Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister update the House on Commonwealth support for oral health around Australia and in New South Wales? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies, and what is the government’s response?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an honour to follow the new Minister for Ageing. The Leader of the Opposition will have to be a lot better at scripting muck-raking questions if he is going to trip up this good new minister.

I do thank the member for Macquarie for his question and I can inform him that this government supports oral health in a number of ways: first of all, through PBS subsidy of prescriptions written by dentists; secondly, through modest—and I do stress ‘modest’—Medicare support for dental treatment under team care plans prepared by GPs; thirdly, through increasing dental training places from 221 commencements in 1995 to 312 commencements in 2005, to a planned 561 commencements in 2010. But, most importantly, the government supports oral health through subsidising the 90 per cent of dental services that take place in the private sector to the tune of about $400 million a year.

I certainly regret, as all members of this House do, that there are an estimated 650,000 people on public dental waiting lists. But the blame lies fairly and squarely at the feet of the state Labor governments, which have consistently failed to deliver timely public dental treatment. Members opposite from the great state of New South Wales should be ashamed that there are 210,000 people on New South Wales public dental waiting lists because the Carr-Iemma government has consistently short-changed dental services in that state.

At the Westmead dental hospital, patients with no teeth of their own and with no false teeth are supposed to be treated within three months. That is bad enough, but thanks to the neglect of the Carr-Iemma government those poor people with no teeth whatsoever are now waiting nearly 2½ years for public dental treatment. Patients in severe pain are supposed to be treated within five days. That is bad enough, but thanks to the mismanagement of the Carr-Iemma government those patients now have to wait in severe pain for up to three weeks before they get public dental treatment.

It is very clear where the blame should lie: the blame should lie with the consistent underfunding and the consistent short-changing of the Carr-Iemma government, which spends 25 per cent less on public dentistry per head than the next stingiest state in Australia.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Crean interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hotham is warned!

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that New South Wales is not the only state where Labor governments run public dentistry badly. I regret to inform the House that in the mid-1990s, after the Leader of the Opposition thought he had been the real Premier of Queensland for about five years, public dental waiting lists in Queensland were more than three years, despite the Keating dental scheme. Queenslanders have 50 per cent worse dental decay than other Australians because when this bloke opposite reckoned he was the real Premier of Queensland he refused to fluoridate the water supplies of Queensland.

Mr Speaker, I ask you: is this miserable result due to the fact that he is not a socialist or is it due to the fact that he was a Christian socialist? I put this question, Mr Speaker, through you: if this bloke opposite is such a genius—if he is the genius he thinks he is—why couldn’t he run health services in Queensland? The real question for the people of Australia is: why would you trust Labor to run the country when you cannot trust them to run the states? People are concluding pretty fast that you will not trust this guy with Medicare. You will not let him do to Medicare what he did to the health services of Queensland.