Grievance Debate

Riverland Dental Services

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:07): Today, I rise to speak about changes to dental service clinics in the Riverland and what appears to be just another centralisation of services in regional South Australia. Yesterday, I received a letter from the executive director of SA Dental Service stating that SA Dental Service clinics in the Riverland would be closed at the end of 2016 and amalgamated into a new Riverland oral health centre to be located at the site of the Riverland General Hospital.

The specific clinics to be closed will be the Berri School Dental Clinic, the Loxton School Dental Clinic, the Renmark School Dental Clinic and the Berri Community Dental Clinic. The letter goes on to say that these changes are a part of a process of upgrading and consolidating South Australia's public dental infrastructure to ensure that it complies with contemporary models of care and relevant standards, and provides a suitable environment for clients and staff.

This is all very well and good, and I appreciate the significant investment in our dental care facilities, but what concerns me once again is the centralisation of these services, or the consolidation, as the state government often likes to call it. We have seen it happen with our health facilities following the $36 million upgrade of the Riverland General Hospital in Berri. For example, surgery at Renmark has all but completely disappeared, wound back and moved to Berri.

The major upgrades to our dental services are vital and well overdue, but why do we have to reduce and close services in some of our other towns? Is there not room for upgrades in facilities in these smaller services to complement the new Riverland oral health centre in Berri? It is not as if we do not have the population to utilise these services. The wait for a public dental service appointment in the Riverland once hit more than two years.

The Riverland has one of the state's most ageing populations, it is an ideal destination for retirees and it has been successfully marketed as such in recent years. With some distance between the Riverland towns, one of the main challenges we face is the lack of public transport options, particularly in the Riverland and Mallee. They are virtually non-existent. Many of the elderly citizens rely on council-run medical buses to get them to appointments and the demand for this is extremely high.

What we are now seeing is more centralisation of dental services, with those that are currently in Renmark and Loxton, which take appointments for children, to be moved to Berri. Parents in Loxton and Renmark who are working full-time will somehow need to find a way to get their children to Berri for a dental appointment in 2017. Do not get me wrong: I welcome this new oral health centre in the Riverland. It will be state-of-the-art with four surgeries for undergraduate students. However, I do not see the need to centralise services, particularly when the demand is high and there is a distinct lack of public transport options in the Riverland.

The last thing we want to do is to further isolate families who are already struggling with the cost of living and who may be unable to afford that travel from Loxton to Berri. Obviously, the recent Save the Children report which was released on Mother's Day revealed that raising children in regional South Australia, particularly in the Riverland and Mallee, is as tough as it gets anywhere in South Australia.

One of the alarming statistics that has just been revealed under the Australian Research Centre statistics—and this survey was conducted for the first time in 25 years—is that one in nine children between the age of five and 14 has never been to the dentist and 25 per cent of children under the age of 10 have untreated decay. What this is saying is that people who are isolated are at a social disadvantage.

The people of regional South Australia continue to see centralisation models, particularly under this government which is a centralist government. It has no regard for people who are doing it tough, who have to travel and who have low incomes, particularly those who have to travel significant distance. They have to take time off work and, in some cases, that reduces pay. Having to travel long distances deters people from actually visiting the dentist, just the same as visiting the doctor.

Regional South Australia will be the beneficiary of one new dental facility, but the strategy around supporting small regional communities has again been put on the backburner and we see another centralised model by this government, which does not care about regional South Australia.