Unconscionable Conduct Chapter 6 Falsehood
The key events illuminated in this publication can be substantiated by visiting my websites, absentjustice.com and absentjustice.com.au. This innovative approach has empowered us to write freely, avoiding the cumbersome numbering system that would have otherwise significantly expanded the publication's size.
By linking original documents (confirmation data) throughout the narrative on absentjustice.com, readers can access the compelling proof that supports both The Arbitraitor story and the Absent Justice story seamlessly. This method represents a pioneering effort—perhaps the world’s first system for validating an unfolding narrative.
Without access to these essential documents and the extensive array of free downloads featuring thousands of evidence files, many individuals would struggle to grasp the deeply distressing experiences endured by Casualty of Telstra (COT) claimants.
Imagine the disbelief of small-business owners thrust into arbitration under government assurances that they’d receive all necessary documentation—only to discover those documents arrived three years after their cases had closed. This shocking failure forced us to present the exhibits as we have, revealing a story of staggering complexity.
This is the account of ordinary Australians battling Telstra, a corporate giant that denied the existence of faults while internal records proved otherwise. It’s a story of intercepted faxes, delayed or censored FOI documents, destroyed evidence, and fabricated claims—all used to obstruct justice.
The arbitrator ignored key points, and regulatory bodies like Austel and the TIO failed to hold Telstra accountable. Their inaction, combined with political indifference, created a system where unlawful conduct—evidence tampering, surveillance, and document withholding—was tolerated.
Telstra’s fear of liability drove it to conceal systemic faults, especially in rural areas. As privatisation loomed, the company deferred network repairs, leaving businesses to suffer. For rural operators, reliable communication was essential—but mobile phones and internet access were rare, and black spots were common.
Younger generations may struggle to grasp how Telstra and its government minders misled the public, masking deep infrastructure failures to protect profits. But the documents tell the truth. And through this publication, that truth finally has a voice.
Chapter 1
A Business Built on Silence
Have you ever had reason to complain about your phone bill?
Have you ever discovered that, even though you know you were right beside the phone at a particular time, your friend insisted he had rung and you had not answered?
Has anyone ever mentioned in passing that they are amazed at how much time you spend on the phone when you know your phone hasn’t rung for days (and you have hardly made any outgoing calls)?
Have prospective clients abused you for being unprofessional and not answering your phone for days when the phone hasn’t even rung once for the last week?
If you have ever experienced only one of these situations then you will understand why I sometimes feel I have lived through a nightmare — I experienced all these problems, and more, for almost ten years.
Unfortunately, I knew nothing of what was ahead of me when I bought my phone-dependent business at Cape Bridgewater, in rural Australia. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that the business was connected to an antiquated phone exchange which had been installed more than 30 years before and which was designed specifically for what the Australian telecommunications carrier (Telstra) designated as ‘low-call-rate areas.
This ancient telephone exchange was certainly never intended to handle the amount of calls that were already being made by residents and holiday makers in late 1987 when I arrived to take over the business, nor was it ever intended to handle the increased number of calls that occurred in this holiday village at holiday time.
This story could easily be your story: I know, because this nightmare was my nightmare.
From Sea to Shore: A Dream Takes Root
Back in December 1987, when I first fell in love with the small accommodation centre perched high on a hill above a picturesque bay on the south coast of Victoria, I knew this was a business I could run successfully.
My working life began in 1960 when, at age 15, I went to sea as a steward on English passenger/cargo ships. In 1963 I jumped ship and started work in Melbourne as an assistant chef, moving from one elite hotel to another—Hotel London, Australia Hotel, Menzies.
Two years later, now aged 20, I joined the Australian Merchant Navy, starting out on the Princess of Tasmania and, by 1975, I had put in time as a chef on many Australian and overseas cargo ships. Time learning to manage hotels, motels and restaurants around Victoria followed.
By 1979, married to Faye and with two children, I was working freelance in the catering industry and on Melbourne tugboats, while studying for a Hotel/Motel Management Diploma. I had already taken on a Hotel/Motel and pulled it out of receivership so the owners could sell it once it was running successfully again.
By 1987, at age 44, I had enough experience behind me to know I had the skills and knowledge to turn a simple school camp into a thriving venue for social clubs, family groups, and schools.
The Phone That Didn’t Ring
What my wife and I didn’t know—and couldn’t have prepared for—were the problems caused by the ‘elderly’ phone system in the area. The local, unmanned exchange had only 8 lines, shared by 60 families and our business. If just four people were on the phone, only four lines remained for everyone else including us.
In February 1988, before we moved in, we printed and distributed 2,000 glossy brochures. I personally visited nearly 150 schools and shires. We expected the phone to ring off the hook. It didn’t.
