Thanks for the laugh

Who said that government departments have no sense of humour?

We got a letter from Centrelink yesterday. It’s hilarious. For those outside Australia, Centrelink is the government body that handles social security payments to the unemployed, low income earners etc.

They’ve asked us to repay them almost $10 000 within the next couple of weeks. If we could come up with that kind of money we wouldn’t need to top up our income with Centrelink payments. We couldn’t come up with $1 000 in the next couple of weeks let alone $10 000. In fact $100 would be pushing it.

They claim that we failed to submit a tax return a couple of years ago. Sorry guys, we not only submitted it, we spent the tax refund too. We have proof which they will see very soon. The wierd thing is that Pauline took them a copy of that return which they photocopied for their records. We never misplace the stuff they give us. Probably because what they give us is money.

I’m sure that we’ll be able to sort it out fairly quickly and we’ll all go back to our normal arrangement of them sending us money rather than the other way around.

The conspiracy theorists would find it interesting that they only sent the invoice after the federal election but I would have found the whole concept funny even before the election.

Posted by Rodney Olsen



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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1 Comment

  • They are quite funny.

    My wifes uncle was going through a rough divorce and was staying at my parents-in-laws house for a while. He was still on sickness benefits but and had informed them of his move. He recieved a letter, sent to this new address, stating that his benefit will be cut off because they know longer know where he lives. Makes sense doesn’t it? Needless to say he was going to frame it and put it on the wall – I don’t know if he did or not.

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