I am indebted to Vic for providing a specific example of the sort of
problems he has.

] I have just had a rejection by Mr Elz for a centacare application,
] this is the second rejection in a row. the first was that Mr Elz
] wished to know the nature of the organisation, they didnt supply me
] with that exact information. I wasted time asking them what they were.
] they are a charity. no acn/brn. back goes the application. 
] rejected again. it seems some other part of centacare already has
] centacare.org.au and this group wanted centacare-brokenbay.org.au. Mr Elz has
] decreed that this group should organise it with centacare.org.au and
] has yet again rejected the application.

It sounds like the registrar has acted in an appropriate way.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the applicant who didn't
bother to supply the full information to the registrar, or even
to check whether the domain name was already in use!
 
] I am I the only one here who finds this disgracefull?

I think you are the only one.
 
] when are the unsuspecting public going to cease to be beholden to
] the whims and personal tastes and preferences of volunteer registrars?

The only thing I can see here which could be done on the registrar side
(apart from a public education campaign, which is hardly appropriate here)
is to consider having something like Melbourne IT's (interestingly named)
PISP program.

Then applicants could have their application submitted by a third party
who understands what is required for org.au and what sort of checks should
be done and information submitted to the registrar for best results.
Basically a knowledgable commercial third party to do consulting on domain
name registration issues (and maybe DNS) -- a domain name broker.
__________________________________________________________________________
 David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management