By April, complaints began. People said we never answered. Others suggested we install an answering machine—which we did. Still, the complaints continued: long periods of engaged tones, no ringing, no messages. We knew the phone wasn’t ringing. We knew it wasn’t engaged. But no one believed us.
The Paper Trail of Deception
Years later, through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, I discovered that the previous owner had also complained about the same faults. One Telstra document—“Telstra Confidential: Difficult Network Faults — PCM Multiplex Report; 31/1/94”—confirmed Telstra had known about the problems since 1987.
We had sold our Melbourne home and used my early retirement payout to buy into a business we believed in. But the phone system was sabotaging everything.
Cracks in the Foundation
Faye’s frustration grew. We began to doubt ourselves. Were we missing calls? Forgetting to turn on the answering machine? But we weren’t. The line dropped out mid-call. Sometimes callers rang back. Sometimes they didn’t. Every lost call was a lost booking.
The Christmas of 1988 brought clarity. At a dinner we hosted for locals, I mentioned the phone issues. Our neighbour Harry confirmed his daughter struggled to get through. Fred Fairthorn, former owner of ‘Tom the Cheap Grocery’ chain, said, “After all, what can you expect from Telstra when we’re in the bush?”
The Breaking Point
By early 1989, the phone system had become the wedge that fractured our marriage. I was angry all the time. I blamed myself for dragging Faye into this. My advertising campaign failed. Bookings dwindled. We toured South Australia to promote the camp, but the phone remained silent.
One day in Portland, I tried to call Faye from a payphone. A recorded message said our number was disconnected. I tried again. Same result. When I returned, Faye was furious. The phone hadn’t rung once. She didn’t know I’d tried to call. She didn’t know Telstra had failed us again.
According to Telstra’s own FOI records, I made nine formal complaints between April 1988 and January 1989. That doesn’t include the letters, or the Portland call. The evidence was there. The damage was done.
By mid-1989, our finances lay in ruins. The bookings we had dreamed of were nothing but mirages. We sold our shares for a pittance—$1.60 each for four thousand. A decade later, they would soar to $8.20. A cruel twist of fate. Our savings from the Melbourne home—$140,000—covered only half the cost of the camp. The rest became a mortgage, a chain around our necks. I had believed we were set for life. Instead, we were bleeding out, selling our lifeblood just to stay afloat.
Our marriage began to fracture under the weight of this invisible war. My self-worth crumbled like ash in the wind. And then, as if summoned by the darkness itself, Faye fell and broke her leg. The hospital visits became a relentless march into despair. Her pain was a mirror of mine—slow, unrelenting, and cruel. The leg refused to heal. It felt as though the universe had turned against us.
We clung to hope, making fleeting trips to Melbourne. Faye sought comfort in familiar faces. I used the time to market the camp in Caulfield and Huntingdale, but the dread gnawed at me. Something was wrong. Something was watching.
One evening, I tried to check the camp’s answering machine remotely. What I heard chilled me to the bone: “The number you are calling is not connected or has been changed…” That voice—so calm, so final—was the sound of our business being erased. I didn’t tell Faye. She didn’t need another shadow in her mind.
Outside Geelong, as we drove home, Faye asked if I’d checked for messages. I lied. At the next phone box, I tried again. The line was engaged. My heart raced. Someone must be leaving a message. But when we returned, all we found was a stale recording from friends in Melbourne—a hollow echo of better days. Why had the line been engaged? Had we lost calls? Had desperate clients been met with silence?
Faye’s hospital visits became her escape. Her spirit frayed, unravelling with each passing day. The weight of financial ruin and her slow recovery crushed us. On 26 October 1989, our marriage succumbed to the darkness.
I turned to Scotch, locking myself in one of the cabins, seeking refuge in its numbing embrace. Faye, terrified, called the police. They stormed in like invaders, shattering my sanctuary. As I faced them, a memory from 1967 surged forth—my clash with the Red Guards during China’s Cultural Revolution. I had escaped aboard the MV Hopepeak, fleeing tyranny. But now, in my fractured mind, the uniforms of my rescuers blurred with the faces of tormentors.
Days later, in a sterile hospital room, doctors assured me I wasn’t losing my mind. But their cold reassurances only deepened my paranoia. I returned to the camp with Margaret, my mate’s wife—a flicker of warmth in the gathering storm.
But this was no recovery. It was the beginning of a descent. A descent into shadows where hope flickered and despair thrived. The silence had become a predator. And we were its prey.
Margaret and I pulled into the camp, only to be met by a scene that felt like a calculated act of sabotage. The air was thick with neglect. Doors hung open like gaping mouths, packages of meat lay abandoned on benches, their frost melting into pools of decay. The deep freeze—once a vital lifeline—was gone, vanished without a trace. It was as if ghosts had ransacked the place, each corner revealing another cruel twist in a growing nightmare.
