Extending free dental care from under 18s to under 30s by the end of 2026 is a vote-winning promise, but so much of it hangs on recruiting hundreds of dentists from abroad, writes political editor Jo Moir
Comment: Free dental care comes up time and time again at elections and Labour has batted it away for the last two, saying it’s a “massively expensive” policy.
On Saturday, six weeks out from the election, Chris Hipkins promised to eventually deliver universal free dental, starting with 18 to 23-year-olds from July 2025 and up to 29-year-olds by July 2026.
That’s 800,000 young people by the end of 2026 getting access to annual check-ups, cleans, X-rays, basic fillings, and extractions.
Free dental already exists for under 18s.
READ MORE: * No big spenders allowed in Labour's campaign * Free dental a political dream
Some in the Labour crowd at the Aotea Centre on Saturday could be mistaken for thinking Hipkins announced the party was going whole hog on free dental immediately given the applause and standing ovation drowned out the important part of the sentence.
All the audience heard was “Labour will make dental care free for all New Zealanders”.
The missing part was “up to the age of 30” – the second mention of it arrived five sentences later and at no point did Hipkins say it wouldn't kick in until 2026.
In December, then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Newsroom universal free dental is a policy everyone would love but “it’s massively expensive”.
In 2020 her party promised and subsequently delivered an increase to dental grants for people on low incomes but failed to invest in the 20 additional mobile dental clinics it pledged for better dental care in remote regional New Zealand.
On Saturday Labour’s health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said five of the 20 have been ordered and the first one would arrive in the country in the new year – more than three years later.
Just last month Hipkins told Newsroom the health system didn’t have the capacity to deliver free dental for all, “and there would likely be significant investment required just in order to build capacity to meet the need for additional dental care”.
Newsroom put that comment back to Hipkins on Saturday and asked what made him think it was affordable now when there’s a cost-of-living crisis, inflation is through the roof, and the country is in recession.
“Every election you have a different set of priorities, we believe now is the time to start rolling out a universal entitlement to free dental care, and we have set out plans to build capacity to do that,” Hipkins responded.
He denied it was too little too late when it takes six years to train a dentist and the first tranche won’t be funded until the May Budget next year.
The additional trainees won’t start study until March 2025.
The first 18 new trainees – a 25 percent increase on the usual number – won’t be qualified until at least 2030.
It means the fast-track green list for immigration will need to be relied on, with Verrall confirming to Newsroom they would need to recruit as many as 200 dentists from abroad.
Dentists, dental technicians, specialists, and therapists were only added to the green list in April this year and so far eight dentists and 18 other dental care workers have arrived.
Verrall noted a government recruitment drive would expect to deliver more than the "piecemeal recruitment from private practices" that has been the case so far.
She said there was some existing capacity in the dental care system that could be drawn on to help and some roles would be used differently.
Newsroom understands the latter translates to training healthcare workers already in the system to also do basic dental care.
There’s no denying access to dental care is an issue that needs addressing.
As Hipkins said in his speech on Saturday, “in 2022 1.5 million Kiwis didn’t visit a dentist because it was just too expensive” and nearly half of those on low incomes don’t see one because of the cost.
“For too long successive governments have treated oral health differently from other health needs. It makes no sense,” Hipkins said.
Presumably he was including the last Labour-NZ First government he was a part of and the current one he inherited from Ardern.
Hipkins described the policy as a bold Labour vision and a “gamechanger for many”.
He acknowledged some aspects of Labour’s eight cost-of-living measures announced so far don’t kick in for a couple of years, making it difficult to claim they will help the back pockets of Kiwis when they need it most.
The dental policy will cost $390 million over the next four years and finance spokesperson Grant Robertson said it had been costed “responsibly and carefully”.
“We could have stood up there today and said it would be all free for everyone right now, but as a country we can’t afford to do that right now.
He said it was a policy that had been talked about in the Labour Party for a long time and this was the beginning of “transformational policy for New Zealanders”.
Transformational, and expensive, but the first real step towards achieving it after so many elections of putting it in the too-hard basket.
Now the hunt for hundreds of dentists begins.
