Like seriously, a few days after my birthday I broke a wisdom tooth. I only even had the bottom two, and broke the other one a month before that but since it didn’t give me any pain I wasn’t eligible to get into the public dentist earlier so was just leaving it since aside from being a tongue magnet since it felt different, it was fine. But then I broke the left one, and damn that one hurt. So I called up public dental and got an emergency voucher for a local private clinic for the next week.
Had a fun few days trying to balance pain relief, but then I got seen, and she recommended extraction and said she could do it right then. So I agreed and off we went.
Problem is, I’m apparently a bleeder. And she’d gotten partway through and the blood just started and wouldn’t stop. So she stitched me up with 1/4 of a tooth left there so she could focus on the bleeding :/ Said she nearly got the Ambulance. Yeah that wasn’t fun, nor was the two weeks after til it’d healed enough to go back in for the rest.
But it’s gone now. And I’m gonna hold off til I come up on the general public dental waitlist and then will probably get the other (also broken but not painful at this stage) tooth out. Yay.
I’d also got blood tests the week of my birthday one going on the Friday after failing on the Thursday. Going back with 2 litres of water in me after getting up for fasting tests. Just tried to get some blood out of me now to check out what might be behind the extra bleeding, but no dice – I’ll go through the week after drinking a tonne of water again. At least this doesn’t have to be fasting. I reckon maybe my veins fear I could bleed out so they wanna protect me.
Ugh.
Anyways. Raging against the NDIS changes, and all the news about mutual obligations/TCF illegality but now my tooth is settled I may have capacity to blog about them
Maybe.
In the meantime I’ve spent 77 hours in Hello Kitty Island adventure, mostly streamed if you wanna check it out!
Labor is back with a bigger majority and only really needing to appease the Greens in the upper house to get anything done. But what will they use this for and will it be at all progressive? Or will they still pretend they can’t do things their supposed base want – such as all the local groups calling for sanctions on Israel, or community groups seeking investment in public housing or increased welfare payments – because I’m skeptical as always, and fell sad that I have to wait and see.
Takoyaki, $10
But first – I turned 43 yesterday and all I wanted was to have Takoyaki and chill, and that I did!
Bruce and I dropped his car off for new tyres – finally spending the money I got from the selective schools supervision earlier this year – then we went to try Umi, the newer of the two Japanese restaurants in Toronto. It’s a bit less fancy that Mizumi which we’ve gone to for many birthdays since it’s been there, and it was very quiet being only 11am on a Tuesday, but there were a few people coming in for their Bento as we were heading out.
Ramune, $6
I normally get lemon iced tea with my Japanese food, but went the ramune today as a special treat. They were tempting me with grape soda though!
Miso soup, $4
We started with some miso soup, the takoyaki and some kara-age chicken. Bruce has been watching more Japanese and other Asian food tourism videos, such as from Dancing Bacons and making me want to travel and eat and eat and travel. But that’s not anywhere near in my future, so local it is!
Kara-age chicken, $13
Obviously being my birthday we had to follow the tasty fried goodies with their Umi Supreme Variety of sashimi: Hamachi (Kingfish), Hotate (Scallop), Salmon, Tuna, Octopus (3 pcs each), and Salmon Roe. Love popping the little roe balls in my mouth lol. Tasty fresh fish!
Umi Supreme, $42
We left full and happy and in no mood for dessert, so picked up a tray of cake pieces from Coles to graze on later, and browsed some op shops til I got over it and just wanted to go home (via picking up the car with the fresh tyres and avoiding the traffic chaos that seemed to be everywhere yesterday!)
Coles Cake Variety, $22
My parents got us a new coffee machine which was on special during the prime day sales and we’d had our eyes one. Slowly getting the hang on the manual pour and getting the accessories to help make the tasty morning brews.
Delonghi Stilosa, $120 on sale
I’ve also been spoiled by my internet friends, with some items off my wishlists coming already and a few more to come! (and I few I’ve bought with birthday money from other amazing souls!)
Backpack from Leigh and porridge sachets and mocha sachets from Jave from my Amazon listHello Kitty Mug Stack from Sally off my Amazon wishlist.
So, back to reality after a food coma Tuesday afternoon – I didn’t miss much from the first sitting day of the parliament – lots of speeches and ceremonies and the like. A rally and vigil for Palestine outside parliament has been ongoing and well attended.
