Contradictions

OUR governments, no matter what persuasion, appear to be experts in contradictions. Privatisations of our old established services, when sold off, would be very beneficial to we consumers we were assured.

Take the issues surrounding Telstra; a real mess. Recently, our landline service, became unavailable. Totally disconnected for seven days. Our many phone calls, speaking with foreigners, who obviously had no idea of how Australian states are situated, firstly tried to convince us, we had a faulty hand-phone.

We were frustrated trying to converse with a person in Dubai, several in the Philippines and finally, one in Australia. The foreigners could not speak clearly in understandable English.

After one week of no phone, a foreigner finally arranged a very sub-standard, noisy line, with all sorts of “bells and whistles” in background, for another 11 days, until I “blew my stack”, and demanded a complaints manager in Australia.

On reaching him, he apologised, explaining that somehow, a technician had been directed to a wrong address in Victoria and the problem was thought corrected.

He explained there were two owners for our lines because of the NBN roll-out and this was causing problems. He, the Aussie person, finally contacted a local technician who fixed the problem in five minutes.

So, we have off shore dealings with operators who have poor English and our government now demanding aspiring new residents speak English.

Hence my concerns with government contradictions.