First of all, the OP is correct: everyone in a customer service role deserves respect and civility and, like him, I was disappointed to see the ACMA email having to remind amateurs of that.
Second, there is important Australian context missing in the discussion. The delays being referred to are within the Australian Maritime College (AMC) which is an intermediary organization which won a contract to, amongst other things, provide administration services for amateur examinations and callsigns. As far as I know, COVID-19 is not being cited as an appreciable component of that delay which is, apparently, mostly associated with administrative changes to the examination syllabus and callsign formats etc.
The government regulatory body, the ACMA, does provide electronic payment and renewal systems for existing licensees.
Co-incidentally, I just had an opportunity to try out the system for a new callsign allocation in the context of establishing a second station. The application process is quite clunky and it is not clear to me that the AMC, or the Wireless Institute of Australia as the previous contractor, add anything at all to the process, except to slow it down. For information, I append below the auto-reply I received from the AMC; it wasn't welcome, but it's polite enough. The ACMA mail posted by the OP arrived a few days later. Note that the AMC is giving priority to new examinations, which I think is fair enough.
A major problem of recent decades is that too many bodies, including the Australian Government, fail to regard the end-to-end delivery of a service as part of their core business preferring, under the influence of various political agendas, to outsource what should be government services to, too frequently, an array of semi-competent contractors. All too often the result is a mess, and the tax-payer ends up picking up the bill, which they could have done more efficiently with a properly resourced and run government department. The relentless responsibility shedding continues down the chain, to the point where the mission assurance function fails utterly and all that can be done in the wake of the scandals, failures and goal-post-shifting is for the good old ATP (that's Aussie Tax Payer for our foreign friends) to fix the mess.
There are structural differences which make this experience somewhat different to that in other countries but there are enough similarities in those other places I've lived on the planet for me think that some of the underlying failings are widespread.
Fortunately, in this crazy year, in which Australia has nevertheless fared much better than many places, I guessed that things may be on the slow side and submitted my second callsign application early, so I don't expect the modest second-station plans to be much disrupted in the long run. And, frankly, it's hard to get very excited with all the other priorities just now.
73, Peter.
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Email received from the Australian Maritime College on application for a callsign (original formatting lost):
AMC Amateur Radio Office
Thank you for your email to the AMC Amateur Radio Office. We are currently experiencing an extremely high volume of emails and calls but we will respond to your enquiry as soon as possible.
29 September 2020
Processing time change – Amateur Radio Callsigns
Due to the recently announced changes to the callsign template and the large amount of callsign variations received, please be advised that the ACMA have now granted an extension in processing times as follows:
• After consultation with the ACMA we will now move from a 45-business day processing time to one in which we will process your application as soon as practicable in order of receipt.
• We understand that this delay may be unwelcome, but you will appreciate that we need to give priority to processing the exams for both amateur and marine radio (previously 15 business days).
We would request that unless the matter is urgent, please email AMC rather than telephoning.
This will allow the Amateur Radio Office team to maintain all other services within the expected 15 business days.
Updates to the Publicly Available Callsigns Database
These have now been completed and we thank you for your understanding and patience during this very busy time.
• New Callsign change applications and FAQ’s:
https://www.amc.edu.au/industry/amateur-radio/callsigns/new-callsign-template-and-faqs• Keep an eye on the News Updates on the website for updated information that may impact you.
• Visit the FAQ Section for answers to your questions.
Kind Regards
AMC Amateur Radio Office Team