Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise on the Dental Benefits Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. As this is a health related bill, I would like to firstly address my comments to rebut some of the points made by members of the opposition during this debate.

We have heard this common phrase throughout many of the members of the opposition's speeches about 'cuts to health spending'. I am not sure, but I think maybe in their talking points members of the opposition are told: 'Just keep repeating this, time after time after time. Never mind the facts, and then maybe it might become a truth.' I have more faith in members of the Australian public to look at what the actual facts are and determining those facts and seeing if they are being misled.

The facts are that for overall health spending this financial year there is a nine per cent increase—this government is putting $1.3 billion extra into health spending this financial year. Next financial year, on top of that $1.3 billion, there is yet another nine per cent—or $1.4 billion—increase in health spending. And in the financial year after that, the third financial year of this government's budget, there will be yet another nine per cent increase. That is another $1.5 million, on top of all those other increases, that is going to our hospitals from this federal government. So if members of the opposition come in here and think that a nine per cent increase every year for the next three years is not enough, it is up to them to simply say how much more they are going to put in, but most importantly where the money will come from. Where will the money come from if a nine per cent—$1.3 billion to $1.5 billion—increase each year in our health spending by this federal government is not enough? How much more do they want and where will that money come from?

Getting onto the exact provisions of this bill: to explain the details of this bill and the necessity for it, it is necessary to do a review of history to see how we have come to this stage. There is the concept that this government would like to see more money invested in dental care across the nation, but there is simply no such thing as free health care or free dental care. Somebody has to pay for it; the money has to come for it from somewhere. There is no such thing as Magic Pudding economics. At the end of the day the bills have to be paid by someone.

To go back to the origins of this bill we need to go back to 1996, when the previous coalition government were first elected. What they inherited at that time was a budget in deficit and $96 billion worth of accumulated debt—that was their inheritance. But even more importantly, they also inherited a liability to pay interest on that debt of $9.5 billion in the first year. So rather than having $9.5 billion to spend on all the many things that we needed in our society, $9.5 billion worth of taxes had to be raised, taken out of the economy and used to pay the interest bill on the previous government's debt. And what we saw was a successful government; we saw they were successful because they created opportunity. They encouraged entrepreneurs to get out there and take risks, to experiment with their new business ideas and to innovate: that is what created the wealth and prosperity, so the money started to flow into the federal Treasury, which allowed us to slowly pay down the debt; to run a surplus year after year and to slowly wind back that debt.

One of the most important things the previous government did to wind that debt back was to lower company tax rates. It often sounds quite counterintuitive, but by lowering company tax rates the Howard and Costello government actually got more money in the coffers. For example, in the first year of the Howard and Costello government company tax rates were 36 per cent; about 3.3 per cent of GDP was raised in company taxes, something close to about $19 billion. But what the Howard and Costello government did was lower those tax rates; they wound those company tax rates back to 30 per cent. Now for those who do not understand how the economy works they would simply say, 'That will cause revenue to the government to fall', but the exact opposite happened. By lowering those company tax rates, by giving individuals and companies and businesses and small businesses the incentive to go out there and invest because of a lower company tax rate, we saw an expansion of the economy. What we also saw was the percentage of total GDP raised by company taxes increase, and increase substantially, at a lower rate of company tax.

So then we move forward to about 2005 or 2006. By then, after good economic management for close to a decade, we had finally been able to pay back that $96 billion worth of Labor debt. But most importantly, because there was no debt, there was no interest bill that the government had to finance. That freed up money to fund a lot of the social programs that are so desperately needed in our society. One of those social programs put in by the then health minister, now the Prime Minister, was the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. This is one of the dividends of good economic management: when you have government keeping the budget in surplus and the economy running, the benefits and dividends you get allow you to spend on social programs. That Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, established during the Howard government by the now Prime Minister, provided $4,250 every two years for private dental treatment for people who had a chronic dental disease. Twenty million services were provided to over one million Australians who benefited under that scheme. One million Australians were the recipients of that good economic benefit—that dividend—through the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. It was the most successful scheme for curing dental disease and dental issues in our nation's history.

But what happened when the Labor government came to power? We saw reckless and wasteful spending, and one of the saddest things of all was that they tried to delegitimise the success of the previous Howard government. They went out and criticised the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. What they did so they could take it away—because they wanted to cut costs to try to wind their budget back—was go out looking for scapegoats. Remember, one million Australians received benefits under this scheme. So they went out looking for scapegoats and the scapegoats they found were the dentists who had made a mistake filling out their paperwork. That is simply what they had done: they had made a genuine mistake filling out the paperwork. Of course, the previous Labor government came out and said this was rorting. They found a few cases—a handful of cases—out of one million Australians who received treatment under the program, and that is the reason they gave for cutting this scheme off. The true reason was they were too embarrassed to admit this was a successful scheme brought in by the previous health minister, then opposition leader, and current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

This is what this bill addresses. It enables those so-called debts that were created—debts the government claims are owed by dentists—to be wiped off. They are not genuine debts; the services were performed. They are simply the result of an error of paperwork. We all know how hard it is to fill out government forms and paperwork. Only the other day I was at a volunteer awards ceremony in southern Sydney with all the volunteers. There were many worthy volunteers in that room. There were rural firefighters; people who volunteer in our hospitals; people who volunteer in our aged-care sector; and people who volunteer with our kids with disabilities. But the overall winner was a group called the 'form-filling helpers'. Their specific volunteer contribution to society is to help citizens fill out government forms.

This is why you cannot simply go back and look at a form in which there has been a slight discrepancy and try to take away the money that was paid to dentists for work they did in good faith—to claw that money back. That is what this bill addresses. It winds back and brings in amendments to make sure those so-called debts, where the work was done in good faith, are repealed. Without delaying the House any further, I commend this bill to the House.

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