Random (Australian) Postal Service Trivia: "IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY"

[Halcyon]

I learnt something weird some years ago and was just reminded of this when I was preparing things for tax time next month.

Take this example of the Australian Tax Office postal address:
GPO Box 9845
IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY

Now logic would suggest that you would replace "In your capital city" with "Sydney" or "Melbourne" etc...

This is not so! You actually write the words "In your capital city" as part of the postal address without modification. You don't add any city, suburb, state names or postcodes. "Common Boxes" (or GPO's) are allocated a number that is applicable Australia-wide.

Strange but true.

(Why bother even writing it? Why not just leave it as the GPO Box number?)

[Tac Eht Xilef]

(Why bother even writing it? Why not just leave it as the GPO Box number?)

Because once upon a time it wasn't the case. As told to me by an old PO tech: there was always an arrangement where gov't depts were allocated common box numbers across all GPOs, but it was very ad-hoc* & started falling apart with the rationalisation & decentralisation of government services in the 80's. IIRC, it changed in the mid-90's - Auspost were upgrading their sorting machines, cottoned onto the fact that it was a potential revenue raising premium service, & added the 9800-9999 range of common boxes.

I like to think the choice of "IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY" was down to someone with a twisted sense of humour noticing how stupid some people really were.

FWIW, according to the AusPost guidelines for common boxes & LMB you can only use those addresses on preprinted barcoded domestic reply envelopes - hand addressed mail is supposed to use a full box-city-postcode address. Doesn't stop the ATO & everyone else telling people to write "IN YOUR CAPITAL CITY" though...

(* They had a lot of weird semi-official ad-hoc stuff like that - anyone else remember SBS's old "PO Box 0-28, Crows Nest" address?)

[VK3DRB]

You have to be strict when following government orders. There is not much room for common sense, just do what they tell to to do. We suffer from some pretty bad bureaucracy here.

A few months ago I had an engineer do some concrete slab calculations and the document he created and signed had two dates on it: 14/1/15 and 14/1/135. The local council rejected the certificate and the whole building application because "We do not recognise the year 135." I stated it was obviously a typo and I will cross out the '3' and sign and date the change on the spot. The reply was they would not accept any change and that I would have to get the engineer to draw up a new document and sign it again.

For some reason it reminded me of this

I had to fill a government form in recently. It had a text box for residential address and another one for postal address. For the postal address there was an annotation stating If this is the same as your residential address, write 'AS ABOVE'. Do you write 'As ABOVE' or AS ABOVE? At the back of my mind I fear that writing in the wrong answer might get it rejected or incur delays. Anyway, I did not use the single quote.
 

[Muttley Snickers]

A few months ago we did away with our P.O Box as it was hardly ever used for correspondence and it took me two minutes on the phone to notify the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) that mail should be directed to my business address, i then rang Business Affairs to do the same and was informed that they no longer looked after business registrations and that ASIC (Australian Securities and Investment Commission) were now responsible for business registrations and renewals.

I contacted them and was informed that they would not accept either verbal notification, a written letter, an email or anything else other than a bullshit online application and registraiton which by the way required them to post us out a pass code for the online access and that could only be sent to our previous postal address which was the now terminated P.O Box, they just didn't get it and drove us nuts.

It took six days of frustration to sort it out and if we ever had to change our ISP or email address then we will be in all sorts of trouble, just crazy stuff, not even a courtesy letter to let us know of the change and luckily for us the business renewal hadn't expired otherwise we would have been trading whilst unregistered. They had all of our details and confirmed both the trading and old postal address, all of my personal details but indicated that they are either not authorised or qualified to tick a different box on the screen in front of them.

 

Muttley

[KJDS]

A few months ago we did away with our P.O Box as it was hardly ever used for correspondence
and it took me two minutes on the phone to notify the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) that mail
should be directed to my business address, i then rang Business Affairs to do the same and was
informed that they no longer looked after business registrations and that ASIC (Australian Securities
and Investment Commission) were now responsible for business registrations and renewals.

