Brenna Holmes is a senior dentist at the public health clinic in Tamworth hospital and she believed the recently released statistics rung true in the region.

“The rate of decay in children’s teeth and, often, the rate of untreated decay was probably pretty true to form,” Dr Holmes said.

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The figures came from the Australian Health Policy Collaboration’s newly established oral health tracker.

Dr Holmes said people’s attitude toward preventative dental care needed to shift.

She said another statistic, from an earlier study, revealed about a “quarter of parents didn’t realise their children need dental visits even if they don’t have a problem”.

“They thought they only needed to go to the dentist when their child had a problem,” she said.

“So, often, by the time their child is having pain or symptoms, the tooth is in quite a poor condition or there’s teeth with decay as well.”

“Often by the time they’re getting pain, it’s because they’re getting infection around it.”

While cost is often sited as a major reason for avoiding a trip to the dentist, Dr Holmes said children living in Family Tax Benefit Part A households are eligible for free dental care up to the age of 18.

“There is a decent chunk of the population who don’t realise they are actually eligible under that,” she said.

Publicly funded schemes for adults are harder to come by, but Dr Holmes said it was cheaper in the long-run to have consistent check-ups rather than putting it off until more extensive work was needed.

She said getting kids in good habits around oral health was crucial to overcoming issues later in life and breaking down any fear-factor about the dentist.

She said the poor adult oral health seen in the public clinic stemmed from poor habits set in childhood.

“You notice if they’ve not got those good patterns set as a young child, or if their parents don’t help them set those behaviours, they don’t know to maintain that,” she said.

The national oral health tracker figures found 34.3 per cent of kids aged five or six had experienced tooth decay in baby teeth. Only 55.8 per cent had visited a dentist before the age of five, a figure dental groups want to raise to 67 per cent by 2025.

More than three-quarters (78.4 per cent) of teenagers aged 12 to 17 had seen a dentist in their lifetime, but it’s hoped the rate will climb to 86 per cent by 2025.