Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Throw him out if he does not shut up.

The explanatory memorandum says that this legislation is also allowing debts incurred during the design of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme to be waived. Some of those mistakes were genuine mistakes. They were genuine mistakes because this scheme was so poorly designed by the now Prime Minister, the former Minister for Health. As I said, it was supposed to cost $90 million a year and ended up costing $80 million a month because of, in some cases, work being done that did not need to be done. There were over 1,000 complaints about dentures that did not fit and about work that was done that was not necessary. Compare that—a scheme costing $80 million a month and so poorly designed—to our targeted scheme investing in public dental services so people on low incomes could get the care and the treatment that they need.

But, of course, this is all part of a pattern. This is a government that said before the last election that it would not cut health—and what has it done? It has cut more than $400 million from dental care—much-needed dental care around the country. The minister is now softening us up for further cuts to the children's dental scheme—a scheme that has, for more than three million Australian children, made it as easy to go to the dentist as it is to go to the doctor.

We have seen these cuts come on top of $50 billion cut from public hospitals. These cuts have come on top of the $7 GP co-payment. They have come on top of up-front costs that used not to exist for diagnostic imaging—costs that the Prime Minister obviously had no idea that his own budget contained, when he was speaking about them in question time yesterday. We have seen it come on top an increased cost of medicines.

The most vulnerable Australians and ordinary mums and dads right across the board know that if their kids need dental care they should get it now before this minister cuts this program. They know, if they are waiting for public dental care, to forget about it. They know, that if they need to go to the GP, it is going to cost them to go to the GP to get a blood test or to get a diagnostic image. When they go to the pharmacy they are going to be paying more for their medicine. But if they turn up at casualty because they cannot afford to go to the doctor anymore, they will be waiting longer because of the cuts to the public health system.

I want to finish on this note, Mr Deputy Speaker: I see in the advisers' box a number of people from the Department of Health who worked extraordinarily diligently on the dental reform package that we took to the people in our time in government. I want to congratulate them for their dedication over many years, the fine work they did and their commitment to the people of Australia to ensure that every Australian can have decent dental health.

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