I contacted them and was informed that they would not accept either verbal notification, a written
letter, an email or anything else other than a bullshit online application and registraion which by the
way required them to post us out a pass code for the online access and that could only be sent to our
previous postal address which was the now terminated P.O Box, they just didn't get it and drove us nuts.

It took six days of frustration to sort it out and if we ever had to change our ISP or email address then we
will be in all sorts of trouble, just crazy stuff, not even a courtesy letter to let us know of the change and
luckily for us the business renewal hadn't expired otherwise we would have been trading whilst unregistered.
They had all of our details and confirmed both the trading and old postal address, all of my personal details
but indicated that they are either not authorised or qualified to tick a different box on the screen in front of them.

 

Muttley

Without the government employing these idiots, what other role in society could the possibly fulfill?

[John Coloccia]

Lawyer perhaps?

[timofonic]

Ohh. It reminds me of Brazil.

Here we have lots of bureaucratic insanity but at other ways (our online administration systems are shit here in my zone and use a very shitty Java app that just works in Windows or specific JRE versions, for example) maybe the rest of people get used to that. I still can't, I get terribly messed.

[Muttley Snickers]

I'm not done yet by any means, I just ran out of ink and was getting low on those animated things, now if you really want to do your head in and completely lose all your marbles then go and google Auskey or ASIC Connect to get some idea of what we are up against. Be warned that you will be dabbling in the dark side and you will not return here the same, complete mental insanity is quite common after dealing with these government departments and their online solutions.

Did I mention that a program from ASIC has to be downloaded, installed and then online registration completed before you are even close to getting there, the program would not run and we spent days trying to get it going whilst on the phone with their "technical department".

All this just to tick a box.

            Thats it, I've run out again.


Muttley

[SeanB]

Let me guess, it only runs on IE6.0, and needs some ActiveX controls that themselves only run on Windows XP sub SP1, with a server side controller that is running on Windows Server 2000, which has not been patched since installation, though it is regularly rebooted every night as a preventative measure.

[georges80]

Ah, Australia and its wonderful UK inspired government and bureaucraps...

I'm an expat that visits Perth every year or so and the 4 weeks (even though at least for 1/2 of it I head bush) I'm there is generally enough to make happy to live in the US. There's some messed up stuff here (esp. California), but compared to the outright lunacy that goes on in oz it makes me happy to not be there 24/7/365

I have to deal with various oz gov depts when I visit, various license renewals etc etc and boy they're lucky that most citizens there aren't armed lol.

I have a mate that has a few of his rellies in local government and getting some of the goings on from the 'inside' is enough to wonder about euthanasia for the sake of the greater good...

cheers,
george.

[Halcyon]

The local council rejected the certificate and the whole building application because "We do not recognise the year 135." I stated it was obviously a typo and I will cross out the '3' and sign and date the change on the spot. The reply was they would not accept any change and that I would have to get the engineer to draw up a new document and sign it again.

I had a very similar experience myself with my place. There was an error on one of the documents which had the correct suburb but the incorrect post code (there was an identical suburb in another state to where I was building).

Common sense would have suggested cross out the incorrect post code and write the correct one in, as it was clear that it was a mistake and the street I was building on didn't even exist in the other state! Nope, rejected, had to resubmit everything all over again.

[zapta]

I'm an expat that visits Perth every year or so and the 4 weeks (even though at least for 1/2 of it I head bush) I'm there is generally enough to make happy to live in the US. There's some messed up stuff here (esp. California), but compared to the outright lunacy that goes on in oz it makes me happy to not be there 24/7/365

I expected Australia to be more like Texas than California. Crocodile Dundee and such.

[georges80]

I expected Australia to be more like Texas than California. Crocodile Dundee and such.

No, unfortunately it inherited the uk scheme of government. To escape the madness requires escaping the city for the bush and most folk don't want to try and survive long term out there. Australia is VERY urbanised - helps keep the majority of the sheep controlled

cheers,
george.

[KJDS]

The Indians understand the art of bureaucracy better than any other nation. We've given the world cricket, football and filling in forms in triplicate.

