Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Dental health services

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (21:43): (951) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. The action I am seeking is for the minister to meet with public oral health therapists to hear their concerns about poor pay and conditions. This government is well aware of the crisis facing our public dental sector, yet they are doing nothing to fix it. It was uncomfortable to watch the minister at budget estimates hearings last month refuse to admit that Victorians face huge issues trying to access dental care. Instead we heard the same tired old lines about Commonwealth funding shortfalls and the high number of people who are seen through emergency care. Common sense tells us that we must ensure that people can access health care before their health deteriorates – before they require emergency care. This is simple, straightforward health service provision. Instead we have a government that is dodging the truth. For decades they have turned their back on public dental. When successive Labor governments underfund our public dental system, we are left with entire generations who have prolonged oral health issues. The health of Victorians is suffering.

Now the oral health workforce is straining under the pressure. Since 2018 the total number of dental practitioners working in the public dental sector has plummeted by 14 per cent. This is despite an overall increase in the number of dental practitioners in the workforce. If the minister is unsure about why this is happening, I implore her to speak to the workforce, because their message is clear: poor public sector wages and conditions are driving them to the private sector or interstate. Oral health professionals working in the public dental system are paid $6 above the minimum wage. These workers are on the front line of primary health provision, managing long adult waiting lists and staffing Smile Squad buses to care for the teeth of Victorian children. Public oral health therapists, 90 per cent of whom are women, are opting to take on precarious casual public contracts because salaries are so poor it is a way to boost their wages. Graduates coming into the public system are leaving after two years because of low wages. Like many of our public health workforce, those who work in oral health are deeply committed to the work that they do, but frankly they are being taken advantage of. Oral health therapists deserve wage parity with other allied health professionals. The Victorian government controls the purse strings. They could intervene right now and commit to a wage increase for these essential health workers. The Greens have long called for a commitment to oral health access for all Victorians. This means boosting the public workforce and paying workers the wage that they deserve, because as it stands there is nothing to smile about.