Tuesday, 8 September 2026

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (23:50): (2779) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I am seeking is for her to properly fund our public dental system so that every Victorian can see a dentist when they need one. Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote said, ‘Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.’ Well, not according to the Victorian Labor government. Really, it should be pretty simple: if you need to see a dentist, you should be able to see one. Yet for the past 12 years they have overseen the deterioration of the public dental system. It is the bare bones of what it should be, under extreme pressure from years of neglect.

More than 1.5 million Victorian adults are eligible for public dental care, but only a fraction of them actually receive it because of long waiting lists. The thing is that a toothache or infection does not wait patiently for an appointment. Dental disease is the leading cause of preventable hospitalisations for kids under 10 in Victoria, and it causes thousands of hospitalisations and deaths in adults. It is not just dental pain and infection. Dental disease is linked to so many other conditions, from heart disease and stroke to pregnancy complications and autoimmune disease. The alternative to languishing on the public dental waiting list is private dental care, but that often means hundreds or even thousands of dollars people simply do not have. So if you cannot afford private care, bad luck – just keep brushing, keep taking pain relief and keep hoping. Nobody should have to decide between getting a tooth fixed and paying the rent or putting food on the table, but that is the reality for a third of Victorian adults who have put off dental care because of the cost.

It does not have to be this way. We could invest in our public dental system to build it up into something that all Victorians could be proud of. We could have the best paid public dental workforce in the country, with genuine opportunities to build long-term careers. We could have modern clinics with the equipment they need, a properly paid workforce and, more importantly, people getting preventative care and intervention when they need it. You may be thinking this is all too expensive, but it is not; it is just a matter of priorities. Victoria can actually afford to invest in dental health. What we cannot afford is to continue leaving people in agonising pain for years. We cannot afford to keep allowing preventable dental disease to become emergencies. Dental care is health care, and it is time we funded it like that.