While it's rarely news when someone gets a filling, paleoantologists are quite excited this week to report what may be one of the world's oldest fillings-made of beeswax, in a jaw recovered from a cave near Trieste, Italy. The specimen has been stored at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy for the past century, but it has only been recently that the beeswax filling has been noticed.

Millions of children and low-income patients will get free dental care under a landmark $4 billion package of reforms announced by Health Minister Tanya Plibersek today.

Ms Plibersek said the spending would be in two key areas: