The best place I've found for Australian telecommunication discussions is:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au

When reading about the dollars included with Australian packages, think of them as credits. So if you have $600 worth of calling time for $25, they are giving you 600 units that you can allocate for different things. Don't think of them as real dollars, because they'll do things like artificially overvalue the price of things like local calls to reach those numbers, (e.g. calculate a call across the street at 0.75 a minute to get there).