They’re introducing the “20% off HECS” bill today which will help a few but again it’s a drop in the ocean compared to recent indexation amounts and the rapid increase in house prices which is the real reason university graduates can’t afford to buy homes, rather than their HECS stopping them.
Hounding people on low incomes for so-called "overpayments" based on dubious data is petty and cruel.
Labor's Centrelink payments are below the poverty line. The last thing recipients need is the Government pursuing them to disprove a dodgy – and often decades old – debt notice. pic.twitter.com/zaE3jalLqn
— Penny Allman-Payne (@senatorpennyqld) July 18, 2025
Historic welfare debts are back, with court backing to pursue them. Labor should have at least legislated the recommended 6 year limit on debt collection, like applies for ATO debts, but they chose not to. They have no excuse not to this term, with their majority overflowing to the opposition benches of the house, but really, they have no will to. Unfortunately there’s gonna be more ugly deaths they can be accounted for by neglect through state enforced poverty.
Meanwhile we get an economic round table with tech, business and mining representatives, but no one from health or disability, even though “Delivering quality care more efficiently” is one of their “productivity pillars“?
One of our local Labor MPs (and deputy speaker) was boasting about their 25% increase in food relief and “financial wellbeing” support – such as financial counselors and food and petrol vouchers and more money for food banks. This is not something to celebrate. You CANNOT budget your way out of poverty – when welfare is half the poverty line you just cannot find that extra money. More happy snaps and warehouses rented, which people just can’t afford to feed and house themselves and their families? Not a win Sharon.
One of my Antipoverty Centre comrades gave me a great birthday present – a few more FOI requests on food relief charities to go through when I can focus on them. Let’s see how they manage to leverage their gearing this year or whatever business words they use for being a middleman between actual humans and often unsuitable food. GO you guys!
I was born in 1982, a couple years before the line was electrified all the way to Newcastle, so I’ve been catching V-sets since 1984. To Sydney, for day trips with my parents, my Aunty and cousin. Back where there were smoking carriages and I remember trips so full I sat on my Aunty’s lap in the smoking carriage all the way from Fassifern to Central.
I used to be terrified of crossing between the carriages. Something you had to do to find a seat or visit the extremely cramped toilets. I had to overcome that fear when I started catching them to highschool in 1995. But then we’d hang out the carriage doors and windows of the old single decker electrics that you could see the fast moving sleepers through the holes in the floor.
A classmate jumped out of one of the diesels up Maitland way and was lucky to live. Ahh the fun of manual doors.
I’ve ridden the new ones a few times. Here’s some footage from the inside. I don’t like the fixed one-directional seats. I do like the charging ports. They should have given us wifi. Oh and I liked that they tell you which side to exit, but apparently they get it wrong sometimes so that’s kinda worse than not saying it at all!
What a whirlwind! Just spend Thursday to Monday up in Magan-djin/Brisbane for the People Against Poverty summit that I helped organise! I’ll post a recap of the event sometime this week (including my presentation which I’ll hopefully get the audio of soon and plan to do an online version of when we all have spoons again), but I’m excited to do a food blogging post for the brekkie the interstate folk had before flying out on Monday at Vulture Street Espresso in the West End.
We were treating ourselves after a weekend, week, and MONTHS of hard work pulling this together, spending our conference allowances on a great feed before returning to the reality of our sub-poverty welfare payments, job seeking responsibilities and, appointments and caring roles. It was a good chance to finally relax a little and eat slowly!
The weather was a little damp all weekend, which threw some plans out, but VSE has a back section that feels open even though it’s nicely sheltered. Lots of plants and wood! I nabbed the large table for what ended up being 10 of us.
They serve breakfast all day, and I was filled in by one of the former Brisbane residents that former lord mayor and brief premier Campbell Newman was one of the reasons cafe’s opened so early every day in Brissie, with the huge spend on bike lanes when he was (a Lycra-clad-cycling-) mayor who needed to access morning lattes with the gang.
Iconic Aussie Smashed Avocado – $19.50.
Many of the meals came with a poached egg, but as I don’t eat that I got my “Iconic Aussie Smashed Avocado” without the egg. There was lemon through the avo, the feta was oddly creamed and squirted but it was tasty as 🙂
Vietnamese Omelette – $18.90
The Vietnamese Omeleltte was intriguing and smelled delicious – filled with bean sprouts, pork mince, onion, cucumber, carrots, capsicum, spring onion, mint and coriander, the fish sauce was noticeable and served with shallots and rice.
