Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this bill, the Health Insurance (Dental Services) Bill 2012 [No. 2], which has been proposed by my colleague Senator Bushby, because it is an area of significant concern to those of us on this side of the chamber and it is a subject of great concern that has been raised with me many times in my patron seats of Chisholm, Bruce and Deakin in Victoria.

Dental health in Australia has been—without being too cute—decaying since the day that Labor took office in 2007. This government inherited a successful dental scheme, the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, that was introduced by the coalition in government and that provides $4,250 in Medicare dental benefits over two years for eligible patients with chronic dental health disease. About one million patients have benefited from the scheme since 2007, with more than 17 million services having been provided. But the patients who rely on the scheme appear to mean little to this government, which has been, I hate to say, playing politics with the dental health of Australians since it formed government in 2007. Why does the government hate this scheme? I dare say it is because it was introduced by the opposition leader Tony Abbott when he was health minister. What has the Labor Party done subsequently? It has repeatedly tried to scrap it and then, after the Senate rejected Labor's attempts to do that, it has set out to undermine the scheme.

As my coalition colleagues have already mentioned in this chamber, the government established an audit task force in June 2010, resulting in an audit process that has destroyed trust in government funded dental schemes, which is an absolute tragedy. The coalition will always support an audit process that seeks to detect fraud, the misuse of taxpayers' funds and the provision of inappropriate services. After all, it is the job of us in the Senate to ensure that we scrutinise sufficiently everything that goes through this place to make sure that taxpayer funds, which are so hard earned, are spent in the most effective, cautious way so as to ensure value for money. But the government's audit process has been misguided. It has seen hard-working dentists pursued relentlessly over minor, technical mistakes in their paperwork. The advent of this has been raised with me by many dentists, including my own dentist when I went for a check-up not so long ago. In the majority of cases, dentists found to be noncompliant have in fact given appropriate services to their patients. These dentists did not comply with technical requirements, but for many of them it was their first interaction with Medicare. There was no intent to mislead and there certainly was no intent to act in a fraudulent way. Many of these dentists have also even attempted to immediately rectify the situation when they were notified of the error that they had inadvertently committed. Yet the government, who have seemed, particularly in the last couple of years, to have had an extraordinary track record of continuous blunders and incompetence have been absolutely unforgiving and merciless in their approach. They have been totally unforgiving and heartless in their prosecution of these cases.

For years Labor ministers have persevered with claims that dentists who did not comply with minor technical requirements must repay all benefits in full. Let me quote just one of those ministers, the Minister for Health and Ageing, Tanya Plibersek in the other place. I find this particularly concerning. On 20 March 2011, prior to her appointment as minister for health, she was quoted in the Victorian Herald Sun newspaper describing the Medicare dental scheme:

There's a massive blowout. There's just an incentive for dentists to go out and look for people to drag in your practice.

So she was in effect reflecting on the so-called lack of professionalism of our dentists. There is no suggestion that you do not have an occasional one, but to absolutely spray the whole dental profession in this way I thought was a slap in the face for the extraordinary expertise and service that they provide to all Australians. It really demonstrated her disregard for the critical service that they provide and continue to provide to Australians. That she would publicly accuse dentists, some of the most respected and valued professionals in our community, of prioritising money over the health of their patients is despicable.

The minister for health is supposed to be acting in the best interests of the profession and the Australians who they assist. Rather than attempting to damage the standing of dentists, she should be out there doing everything she can to strengthen the position of the profession of dentistry. Yet that is exactly what the minister and her predecessor in this Labor government have done. Reputations have been ruined. Some dentists are even facing bankruptcy. But the government do not seem to be too concerned about that either. They have shown a complete lack of compassion for dentists and the health of the patients that they treat.

Has the government ever stopped to think about how a government-funded dental scheme works? It works with the participation and cooperation of the dental profession—the very same group that has lost trust in the government and the way in which it has presided over this issue. Despite the government promising time and time again that dental health is a priority, there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Whilst we are becoming accustomed to the government breaking its promises time after time, this is one area where it has just got to stop.

