Taxing time on the telephone

FROM MY CORNER .... with Ann Brunswick

For some years now it has been my view that our nation’s biggest communications company Telstra has been running the country’s biggest practical joke. Surely that is the most logical explanation for its voice-recognition directory assistance service that in my experience never actually worked.

No matter how clearly a name was enunciated, the end result was very quickly a message along the lines of “please hold and an operator will be with you shortly” or words to that effect. Well it seems that the Australian Tax Office has joined in the joke. Last week it fell to me to fill in a form sent to me by the ATO requesting details of my superannuation fund.
It was one of those forms with little square boxes that need ticking, or crossing, or filling in with individual letters and numbers. Naturally, my attempt at filling in some of the squares fell far short of perfection and it soon became obvious a replacement form was needed.
So a search of the ATO’s website was needed to locate my nearest ATO office. But in doing so my eye fell upon a link on the site marked “find a form or publication”. You beauty, a trip saved. Surely it would be simple to find the replacement form and maybe print it off and then fill it in and send it back to the ATO.
But no, the link took me through several other pages before it was possible to find a list of forms related to superannuation. Finally the relevant document was located among several dozen forms. Then it occurred to me that my home printer was not available to produce a copy of the form.
You see, the previous week I had installed new ink cartridges at great expense and had since printed a couple of A4 sheets so naturally the printer was almost out of ink. But the good old ATO gave me the option of ordering a copy of the form by phone, so naturally that was the way to go.
The process involved listening to a recorded voice list six or seven common forms, after which callers are supposed to name the form they want and apparently the computer takes it form ... I mean ... from there.
The last option is to let the computer know that none of the options being offered is the one you want. Which was what I had to do. But the computer didn’t recognise “none” when expressed in my dulcet tones, so it offered to go through all the options once again.
That was when I hung up. Good one guys. It’s so much fun wasting time with you. Oh, and while visiting the CBD a few days later a trip to the ATO’s service centre proved equally fruitless. They didn’t have a copy of the required form. but they did promise to post one to me.
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Police as they travel about in their vehicles have to obey the traffic laws as a general rule, right? I mean they can speed and go a little crazy when they’re racing to a robbery or an accident or an accidental robbery, but when they’re just pottering around, they obey the rules like the rest of us.

Well, apart from driving with their elbows out the window, which I understand is compulsory under police regulation 124C subsection 2. So my question is this: why doesn’t the same principle apply to the boys and girls in blue when they’re on their push bikes?
Time and time again, you see them in pairs riding leisurely through the main Valley mall, and clearly they’re not racing to a bank robbery or a murder scene. Us mere mortals might get off with a warning for such behaviour, but we might also equally be pinged with a heavy fine.
It’s not a long mall, so surely they can walk their bikes through it? Now I’m sure some spin doctor in the police department PR will pounce on this, and tell me it’s quite kosher for the coppers to ride their bikes in the mall while on duty. But if so, then the rule is wrong. It would be nice to see them lead by good example.
On the same subject, a friend tells me a friend of his was pinged $500 for riding his bike through King George Square a few months back! No warning, just a half-a-grand gesture for his heinous illegal act. But there’s a good chance he might get out of it.
He committed the offence at the height of summer, and I understand his lawyer will argue that if he had walked his bike across the square, he might easily have died of exposure to the elements!