Births, Deaths, Marriages, Australia Post rage

Am usually pretty patient with gov dept's. Generally they're OK, but there are times when they really fuck up. Like this one, with bloody NSW Births. Deaths and Marriages. We are still waiting for David's birth cert, ordered urgently, and supposed to be in about 10 working days. David is having to ring them again today (after ringing last Friday) asking them where the fuck this bloody birth cert is. It's the final piece in the Centrelink form puzzle for him to finally apply for about a $300 a week Sickness Allowance.

Readers of this blog would know we've ended up in a dire financial position after a discrimination thing at David's work, where being "permanent casual" they put him to the bottom of the list and just stopped ringing him. With no explanation or warning. After about a month of no work and a mounting credit card balance, we started realising what was going on, which I must say had a very bad effect on David's mental health after working there for years. At financial breaking point his GP gave him a Centrelink doctors cert as being unable to work due to severe depression, and so he could apply for the Sickness Allowance.

So we've gone through and done all the forms, printed out all the proof of our situation, and have been ready to go down to Centrelink armed with them for a week now. But we can't as we're still waiting on this bloody urgent birth cert for his proof of ID. The thing is nearly two weeks late now. WTF are they doing in that bloody dept? David's not good dealing with these people. He feels like he's bothering them if he rings more than once :s  He doesn't seem to know that these people can fuck up royally sometimes and to get anything done on such occasion you have to push them.

So I had a bit of a dummy spit, just sort of to all gov's depts that I've battle with over time. David has an appt with the psychologist today but we can't afford a full priced bus fair as David hasn't got the concession card yet from applying for Sickness Allowance :s  So I let him use mine. He misplaced it somewhere in the house and so we're both fart assing around the place looking for my pension card, so he can get on the bus with a concession ticket. At this point I explode a bit.

Something like, oh FFS this is fuckin ridiculous! Fucks sake we can't even go out together because we're fucking around with one pension card because bloody birth deaths and marriages hasn't got their fucking act together! David looks at me a bit stunned. I say I'm not yelling at him just at the NSW gov. 

It's more than that too. He had to get his HIV meds yesterday still without a health care card to get them at concession rates. So we had to pay $70 or so on the credit card again, or he'd have no pills. If the bloody birth cert was sorted he'd have the health care card by now and the meds would've cost $12. Now he's going to have to fuck around getting refunds later on when the card is backdated. But that doesn't help us now does it. 

Also as this hasn't been sorted out for another week, it's starting to look like we'll have to use the credit card towards the rent again. All because of this stupid, fucked up, Barry fucking O'Farrell failure, bloody NSW Births Deaths and Marriages! Fuck!

Update:

*sheesh* So David gets through to them after untold time on hold. They have another story this time - last time on Friday they said it was being sent out that day. Today they said it was sent out two weeks ago, and after some time they found that Australia Post had sent it back reckoning there was no one here to sign for it. That's bullshit, there's always been someone here, and there was nothing in the letterbox saying anyone had been and to pick it up at the Post Office. 

So anyway I smell a rat in that story. So they're going to send it again by super duper express post guaranteed to arrive by tomorrow. So I dunno who to blame now. I'll blame both of them I guess. Births deaths and marriages didn't seem to have much of an idea WTF was going on, and we've had ridiculous things happen with the local Australia Post office in the past; like parcels not being delivered because after 6 years living here they suddenly didn't know where I lived. 


Hopefully after all this bullshit Centrelink will backpay, and hopefully we'll have a smooth trip when we finally get there. And hopefully against all odds, David might even have some money in his account by the end of the week.