On that second point that is what Troy Hunt shows doing: he goes to the FedEx website and finds no indicator of any duties/taxes in the official package tracker. This seems a case where the Australian customs team doesn't have feature access to the main website to service this case and are instead badly routing around it.
I think this is the core point Troy Hunt is trying to show, but I don't think Troy Hunt makes it explicit enough that this org chart/processes problem is the real problem and the thing FedEx should most fix because you can't rely on incoming notifications to not look scammy, real notifications are indistinguishable from fake ones even if the real ones weren't doing so horribly to begin with. Troy Hunt often makes that point better in other posts (see the old, long series on "Extended Validation" certificates for an example) and maybe just assumed that message was clear rather than harping on it and then resummarizing it in bold text and blinking lights this post.
I think this is the core point Troy Hunt is trying to show, but I don't think Troy Hunt makes it explicit enough that this org chart/processes problem is the real problem and the thing FedEx should most fix because you can't rely on incoming notifications to not look scammy, real notifications are indistinguishable from fake ones even if the real ones weren't doing so horribly to begin with. Troy Hunt often makes that point better in other posts (see the old, long series on "Extended Validation" certificates for an example) and maybe just assumed that message was clear rather than harping on it and then resummarizing it in bold text and blinking lights this post.