A recent pre-election commitment to build ten new clinics and promising free care for everyone will make it harder, not easier for vulnerable Victorians to access the dental care they need.
By Matt Hopcraft – Republished from Dental as Anything
Let me preface this by saying that I am one of the strongest advocates for increasing public funding to improve access to dental care. Too many Australians delay or miss out on necessary dental care each year, and affordability is a key driver. I have spent countless hours meeting Victorian politicians and their advisors outlining the issues with their under-resourced public dental system and discussing ways to improve it, to little avail.
When I heard that the new Victorian Premier Ben Carroll had announced a new dental package, I was equal parts intrigued and sceptical. Might the message have finally sunk in that dental health is not something that can be ignored.
At the same time, I got a strong sense of de ja vu. Because we’ve been here before folks, with big pre-election dental announcements. And there is a saying about people who make the same mistakes over and over again?
So a little history lesson. Just prior to the 2018 Victorian election, I wrote that there was a distinct lack of focus on dental care in the policy announcements from the major parties. Perhaps that piece, alongside the continual highlighting of long waiting times for public dental care (obtained via Freedom of Information requests due to a lack of transparency) sparked someone in then Premier Dan Andrew’s office. Because in the days before the election, Andrews announced his signature $321 million Smile Squad school dental van program.
In case you have forgotten (and I certainly haven’t), this Labor government promised to provide free dental check-ups and treatment to every state school student.
One of my (more muted) public responses at the time – ‘yet to be convinced the plan would free up capacity in the wider public system within coming years.’ Behind closed doors I also advised that the government would be unable to deliver on their ambitious promise, for a range of fairly obvious reasons. Advice that fell on deaf ears.
So before we look at this new initiative, it’s worth revisiting that 2018 election promise to see whether the government has been able to deliver on their ambitious promise.
A review of the recent 2026/27 budget papers tell a dismal story. In 2025 there were 666,000 primary and secondary school students across nearly 1,600 government schools in Victoria. Despite nearly eight years since the program was first announced with an aim to visit every government school in Victoria, the budget papers had a target to visit only 575 schools 2025/26 – a target they are likely to fail with an expected outcome of visiting 562 schools.
Across these schools, there is a target for 69,300 children to receive a dental examination – a little over 10 per cent of the total student population. And the expected outcome is even less than that extremely low target – only 64,900. As for treatment – a target of only 20,800 students with an expected outcome of only 15,200.
Across all of these key metrics, Smile Squad has clearly failed to deliver on the core promise – which was to provide free check-ups and treatment to every state school student. There is no way to spin this other than as a monumental policy failure*.
What about the public dental system for adult patients? Waiting times currently sit around 15 months and they are increasing again. But that average hides much longer waiting times in many parts of the state – 33 months in Pakenham and Lowan, 24 months in Gippsland East, 21 months in Sunbury and 22 months in St Albans – right next door to Ben Carroll’s own electorate.
This is not a new problem, and the causes are pretty obvious. There are more than 1.5 million adults eligible for public dental services, but only around 200,000 are able to receive dental care each year. Around one third of that care is for emergency treatment – exacerbated by the fact that patients are stuck on long waiting lists as their oral health deteriorates. So smaller problems become bigger problems until there is a need for urgent care. Then treatment is compromised, and there is not enough time to focus on prevention and general care. Why? An underfunded and resourced system.
At latest count, just over half of the 640 dental chairs are fully utilised, and the number of dentists employed in public clinics has been declining since 2018. Like the current enterprise bargaining with teachers and doctors has shown, the Victorian government consistently undervalues and underpays its frontline staff.
Despite enterprise bargaining and industrial action, Victorian public sector dentists remain the lowest paid across Australia, making it hard to attract and retain staff, as the current vacancies attest.
So where does that position this latest announcement to provide ten new dental clinics across Victoria – seven in Melbourne and three in unspecified regional locations, to provide free care to all Victorians operating on a drop-in basis like urgent care medical clinics?
The Andrews/Allan/Carroll government, under a succession of health ministers – Jill Hennessy, Jenny Mikakos, Martin Foley and Mary-Anne Thomas – have paid only lip service to public dentistry. This is an announcement without teeth. A promise that cannot be fulfilled. If they can’t fully staff their existing clinics, what hope is there of finding staff for 10 more? If they can only provide care to less than 20% of eligible patients – those most vulnerable and at need – then what are the consequences to removing the means test and attempting to provide a free service available to everyone?
The frustration here is that for years we have been advocating for governments to take oral health more seriously, and to invest funding to help those who have the most difficulty in accessing care, and who experience the greatest burden of disease. There is clearly a need for the Victorian government to invest more into public dentistry. But this isn’t the way to do it. It is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, whilst ignoring the real problem that does. Respect the current workforce and build that capacity. Once the current chair capacity reaches 100%, then look at expanding. Anything else is fanciful electioneering, that helps no-one.
It’s worth noting that Smile Squad was dreamed up not by health bureaucrats or dental health experts, but by politicians and political advisors. And it was based on a complete misunderstanding of data. Internally, the Andrews government apparatchiks who designed Smile Squad believed that fewer than 20% of Victorian children visited the dentist each year. They were shocked when I showed them longstanding evidence that child dental visitation rates were consistently around 80%. It’s the sort of rookie error that happens when you don’t consult with experts. And I fear that Ben Carroll has made the same mistake again, to the detriment of the oral health of Victorians.
This is a government that has consistently failed to deliver on their dental promises and have overseen a public dental system in a state of disrepair. Victorians deserve better.
* This isn’t a criticism of the amazing people who work tirelessly across our public dental clinics. It’s an indictment on the government who consistently undervalue the work that they do until an election rolls around and they need a shiny new policy announcement.
Read more of Matt Hopcraft’s work by subscribing to his Substack – Dental as Anything
