Absent Justice Contact
TELSTRA AT ITS WORST
On page 180, ERC&A, from the official Australian Senate Hansard dated 29 November 1994, Senator Ron Boswell confronted Telstra’s legal directorate with a question that should have detonated the arbitration process:
“Why did Telecom advise the Commonwealth Ombudsman that Telecom withheld FOI documents from Alan Smith because Alan Smith provided Telecom FOI documents to the Australian Federal Police during their investigation?”
Telstra’s response was hollow — a lie so transparent that the senator, the AFP, and I all recognised it instantly. Senator Boswell pressed harder:
“…Why would Telecom withhold vital documents from the AFP? Also, why would Telecom penalise COT members for providing documents to the AFP which substantiate that Telecom had conducted unauthorised interceptions of COT members’ communications and subsequently dealt in the intercepted information by providing that information to Telecom’s external legal advisers and others?”
The threats were no longer implied. They were real. They were public. And they were lethal to any notion of justice.
What is unforgivable is that no one, not the TIO, not the arbitrator, not the government, ever investigated the catastrophic impact this document‑withholding had on my arbitration. Telstra was a government-owned corporation. The arbitrator was bound by law. Yet both stood idle while an Australian citizen assisting the AFP was punished, disadvantaged, and silenced.
