Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows a young couple, the Simms, in their living room in Melbourne being interviewed in 1969 about how financial difficulties have resulted in their family’s poor dental health and an inability to afford health insurance. Throughout the clip the interviewer is off-camera and the camera is focused on the couple in close-up so that their responses to his questions can be seen clearly. The Simms appear to be relatively at ease despite the intrusive nature of the interview.

Educational value points

• The clip provides an example of a television interviewer and camera intruding into and exposing the personal and private world of the couple being interviewed and raises questions about the justification for such an intrusive approach. The Simms respond with good humour and dignity in the face of questions that expose their poverty and the fact that they wear dentures and that reveal potential dental problems that they may face with their young children.

• The poverty and hardship experienced by the Simms reveal the falling standards of living for vulnerable citizens in the midst of growing affluence in 1960s Australia. In 1966 the first major piece of research on living conditions in Melbourne showed that around 1 in 16 people was living in poverty. This shocked many Australians and was influential in the establishment in 1972 of the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty, resulting in the 1975 Henderson Inquiry Report.

• The interviewer asks questions about dental care within the family because limited access to dental treatment was and continues to be an indicator of social and economic disadvantage. Untreated tooth decay has adverse consequences for health. Decayed and missing teeth can also affect job prospects, making it more difficult for people competing for jobs. Poverty that limits access to dental treatment has been identified as a major cause of deprivation and social exclusion.

• The Simms both had a full set of dentures at a young age and that may indicate the poor state of dental health for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the 1960s. This situation improved following the introduction of fluoride into various Australian water supplies beginning in 1964 and the development of a preventative approach to oral health. Those Australians born since 1970 have been exposed to more dental prevention than any preceding generation.

• Mr Simms reveals that he is no longer able to afford medical insurance at a time when only a voluntary system of private health insurance operated in Australia. Health insurance became untenable for contributors such as the Simms who could not keep up with rising medical and hospital fees. It was not until 1975 that Medicare, the Commonwealth-funded health insurance scheme, was introduced in Australia to provide free or subsidised health-care services.

• The Chequerboard series (1969–75) from which this clip is taken was the subject of debate among ABC television viewers, and some reasons are evident here. For example, extreme close-ups on the faces of subjects as they spoke intimately about their lives led to accusations of intrusiveness. The series was praised for the way it covered important social issues and allowed ordinary Australians to speak for themselves rather than have experts speak for them.

A young married couple are being interviewed in their home.
Interviewer Tell me something about the problems of coping in the house. Things like toothpaste. Do you have any toothpaste in the house at the moment?
Mrs Simms You’d be joking. No, not at the moment.
Interviewer Then the children may have dental bills in the years to come. How will you face that?
Mr Simms Well at the moment, they’re not old enough to really use a toothbrush and know what it’s for, are they? They’re only one and two. They’re not even into their second set of teeth yet. That’s the ones that really count. You’ve got plenty of time to train them between now and them. As for ourselves, we’ve both got false teeth so we don’t use it for ourselves, only…
Interviewer Why did you both have all your teeth out?
Mr Simms Well, Estelle had hers out when she was only a youngster, and I had mine out when I was about 19.
Interviewer It saves you some dentist bills?
Mr Simms That’s it. That was more or less tooth decay, not looking after them, I suppose.
Interviewer Mr Simms, have you ever belonged to any kind of medical insurance organisation, like medical benefits?
Mr Simms Well, I was in HBA when we first got married, but one thing on top of another, I wasn’t able to keep the payments up on that either.
Interviewer You mean in order to pay the medical bills, you had to cut out medical benefits?
Mr Simms Benefits, because they don’t cover you wholly and solely either. They only cover you for a certain amount, so many months in the year, and after that you’re on your own. They drop right down, as you – the more hospital bills you get. If you’re one of those people who’s chronically ill, and you’re ill all the time, the bill drops down to a hell of a minority by the time 12 months is up. You might as well not be in it anyway.