Government Support for Dentists' Pro-bono Work

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PDF printable version of Government Support for Dentists' Pro-bono Work (PDF 91 KB)

31 August 2012

E&OE Only

Press Conference - Government Support for Dentists' Pro-bono Work Melbourne

Topics: Funding for National Dental Foundation, RU486

Tanya Plibersek: We'll we're here for a very happy reason today, to announce the funding of $450,000 for the National Dental Foundation.

The National Dental Foundation, run by Merv Saultry and a number - a great number of volunteers has made an absolutely invaluable contribution to the dental health of Australians.

This is a group of dentists who do work free, pro bono, in their own time for people who really need dental help. They look after people on low incomes, unemployed, refugees, women and children in shelters, homeless kids, all the most needy people in our community and they do it for free, in their own time, in their own surgery, using their own resources.

This $450,000 will enable Merv and his friends to employ someone a day a week in each state and territory really just to book appointments, make sure that dentists are available, make sure that the patients turn up because of course if the dentists have set a day aside for a dental [indistinct] they want to make sure that that day is fully utilised.

This is an enormous contribution that has been made up until now completely by volunteers in their own time and effort with a small grant here and there to help with expenses. By being able to employ someone a day a week it will mean that the National Dental Foundation can almost double it's capacity for people to be seen.

I really want to congratulate Merv today because this really has come out of years of hard work, dedication, thousands of hours of his own time, and a degree of leadership that is quite uncommon. He has been the one who has contacted dentists and dental organisations to get him to contribute their time and their resources to the fantastic effort.

He's been the one that's been knocking on doors asking for this funding to be coordinated so that the capacity of the National Dental Foundation can be expanded.

So Merv I'm going to hand over to you know. This is - it's just such a tribute to this man, to all the volunteers involved. It's a small amount of money by Federal Government standards but I know that every single cent will be used for the best possible outcomes to get great quality dental work for people who really need it.

Mervin Saultry: Thank you very much. I'm a bit embarrassed by all that. What I'd like to do is acknowledge the fact that it's a team effort, that it didn't matter what one person did if you didn't get the support of other people, it couldn't happen.

And that in particular the other board members at the National Dental Foundation; they're all dentists who own and operate their own practices and yet you still find that they've found the time to volunteer and they volunteer but also the leading dentists in their states.

Their collective efforts over the last seven years have really started to build into a fair bit of momentum and that's really reflective in the number of people who have been helped.

In designing the foundation we've decided that the charities who are working with the very many people without the discretion of selecting the patients, and this has truly been simply to separate the greedy needy from the really needy and make sure that the volunteers spent time with going to people who really didn't have a lot of options.

We're very, very thankful for Minister Tanya's persistence. She has supported me now for quite a few years and this help is going to make it - this donation of money is going to make a really major difference to what we're able to do and I sincerely thank you.

Tanya Plibersek: Thanks Mervin.
We're going to talk to Steven now.

[Over talking]

Question: Feeling brave Steven?
[Laughter]

You're amongst friends here. Reporters never do anything mean to people.
[Laughter]

Steven, tell us about your experience and how you feel like it changed your life?

Steven: I've ended up having 10 fillings and a new plate made for the side of my mouth. It's helped me confidence-wise so confidence-wise incredibly.

Overall I'll be able to get a job easier and stuff now, won't have the problems - tooth aches everything like that that I've been putting off and putting off because I haven't had the money or any support to be able to go and look after my teeth. And yeah, just give me a lot more confidence and be able to get out and smile again and yeah.

Question: How did you manage to get in touch with…

[Break in audio]

Steven: …and their local church organisations that helps people out when they're down and needy and yeah, that sort of got me in contact with the foundation and got me signed up.

Question: How long had your teeth been hurting for around then?

Steven: Two and a half to three years.

Question: How many visits did it take?

Steven: One.
[Laughter]

Yep, yep, a lot of work, I don't know.

Question: Can you talk about what it was like when your teeth were bad, what that did to your confidence and so on?

Steven: Confidence was right down. I didn't want to go out to social events, anything like that. Job interviews, anything like that, were a lot more - I was self-conscious things like that, didn't want to smile, didn't want to sort of put on a face at all because the gaps missing and holes everywhere and stuff like that.

Question: Did you think it did affect your ability to get a job?

Steven: For sure. For sure. I think now with clean teeth and a full set of teeth and all my holes fixed, I think I've got a lot better chances in jobs now.

Question: [Inaudible]

Steven: Yeah, yeah, it was getting me down a lot, sort of, don't like to go out a lot when you've got holes in your teeth and teeth missing and stuff like that. So…

Question: Would you have got it all [indistinct]…

Steven: No, it would have been years down the track when I could get myself back on my feet and afford some sort of dental cover then. But yeah, I would have still been going through pain.

Question: And what kind of work did you get to your teeth?

Steven: Fillings. Mainly fillings and a new plate and stuff made so that missing front tooth is gone.

Question: How many fillings did you get?

Steven: Ten altogether.

Question: [Inaudible]…particular incident?

Steven: Front tooth car accident and the rest just neglect and probably being a young fella and not looking after his teeth properly. Probably more what it comes down to.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mervin Saultry: Can I just make one statement, part of what we do for people like Steve is that when they are treated on the day that the dentist as well as the treatment prepares a forward treatment plan and that forward treatment plan is handed to the case worker to help people like Steven get into the public dental health system so that they aren't left on their own and they can register for further treatment.

And that way we're not just picking people up and putting them down and [indistinct], we're reaching out and getting them out of their oral health issues and then helping them into a very positive future.

Question: [Inaudible]

Tanya Plibersek: Okay, come on.
[Laughter]

Question: …[inaudible] questions on how this will be funded and if the budget will be able to - would you be able to get it back to surplus as a result of this scheme, how do you respond to that?

