May 21, 2026 — 5:47pmWhen Natasha Tualau walked into a clinic owned by one of Australia’s largest cosmetic dental chains, she claims she was looking for a simple fix for a discoloured front tooth.Instead, the 34-year-old alleges she stepped into a high-pressure sales environment that depleted $35,000 from her family’s retirement savings to fund expensive and painful dental work, including veneers.Natasha Tualau says she has been left with sore teeth and no retirement savings. Paul Jeffers“I don’t ever want to have my teeth touched by a dentist,” the mother of four said. “It’s left me in pain every day.”Her treatment at the clinic by four Dental Boutique dentists, as well as an external GP and psychiatrist, is now being investigated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).The watchdog is growing increasingly concerned about medical practitioners encouraging patients to access their superannuation early under a scheme designed to help those with chronic pain and life-threatening conditions.The latest figures from the Australian Taxation Office show that more than $817.6 million was withdrawn from Australian’s superannuation accounts to fund dental procedures last financial year. This represents a 12-fold increase over seven years. A record 34,050 Australians successfully applied to raid their retirement nest eggs to pay for dental work last financial year.To be approved for the scheme, patients must provide the ATO with two separate reports from a medical specialist and a medical practitioner to certify that treatment is necessary to treat a life-threatening illness or injury or to alleviate acute or chronic pain or mental illness.Tualau alleges that on two separate occasions, Dental Boutique practitioners wrote false declarations to the ATO saying she was experiencing acute and chronic pain and mental illness to facilitate her access to the scheme. She claims she was not suffering from these ailments at the time.“Clinically, there was nothing potentially wrong with my teeth other than the cosmetic side of it,” she said.Dentist Boutique categorically refutes all of Tualau’s allegations. It has said that only a small minority of its patients use the superannuation early access scheme.The rise in superannuation being withdrawn has coincided with a steady stream of complaints to AHPRA about the conduct of medical practitioners involved in the scheme.Between January 2019 and March this year, the watchdog received 112 notifications related to the compassionate release of superannuation.In 2024, this masthead revealed that AHPRA was investigating claims that a Dental Boutique practitioner and a Sydney GP created false declarations for the Tax Office that allowed a 46-year-old Melbourne man to withdraw $41,000 from his retirements saving for dental veneers and crowns. That investigation is ongoing.Dental Boutique, which employs more than 150 clinicians around Australia, denied these claims.During her first visit to Dental Boutique in May 2023, Tualau asked a consultant for advice on fixing a cracked and discoloured front tooth that had been damaged in a childhood accident.They later put her in touch with a dentist who advised that only fixing one tooth would result in a mismatched smile, and she should consider composite bonding for eight teeth.When she said she was unable to afford the $10,000 price tag or payment plans, Tualau alleges, the Dental Boutique dentist suggested another solution: her superannuation.Tualau claims that Dental Boutique’s finance team phoned her later that day and asked her to authorise contact from SuperCare, a third-party company that helps Australians access their superannuation for medical treatments.Tualau says her superannuation was drained to fund expensive dental treatments, including veneers.Paul JeffersA GP and a Dental Boutique practitioner – whom Tualau claims she never met and who is not mentioned in her dental records – then wrote letters to the Tax Office claiming she needed dental work to alleviate acute or chronic pain.SuperCare helped Tualau submit these forms to the ATO during a Zoom call in which she was allegedly asked to mirror her screen while logged on to her MyGov account.There is no mention of chronic pain in Tualau’s dental records from that period – just localised sensitivity to cold.But after the composite bonding was applied to her teeth, Tualau claimed, she did start to experience pain. She said that within 18 months, the bonding was chipping and cracking, and her erupting wisdom teeth were also causing severe discomfort.She said the clinic recommended extracting her wisdom teeth and upgrading to 10 porcelain veneers. This would set her back a further $23,990.This time, Tualau accessed her former husband’s superannuation. She alleges the clinic told her to tell a psychiatrist over a telehealth consultation that her dental state was making her mentally unwell.After Tualau told the psychiatrist that her teeth were making her mentally unwell, that psychiatrist, another GP she claims she never spoke to, and a Dental Boutique dentist wrote letters to the ATO last August stating that Tualau had an acute mental health condition.They wrote that this would be alleviated if her veneers were fixed and her wisdom teeth removed.“The proposed dental treatment is intended to address these concerns by restoring oral function and aesthetics, thereby alleviating the patient’s reported mental illness,” wrote the Dental Boutique practitioner.Her dental records do not mention mental illness.In December, SuperCare emailed Tualau and confirmed that Dental Boutique paid two fees of $680 in 2023 and 2025 to help her access her superannuation. SuperCare did not provide a response before deadline.While Tualau now has a dazzling smile, she said she had been left in constant pain from her veneers. She struggles to drink cold liquids without stinging pain, and when the wind hits her teeth, she winces.“I had four unmedicated births,” she said, “and I would go through that any day over this.”She has also been left with financial scars.Because the ATO treats early superannuation payments as taxable income, her childcare subsidies and family tax benefits have been slashed. She no longer has any retirement savings and worries that she will never be able to own her own home.Associate Professor Matt Hopcraft, a dental expert from the University of Melbourne, said it appeared some dentists were exploiting the scheme for financial gain.“They know the language to use to get the requests approved,” he said. “It points to a really significant issue... that they have got these really loose criteria, and clearly some practices are exploiting them.”Hopcraft would like to see limits on the amount of money that can be withdrawn for dental work and improved information sharing between AHPRA and the ATO to crack down on practitioners and clinics submitting disproportionate numbers of applications.“The broader dilemma is that we’ve got this situation where a huge group of people really are struggling to access dental care because of the cost ... we don’t have a Medicare-type system to help them,” he said. “These people are falling through the cracks.”An AHPRA spokesman said the watchdog was unable to comment on individual practitioners.But the spokesman said the watchdog was working with the ATO to ensure that the compassionate release of superannuation was only being used for patients with legitimate clinical needs.“Enticing patients to use superannuation for non-essential treatment, falsifying reports and profiting from vulnerable patients is unacceptable,” he said.“Non-compliant practitioners are on notice that AHPRA will use every available tool to prevent harm and enforce professional standards.”These tools included intelligence-sharing with other agencies and piloting the use of AI to identify risky online advertising, he said.A Tax Office spokeswoman said that while the vast majority of health practitioners did the right thing, the agency was concerned that a small minority of health practitioners and third parties were using predatory practices to get Australians to inappropriately access their super early.“The ATO cannot comment on specific matters or actions currently under way,” she said. “However, the ATO’s ongoing regulatory and compliance work makes it clear that there are consequences for behaviours that are being observed across the system.”Henrietta Cook is a senior reporter covering health for The Age. Henrietta joined The Age in 2012 and has previously covered state politics, education and consumer affairs.Connect via X, Facebook or email.From our partners