Page 2989 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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remarkable presentation which Mrs Burke gave. Once again it strikes me as remarkable that a member of the Liberal Party, with no sense of self-awareness or culpability, would stand in this place and launch a very directed attack in relation to oral surgery or dentistry within the ACT—or indeed anywhere in Australia.
I think we have all acknowledged—and we acknowledge it again today in response to Mrs Burke’s rant—that, after 11 years of Howard government, if one were to seek to identify one amongst many nasty, unjustified, vicious cuts in budget, it would be the slashing by the Howard government of the public dental funding that would rank as the most vicious, the most unnecessary and the most calculated decision that the Howard government has taken in its 11 years—in a context of unheralded prosperity, in a context where a $17 billion budget surplus that was anticipated just three months ago has now expanded to a $22 billion surplus.
With a surplus of $22 billion, the Howard Liberal government still cannot find a way to restore funding for public dentistry. Yet we have a member of the Liberal Party—the shadow minister for health and Deputy Leader of the Opposition—standing in this place and seeking to make suggestions about issues that members within this community face in relation to oral health and dentistry. The implications for anyone with untreated oral or dental issues are quite remarkable. It indicates to me—indicates and illustrates—a complete lack of self-awareness or consciousness of the responsibility that has to be sheeted home to John Howard, Peter Costello and 11 years of Liberal government for the absolute slashing, under that government, of funding for public dentistry within Australia, including here within the ACT: funding which my government has to some extent sought to restore. Indeed, in the last budget we increased funding for dental services by $1.7 million, seeking to make up some of the shortfall.
In the context of the Howard Liberal government’s commitment to health, some of the statistics and the information that have been released in the last week or so by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is sobering. We find that in its 11 years in government the Howard government, the Howard-Costello team, have effectively reduced commonwealth expenditure on public health by 10 per cent over 10 years. In a period of unheralded growth, increased demand and an ageing population—an exponential increase—we find the federal government actually decreasing expenditure on health whilst the states and territories, without the same access to revenue streams, have been desperately seeking to hold back the flood of demand.
In her presentation, Mrs Burke went to an internal report into oral and maxillofacial and plastic and reconstructive services. It was an internal report. Mrs Burke stands again, as she has done previously, and seems to suggest that there is some secret report—a report that she says was gathering dust. It was an internal review undertaken by the hospital around service development and quality improvement in ACT Health. It was not a report to the government, nor was it a report that was requested by the ACT government. It was an internal investigation, within oral maxillofacial and plastic and reconstructive surgery, into issues around that particular service within the ACT.
A number of stakeholders were consulted. A number of recommendations were made. The government has accepted many of those recommendations and acted on many of
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