I used to believe that it was as compulsory to be registered with Medicare as it was to vote. I’m coming to learn that neither is really true. I’ve never been interested in politics and wouldn’t trust the person I voted for to live up to the promises that made me choose them anyway, so I took leaving Australia as an excuse to leap off the electoral role. In recent years, there’s been fierce movement among expats who lost their right to vote when they left Australia and want it back. I left the debate to them, mildly surprised that they were being denied.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I ducked into the Medicare office to get the forms for signing up again. Again, I’m not particularly interested. I prefer to put my money towards eating well and keeping fit (assurance rather than insurance) and investing the rest so that if I do decide that I need medical help, I’m able to afford it. But it’s compulsory, so in I went. It turns out that I need to prove I’ve returned by supplying 2 documents that prove I’ve rented or bought a property, started work, put children in school or such. If I choose to move in with someone else and keep going with my company, I don’t have a chance of getting any of those documents. Not until I have children and wait for them to be old enough to go to school, anyway.<\/p>\n
I guess it will be the same when I reregister for voting. I wonder if the tax man will also deny me my right to pay full tax…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to believe that it was as compulsory to be registered with Medicare as it was to vote. I’m coming to learn that neither is really true. I’ve never been interested in politics and wouldn’t trust the person I voted for to live up to the promises that made me choose them anyway, so… Continue reading Not so easy to return<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}