Aussie Bacon, egg, and avocado roll – $13.50.West end vegetable fritters – $18.90. With a side of bacon – $8.Creme Brulé French Toast – $18.90.Free range eggs on toast – $10.Bao Benedict – $21.Brissie Hash Cakes – $21.
Vulture Street Espresso was recommended by a gluten free local who came along and most meals had vegetarian and gluten free options, and a great coffee and drinks selection. They also let us split the bill and individually pay as we each needed to leave, I bought some espresso beans to try at home, which were a good start to today!
(aka why GPs aren’t going to go back to bulk billing but it might save the few remaining bulk billing practices if you’re lucky to have one near you that caters for ongoing patients and more complex needs aka not an urgent care clinic which has a place but isn’t the answer we’re looking for)
The Claim
So, this is the measure that Labor reckons will get bulk billing at GP’s back to 90% of consults. It was a key part of the campaign, along with more urgent care clinics – which are GP practices you can drop into for a one-off consult for something acute but not needing hospital – like back pain or a sprain or something. They say go there for a break but I’m not confident all centres have X-rays so it’d be best to check your local one before deciding there over the Emergency room.
The extra incentive, depending on location, gives an extra $20+ per consult to the practice, if they bulk bill the patient. There’s a loading of 12.5% too in the new version if they bulk bill all patients. They also need patients enrolled in MyMedicare, yeah yet another program rather than upping the medicare benefit paid across the board.
The patient des not get this if they’re privately billed. SO most of us are still going to be out of pocket $40-$60 a visit if we can afford to front up the cash. So, many are still stuck rationing their ongoing healthcare to if they can afford it, or if they can GET to a urgent care clinic (not at all easy by public transport) or waiting it out til it’s an emergency and being thankful in NSW that if you have a concession card you can get free ambulance.
Personally, I’m continuing to schedule my GP appointments for ongoing care and scripts around pension days so I know I’ll have the money upfront. But not everyone can work that, or be able to be down $40-60 after the appointment even with rebates being paid back that night – and not everyone even has a regular GP or one taking on patients in their area.
We’ve used the urgent care clinic for stuff, but it’s completely unsuitable for mental health care or anything ongoing physically.
The base rebate needs to be higher – enough to either incentivise bulk billing or to allow people to get the money together to go knowing they’ll get most of it back to then be able to afford their regular expenses or medications that are prescribed.
Another announceable at the end of April was the “1800MEDICARE“..
Whether you need expert health advice or reassurance, the registered nurses at 1800MEDICARE will be there all day, every day, to provide advice and refer you to the health service you need – whether that’s your regular GP, the local hospital or a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.
So, at the initial level, the 1800MEDICARE number and service is a rebranding of the Health Direct line, staffed by nurses 24/7 in conjunction with the states. I’ve used that service personally and at work, and have been transferred to them from 000 (don’t worry it wasn’t life threatening) for more thorough triage and consult.
What 1800MEDICARE is adding to this is a GP service between 6pm and 8am, able to give you a prescription after hours when urgent care clinics aren’t open. For me, if I got a script from them it might be helpful and I could fill it at 8:30am weekdays locally when the chemist opened, or if some one was able to drive there’s chemists 15 minutes away open 9-4 Sat, 9-2 Sundays. They can order bloods I guess to then get done in business hours? But I’m not really sure how much more they can offer that the nurse line can’t. So it’s a helpful extra service, but not going to solve the problem people have of not being able to afford to have an ongoing GP.
If you need urgent GP care that can’t wait for your regular GP to be available, the triage nurses will connect you to a free telehealth session with a 1800MEDICARE GP via phone or video, available all weekend and weeknights between 6pm and 8am.
On your phone and in the comfort of your home, a 1800MEDICARE GP will provide the free care you need, like an emergency prescription for your regular medication, or treatment for an illness or injury.
I’m currently waiting for my GP to call, since I changed my appointment today to telehealth since I’ve been snotting up the place. After the call, reception will call me to get my card details for the $80 fee, of which I’ll get $42.85 back from Medicare this evening. Fortunately I have been into the clinic in the last 12 months so I AM eligible for the rebate.
So I’ll save the mental health promises and anything else I think of for next time.