Tanya Plibersek: So this $450,000 for the National Dental Foundation comes from the half billion dollars that was contributed in the last budget to better dental care for Australians; $515.3 million in the 2012-'13 budget. That covers not just this measure but a boost to public dental, $345 million to take people off the waiting list in public dental across the states and territories and other measures including work force measures, extra dental chairs where they're needed and so on.

The measure that was announced earlier this week, the $4.1 billion investment in oral health - $2.7 billion for children and $1.3 million for adults in the public system and extra money again for workforce measures and dental infrastructure measures - will be fully funded and accounted for in the way all of our spending measures are fully funded and accounted for and you'll see all of the figures in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.

This government has a record of taking tough decisions to make savings. We've found $33 billion worth of savings in the last budget and $100 billion worth of savings in previous budgets.

The reason that we've worked so hard to make those savings, the reasons that we've worked so hard to make sure that Australians have a job and the economy is doing its best, that it's growing strongly is because we want to invest in [indistinct] priority. We want a strong economy so we can have a fair society. The savings we make but strong economy we run is so that we can back this sort of investment; the investment in our children's future that will be driven by the education reforms that we were discussing at the moment.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme so that provision of disability services is not rationed, it's actually based on need.

These are things that we believe… [break in audio] …and the Government, and I think they're things that the Australian community strongly supports. So we need to make sure that every dollar of taxpayers' funds is going to those priorities, that involves some tough saving decisions.
One of the first things I had to do as Health Minister was to shepherd through a very difficult saving in the private health insurance area, means testing the private health insurance rebate, it wasn't easy. I had to make a case to the community about why it was necessary but we are then able to use those dollars to invest in the things that are true priorities for this Government, and dental is one of them.

Question: There's some confusion though between yourself and the Prime Minister it seems, as to whether it's a spending or a saving measure though, doesn't that essentially making it pretty difficult to convince people that that is what you're trying to do?

Tanya Plibersek: No, one of the things that we announced this week is the closure of the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, the scheme that Tony Abbott introduced in the dying days of the Howard Government, that cost - was supposed to cost $90 million a year, it's now costing $80 million a month, and with that scheme, that $80 million a month, we've still got 400,000 people on public dental waiting lists.

It's a scheme that sprays money around, with very poor effect, it's not means tested, so you can be a millionaire and get treatment under the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, and you can be a poor teenager, and not be able to afford to get a filling, under that very same scheme. You can have up to $4250 worth of work done, but that work can be cosmetic, because there's no rules about what can be done under the scheme.

So not means tested, not targeted to the services that are most necessary, and it's one of the most poorly designed and wasteful schemes invented in the history of health policy, and Tony Abbott brought it in as Health Minister.

By closing that scheme, of course we don't need to continue to find money to fund it, but there's no provision in the forward estimates for the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme, because it has been our intention to close it since we came to Government.

For years now we've been trying to close this scheme, and quarter on quarter, we have had to find the money to pay for it. And there's no pot of money waiting to spend on the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme that we can redirect to this.

So the Prime Minister's right in saying that we will no longer quarter on quarter, have to find the funds to cover a wasteful and poorly designed scheme.

Question: Why did it take so long?

Tanya Plibersek: Because we couldn't get the support of the Greens or Independents, and certainly not the support of the Liberals, to close it.

Question: Does it frustrate you then the credit that the Greens are certainly taking over getting this dental scheme through?

Tanya Plibersek: Well, we have negotiated with the Greens on the scheme, but I can tell you, if we had managed to close the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme earlier, we certainly would have been in a better position for funding other areas of health reform, including dental.

I think that it's great that the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme will close now, it's been wasteful spending, and I think it's also worth remembering that I've been talking about better dental care since 1998 in the Parliament, and Merv will tell you that years ago, when I was working on homelessness, I knew that dental was a priority then for homeless Australians, and low income Australians.

In my first press conference as Health Minister, I named dental as one of my policy priorities, and I'm very pleased that we've got there now.

Question: Just on one other matter, what's your reaction to the listing of TGA [indistinct]?

Tanya Plibersek: I think the listing of RU486, or Mifepristine, is something that has clearly gone through all of the normal TGA processes. There has been no interference at all from the Government, it's been evaluated as safe and effective, and I'm pleased that Australian women will now have wider access to this.

Having an abortion is an incredibly difficult decision for any woman, it is not a decision that anyone takes lightly, but around the world, around 40 million women have used this method of having a termination, a medical termination, and it's been found to be safe and effective in over 40 countries where many, many women have used it.

We know when given a choice, around 84 per cent of women prefer a medical to a surgical termination, and we also know that in countries abroad, with great distances to travel, as with Australians, that this medical termination may be indeed an easier form of termination to access, than surgical terminations. No-one should be under any illusion that this is an easy decision…[break in audio]… process to undergo.

This is about giving women a choice, treating them like adults and allowing them and their medical advisors and their families to make a decision together about what method of termination they'll pursue.

Question: Specifically, where will the government find savings to fund this scheme. You've said you won't take an axe to the health budget to fund it, could you kind of specify what specific savings were made - what programs might be cut?

Tanya Plibersek: So all the savings across government will be planned in the mid-year economic forecast but of course I will have to find savings in the Health portfolio and other portfolio will have to find savings as well. We've set up a tough requirement to return to surplus.

These have been difficult economic times. We're just coming out of the global financial crisis - at least we hope we're coming out of the global financial crisis.

Australia has done very well compared to other countries. Our economy is strong but we still need to be very wise and very responsible in returning the government - the budget to surplus.

Savings will be made clearer at the mid-year economic forecast but we have a strong record of finding savings; $33 billion in the last budget and indeed my own record as Health Minister has included some pretty tough savings already.

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