Public Dental Services, Queensland: Alan Thomas Robertson.

Alan Thomas Robertson's career as Assistant Superintendent Brisbane Dental Hospital [1927-1945] and Acting Superintendent [1945-1946] spanned difficult times. In Victoria, against a backdrop of family tragedy and World War I, Robertson achieved distinguished academic and war-service records. Following the move to Queensland, Robertson either experienced or witnessed the Great Depression, World War II and affiliated paradigm shifts in government policy, dental education and the system of the delivery of dental services. Within this context, the actions of Hanlon, Vidgen and Hoole overshadowed Robertson's brief but meaningful contribution to the Australian Dental Association Queensland Branch, his diligent nineteen years of service to the Brisbane Dental Hospital [BDH] and its patients, his pioneering of general anesthesia and his perennial commitment to undergraduate and continuing dental education. Robertson's career was neither financially lucrative nor acclaimed. Despite his overt patriotism, leadership potential, academic profile and experience, seniority and service, Robertson's appointment as Superintendent at the BDH was only an interim measure. A brief career in an entrepreneurial private practice ended in professional isolation followed by tragedy. The authors present a revisionist interpretation of Robertson's career. This narrative conveys messages for human resource managers in both academe and health departments.

Public Dental Services, Queensland, Australia: Charles Octavius Vidgen.

Charles Octavius Vidgen was the Superintendent of the Brisbane Dental Hospital, c1917-1945. Hitherto, commentators' reviews rely on imposing but narrow streams of evidence to either ignore Vidgen's influence on the dental profession or portray it as both peripheral and controversial. In this account, the authors use historical method to provide a revisionist account of Vidgen's professional profile and, to a lesser extent, a character resurrection. Vidgen was probably introverted. His orientation relating to dental education became obsolete, inappropriate and disruptive. Vidgen's actions, beliefs and values incurred sustained and organized opposition from academe, the Australian Dental Association Queensland Branch, the Odontological Society of Queensland and some private practitioners. The sociopolitical context, namely the Great Depression and affiliated reconstruction, the community's demand for government-administered dental services, World War II, twenty-five years of continuous Australian Labor Party government in Queensland, Edward Hanlon's authoritarianism and the emergence of a welfare state were also relevant to Vidgen's becoming a nonconformist, nonjoiner and an outcast. However, the authors posit that, for the socially disadvantaged and the regionally and remotely domiciled, Vidgen was a humanitarian and a quiet social reformer who, under Hanlon's authority and tutelage, pioneered enduring changes to the delivery of dental services across Queensland.

Brisbane Dental Hospital and Queensland University Dental College Building Alias The Palace: Heritage Listing.

The National Trust of Queensland placed the Brisbane Dental Hospital and Queensland College of Dentistry Building, alias The Palace, on the National Trust of Queensland Register in April 1997. This action generated no statutory consequences. Within days, the trust nominated The Palace for listing on the Queensland Heritage Register. Under the terms of the Queensland Heritage Act 1992, this nomination could have impeded an imminent $2-million redevelopment within The Palace. Two years later, the Queensland Heritage Council entered The Palace on the Queensland Heritage Register. This procedural delay was unusual and occurred in an era of post-Fitzgerald bureaucratic reform, federal cutbacks to funding for public dental services, tenuous political control of state government and widespread community support for heritage protection. The authors use historical methods to disclose and analyze hitherto inaccessible evidence relating to the delay in the listing. They argue that, against a backdrop of potential controversy, a small band of networked, organized and resolute administrators and Palace-based personnel, achieved the redevelopment. Astute tactics, concurrent rebuilding of health infrastructure, ministerial resolve, the nature of the act, public demand for dental services, the timing of the redevelopment and the political circumstances influenced the outcome.

Public Dental Services, Queensland: Alfred James Hoole.

Historians have given limited attention to the genesis and evolution of public dental services across Queensland. The Secretary [Minister] for Home Affairs and later Premier, Edward 'Ned' Hanlon, was the political architect of accessible public hospital and dental facilities. However it was administrator and dentist, Alfred James Hoole, who orchestrated the practical details in the field. Hoole developed an extensive and successful government-administered, hospital-based dental service that, in terms of reach and workforce, was the contemporaneous leader in Australia. These clinics and affiliated school dental services delivered treatment to a disproportionately high percentage of socially disadvantaged and remotely domiciled Queenslanders. Hoole's career progression from Superintendent of the Brisbane Dental Hospital to Director of Dental Services is remarkable for its achievements, consequences, competency and duration. It originated from a limited secondary education and traversed the bitter political split of 1957, changes of government, minister and fiscal policy, health adversity and opposition from private practitioners. Hoole, an anointed leader, a ministerial confidant and a pragmatist, served on authorities and institutions that shaped the future of dental education and dental practice across the state. Forty-five years after his death, Hoole's contribution to the administration of public dental services in Queensland remains unrivalled.

Public Dental Services, Queensland: Edward "Ned" Michael Hanlon.

Within the Australian context, commentators often portray the Queensland system of delivery of public dental services as state-specific. A poorly explored dimension within this narrative is the contribution from Ned Hanlon. The authors use historical methods to address this inadequacy in the literature. The implementation of Hanlon's vision of a statewide government-administered dental service required dentists and infrastructure; both implicated legislative and administrative changes to dental education, hospital organization and local authority. In this way, there was an inexorable link between the genesis and evolution of the public hospital and public dental systems. Hanlon's motive was initially humanitarian but later implicated pragmatism, state development and Queensland chauvinism. Hanlon's actions were autocratic, authoritarian and populist. He pursued regionalism, states rights and state development. The post-depression and post-war timing, together with the ubiquity of dental caries and the nature of the dental profession, facilitated Hanlon's success. A nascent and emerging dental profession was powerless, out of touch with public thinking and hindered by the legislative framework that controlled dentists' registration. The Hanlon-dentist encounters became an intersection of conflicting values; idealism and tradition versus pragmatism and innovation. Whatever the perceived inadequacies in Hanlon's methods, his contribution to public dentistry across Queensland remains remarkable.