Constituents in my patron seat in my home state of Victoria, as I have previously said, are crying out for the federal government to give dental health the attention that it so deserves. Melbourne people are waiting up to three years to see a dentist. In February of this year the community newspaper group Leader Community Newspapers reported that the situation had gotten so bad that desperate patients were ringing around to find public dental clinics with shorter waiting times. In some suburbs the waiting times had blown out to 30 months. I know that in the suburb of Box Hill, which is close to my electorate office in Burwood East, it can take up to 20 months for a check-up and 31 months for dentures. I have had someone walk into my office who had lost their dentures and had waited for two years. They were absolutely desperate because they were not able to consume solid food.

With dental health largely excluded from Medicare, that means struggling families sometimes have to book more than two years in advance just for fillings, for check-ups or to have their teeth cleaned. The Liberal state government in Victoria, which inherited these blown-out waiting lists from their Labor predecessors, have acknowledged that these waiting lists are too long. They recognise the importance of dental hygiene to an individual's overall health and are increasing funding to target areas of high need and to address some of the real issues that many people are facing in Victoria.

It is up to this federal government to finally keep its promise and show that dental health is indeed a priority, as it keeps saying. It is time for the government to take some of the pressure off the states and territories with a Medicare dental scheme that actually supports dentists and their patients. Labor has promised to fix health and end the blame game between the federal and state and territory governments, but what we have seen is something quite different. This government needs to realise that talking about dental health is not good enough and that Victorians—in fact, all Australians—are calling for action. Government action might have helped six-year-old Jackson from Melton, who had to endure a two-hour operation at the Melbourne dental hospital in December last year. Jackson had to have no fewer than six teeth removed, five fillings, two root canals and two silver crowns fitted. What a traumatic experience for someone so young!

Even sadder is the fact that he is not the only child struggling with dental health because of lack of access to services. A study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that more than half of all six-year-olds are affected by teeth decay.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

That is a hugely troubling statistic, Senator Bilyk. You should listen. You might actually learn something if you listen. It would help you enormously. Why is this government not prioritising funding for dental health and dental education instead of wasting time and taxpayers' money pursuing dentists over minor infractions of the Medicare scheme? It is a disgrace.

The government, in one of its rare initiatives in dental health, introduced the Medicare Teen Dental Plan in 2008, which provides a voucher to eligible teenagers. But the voucher is just for a preventative check and the Australian Dental Association has argued that the scheme is inadequate. It does not provide for follow-up care and is restricted to 12- to 17-year-olds. The report Child Dental Health Survey Australia 2007: 30-year trends in child oral health was released just last month, on 29 May. One of the survey's findings was that:

Thirty-nine per cent of children aged 12 and 60% of children aged 15 had some history of decay in their permanent teeth—that is, one or more decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth.

In the face of this report, I simply cannot understand why the government is failing to act on this. As a mother, I am angry on behalf of all the parents out there who are having to deal with this.

In addition to undermining the successful existing Medicare program, the government has failed to deliver on its own dental health promises. I just mentioned the inadequate Medicare Teen Dental Health Plan, but there was also the Commonwealth Dental Health Program proposed by Labor in 2008. As usual, Labor promised a lot—this Labor government promised an enormous amount—but have delivered very little. Under the Commonwealth Health Dental Program, there was to be funding directed to the states and territories to provide some one million services. Of course, the government did not stop to assess the capacity of the public dental workforce to provide the services. They could have consulted with the Australian Dental Association—I know that the Victorian branch's figures show that only 10 per cent of dentists work in the public sector. So, as usual, the figures Labor used were wrong. Their program could not deliver the one million services promised. I notice that Senator Bilyk has suddenly gone very quiet on the other side of the chamber in the face of some statistics that demonstrate just how they have, once again, dropped the ball. But the figure falls well short of the 17 million services provided by the Medicare dental scheme introduced by a coalition government. The program was scrapped—did you hear that, Senator Bilyk?—in this year's budget. This is yet another broken promise from Labor.

The budget, in fact, provided very little for dental health, despite all the rhetoric coming from the other side of the chamber. There was only approximately $60 million in new funding announced in this budget for dental health care. When you consider the needs of Australians, including those in Victoria, that sum is a drop in the ocean. It will not result in the substantial improvements to dental health care that are needed. The coalition is the only side of politics that has delivered a dental scheme that has made a real difference.

I am very pleased to speak in support of this bill today. It is an area that needs to be rectified. It is an area in which the Labor government have continued to demonstrate their incompetence. For the sake of my constituents in Victoria, I hope that this government supports this bill, finally sees some sense and sees the need for the promotion and support of greater dental health care for all Australians.