[wagon]

The stupidity even infects our police service.  Recently I had reason to contact them regarding a hazard on the road that needed cleaning up.  I contacted the Toowoomba station directly, eventually got through to a real person, who told me to ring ''Policelink', who whould ring them and let them know.  I got rather terse at this point, and asked to speak to 'someone who actually cares'.  To their credit, I was immediately connected to someone who could do something.  But why the attempted run-around in the first place?

Then there's the whole 'safe system of work' crap for doing electrical work.  I believe I'm supposed to do a 'risk assessment' for every job that involves live work.  WHY? (I don't, it's a time waster!)

[tautech]

Since found out that those animated things are called emoticons, I've completely exhausted my allocated number on this topic.


Muttley

You missed this one. 

[wagon]

Then there's the whole 'safe system of work' crap for doing electrical work.  I believe I'm supposed to do a 'risk assessment' for every job that involves live work.  WHY? (I don't, it's a time waster!)

But then you get situations like that which happened with the "pink batts" fiasco where installation firms spring up lured by the wellspring of government money. They hire workers who lack the necessary skills to do the job safely, or even to recognise risks, and are not given the proper training. Then when people die, young people with their lives still ahead of them, the community demands a response to try to prevent further tragic consequences in other families.

Pilots do a pre-flight check before every flight. One is to check for water in the fuel. Every time they don't find any (most of the time) they have wasted their time. Or have they? They won't be any more dead if the engine cuts out than you would be if you get electrocuted.

The laws aren't there solely to prevent you from just killing yourself. I'll accept an individual making that risk assessment for themselves alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_the_Home_Insulation_Program

You are, of course, right.  But wrong too.  I work for myself, by myself.  I want to go home to my wife and children every night, so I won't do anything dangerous.  Ever since I started working with electrical stuff I've had safety up front, but no paperwork is required to do that.

Now, the home insulation thing was different.  Canberra was told by many, including the ESO in Qld, that they were doing it wrong.  Canberra didn't listen. (I knew this before the inquiry, I had a friend high up in the ESO at the time).  How many OH&S laws were broken already?  It was a case of rush in now, sort it later.  It had fatal consequences. 

[zapta]

No, unfortunately it inherited the uk scheme of government.

Interesting, the British civil services is what Parkinson studied before he formalized his famous laws about the inefficiency of bureaucracies.  These laws are similar to the later time Moore's law but apply to bureaucracy.

For example,

"In any public administrative department not actually at war the staff increase may be expected to follow this formula:"



"Where k is the number of staff seeking promotion through the appointment of subordinates; p represents the difference between the ages of appointment and retirement; m is the number of man-hours devoted to answering minutes within the department; and n is the number of effective units being administered. Then x will be the number of new staff required each year."

http://www.economist.com/node/14116121

http://amzn.com/0395080681

[VK3DRB]

Now, the home insulation thing was different.  Canberra was told by many, including the ESO in Qld, that they were doing it wrong.  Canberra didn't listen. (I knew this before the inquiry, I had a friend high up in the ESO at the time).  How many OH&S laws were broken already?  It was a case of rush in now, sort it later.  It had fatal consequences.

The politicians who concocted this home insulation sham accepted responsibility but no accountability for the deaths of these young Australians... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-17/young-men-who-died-in-insulation-scheme/5322168.
If an electronic engineer was reckless in designing something which ended up killing four innocent young men, he would likely be given jail time and rightly so.

[Halcyon]

Back on topic please guys. Political arguments rarely go anywhere, even in real life. :-)

[Halcyon]

You are right and I am more than happy to delete my probably unnecessary rants
if you like including this one but before I do can someone tell me how they look
because if I post from the pc the margins or tabs look ok but when viewed on the
tv at 150% magnification they are all over the shop, I have big trouble with this.

I will delete the others but have no control over quoted posts.

Regards and Many Thanks

Muttley

No need to delete. I just don't want this thread getting out of hand. Saves Dave and the mods a bit of work.

Although your posts read fine, they have carriage returns probably where they don't need to be (as the site automatically applies them anyway). So your text appears a bit "word-wrappy" (as per the quote above).