has released its latest snapshot on the progress of the Commonwealth against the 2008 National Healthcare Agreement. The Healthcare in Australia report notes six areas of concern. One of them is that more Australians are putting off dental care because it is seen as too expensive. It is a worrying precedent that some Australians are not going to see their dentist, orthodontist or other dental professional because of costs. The report finds that nearly one in five—18.8 per cent—of Australians aged over 15 put off seeing a dentist. The statistics are worse in our poorer communities. Amongst the poorer communities, one in four people put off going to see a dental professional because of the costs. If you go to the doctor, particularly in a disadvantaged area, it is bulk-billed; there is no cost to the patient. But, if you go to a dentist, there is a significant cost, and it is a big deterrent to people.

According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics report, Census of population and housing: socio-economic indexes for areas (SEIFA), my electorate of Paterson has a population of 230,235 people. This report notes that, out of 722,685 doctor visits, 566,357 were bulk-billed. That is over 78 per cent of my residents who need bulk-billing. With that high a percentage for standard GP visits, you can only imagine the number who could not access dental health specialists.

Dental health is critical to maintaining good health. It is especially important when you already have other medical ailments, other health issues, to manage. This is increasingly common when you are in the older segment of our society, when you are elderly. In my electorate of Paterson, senior citizens make up a large part of my community—self-funded retirees and age pensioners. In Paterson I have 36,319 constituents aged 60 and over, who make up 28.4 per cent of the electorate. In Australia the number of constituents aged 60 and over is approximately 4.2 million, which equates to 19.6 per cent. So you can see we are batting above the average in terms of the elderly in my electorate of Paterson. By 2037, nearly 23 per cent of the nation's population will be 65 years old or older, and this equates to more than 6.4 million people by 2037.

As my constituents get older, they encounter more healthcare needs. As the following examples will explain, their dental health can prove interconnected with their existing conditions when it comes to treatment options. I was contacted by a constituent who wanted to complain about the axing of the Labor government's scheme. This person is 66 and was diagnosed with lupus, with secondary Sjogren's syndrome. Despite surgery on her saliva ducts, this lady's glands were producing a minimum amount of saliva. Due to this, her teeth were deteriorating rapidly and she required a lot of dental procedures. Also factor in the cost of the additional trips to Westmead Hospital's Specialist Dental Centre, which involved hotel stays overnight. With her condition consisting of six extra issues caused by the first, she was seeing eight different specialists in all, so her medical bills were high, and, with the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme being closed down, she was concerned about the future of her health. I can fully understand why. She would not be on her own in that respect. My electorate is rural and, in parts, quite remote, so any visit to Sydney is quite a journey, and when you are sick it would be quite exhausting.

Another resident contacted my office. She too was concerned when the scheme was closed down. She was over 60 and being treated for breast cancer. This terrible disease had her enduring surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. In addition to all this, these services were causing problems with her bones and her teeth. Her GP referred her to a dentist under the scheme, but six weeks later the scheme was shut down. So not only does this resident have to endure the biggest battle of her life with breast cancer; she also has to take on dental issues as a second, encore round.

And it is not just seniors who are finding it tough. A resident in my electorate who goes by the name of Angel was seriously injured in a car accident when he was in his early 40s and was affected by the axing of the chronic disease dental plan. In this accident he broke his back in three places and his pelvic plate in five places and completely snapped his right hip joint. He broke his left leg and both his ankles and broke his heel bones off. He also received muscular damage and torn nerve endings. He spent four months in traction and six months in a wheelchair, and once he finally regained the ability to walk he was slapped with a $25,000 bill. So, already, Angel has taken on his fair share of the pain, and that is quite a recovery that he will have to make. Following all this, he has to take heavy medication for the pain and the nerve damage, which has an effect on his teeth. He estimates that his teeth will rot within a couple of years if he does not go to a dentist on a regular basis—which of course he cannot, without the scheme that was in place.

Now my constituent has to choose between going further and further into debt and losing his teeth at the age of 45. And I have to ask: how could the former government have been so cruel to those who needed their help the most? When you are fighting cancer you have to keep up good dental health because of the amount of surgery you will be having. That is why it is quite concerning for a senior citizen, whom I have mentioned before in this place, who is fighting breast cancer. She is having surgeries as a result of chemotherapy and if she does not find the money to fund her dental treatments she cannot continue to fight the cancer. As I asked at the time, when Labor was cancelling the scheme, what kind of a heartless government would cancel such a vital scheme that delivered so much to people outside the major cities? Let me take you back to 2012, when we were first discussing the ridiculous concept of scrapping the scheme. I told you about Margaret Rylands from Forster, who had been living with diabetes for 52 years. Her husband had to have five bypass operations and then they had little money coming in. They also had bad teeth. Now, with no scheme in place, if their teeth get worse or her husband needs another operation, they could be in real trouble.

Let me explain. I know of a young man in Forster who had jaw cancer. He needed to keep good teeth while battling this disease, at it could affect his general health. If he got so much as a gum infection in a tooth, it would flow on to his bones and down to his jaw. Now he has cancer and an infection, and that infection could kill him. In my area of an ever-growing number of retirees, this could be catastrophic. If one of my elderly residents falls down and breaks their hip, they will need surgery. If they have bad teeth, they will now have to find the funds to first fix their teeth before they can even get onto the waitlist for a hip replacement. This means that they will need to find extra help just to get around, and then wait until their dental health is cleared before they can take the steps towards independence again.

As I said earlier, I yet again find myself having to fix another one of Labor's bungled programs. In the past year we have had to deal with many of their shoddy schemes—policies like disastrous home insulation schemes, the failed solar rebate, the implementation of crippling carbon taxes and mining taxes, and the lapse in border protection. All of these were especially felt in my electorate. And of course there were the never-ending issues with digital television, which I raised yesterday. To fix one more mess and assist the overworked, undercredited dental health specialists in my area is important. This bill will address that in part. I commend the bill to the House.

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