Faye had fled the night before, swept away by the whispers of well-meaning “do-gooders” and welfare workers who insisted she seek refuge in a so-called “safe house.” But safety was a lie. What remained was chaos—raw, unfiltered, and merciless. Food was left on the benches once frozen, now thawed, and blood was now dripping from the benches onto the floor. Surely the do-gooders would not have done this. Had somebody from further afield, an opportunist, decided they needed a fridge and freezer. All my food stores had gone; we were clearly wiped out.
According to my diary, seventy students from Monivae Catholic College were due to arrive in just two days. Five days. Four nights. Seventy mouths to feed. The weight of that responsibility pressed down like a vice. Without Margaret’s unwavering presence, I would have crumbled into dust.
We focused on cleaning and shopping, but the tasks felt insurmountable. My heart was a hollow drum, echoing the loss of a twenty-year marriage. The shopping list loomed like a cruel joke—what could I possibly prepare for seventy hungry souls? Time was slipping through my fingers. It was already Sunday evening. The Monivae group would arrive the next day. Their first meal: dinner. And I was drowning.
Then, as if summoned by the same malevolent force that haunted our phone lines, the hot water system collapsed. Cold showers became the norm. Staff grumbled. The camp groaned under the weight of dysfunction. Yet Monivae College returned, year after year, their loyalty a fragile thread holding us above the abyss.
But even loyalty couldn’t mask the growing tension. Margaret watched me with wary eyes. She saw the cracks forming. Her decision to summon Brother Greg—a teacher from Monivae—wasn’t kindness. It was triage. I had begun mumbling in my sleep, incoherent fragments of past traumas bleeding into the present. The darkness was sleeping in.
We sat together in the dim light, the three of us. Brother Greg gripped my hands. Margaret clutched my arms. I was anchored, barely. We spoke of China, of the Red Guards, of the MV Hopepeak. Of Faye. Of the unravelling. Margaret endured it all like a soldier, her presence both a comfort and a reminder of the war I was losing.
Religion crept in like a shadow pretending to be light. Women from the church surrounded me, their smiles too polished, their comfort too rehearsed. Their intentions may have been pure, but their presence felt like a veil—thin protection against a storm that had already breached the walls. Faye’s absence gnawed at me. I longed for connection, for intimacy, for something real. But all I found was silence.
And that silence was not benign.
The phone problems persisted, growing more grotesque with each passing day. In mid-November 1989, Chris from the church mentioned she had tried to call. The line rang endlessly, then fell into a void. I had already filed complaint after complaint with Telstra, each one a scream into the abyss. The fault logs became a twisted diary of despair.
One day, Chris tried the kiosk phone. Nothing. Just dead air. I tore through the connection box, convinced a loose wire was the culprit. But everything was intact. The deadline loomed, mocking me like a spectre.
Then came the gold coin-operated phone in the dining room. Untouched. Untainted. Or so I thought. I fed it coins, clinging to hope. A dial tone. Relief. But then— “The number you have called is not connected or has been changed.” The voice was mechanical, but it dripped with malice. My coins were gone. Swallowed by the machine. Swallowed by the lie.
I tried again. This time, the message changed: “The line is engaged.” But I knew it wasn’t. I was alone. The phone was silent. The machine was lying. The universe was conspiring.
In the months that followed, I descended into madness. I devised bizarre testing routines, rituals to expose the malevolence behind the phone lines. But the answers never came. Only more silence. More deception.
Was Telstra incompetent—or complicit? Was there a force beyond them, feeding on my unravelling? The questions clawed at me. The weight of it all pressed down, suffocating. I stood at the edge, trembling, staring into the void.
And the void stared back.
Chapter 2 - Casualties of Telstra
A friend rang. In July 1992, to tell me she had heard of a restaurant in Melbourne suffering the same phone problems that were crippling me.
I felt a great comfort in hearing this and knew I needed to meet the owner. Making phone contact with the restaurant was, of course, difficult, but eventually I got through to Sheila Hawkins, proprietor of The Society restaurant in Bourke Street, in the centre of the city. We arranged to meet, and I travelled to Melbourne in early August.
It was so good to talk to someone who experienced similar problems. And there were more of us. Sheila knew of an Ann Garms who ran the Tivoli Theatre Restaurant in Brisbane, who was also having serious telephone problems. Back in Cape Bridgewater, I rang Ann to discover she was coming to Melbourne the following week to register her own complaints with Austel, the Australian Telecommunications Regulator, and we arranged to meet with Sheila. I went into the city again for the meeting, where Ann mentioned another Brisbane business that was in similar trouble—a car parts company run by Maureen Gillen. Like Ann’s business, Maureen’s was trunked off the Fortitude Valley exchange. Sheila, meanwhile, had contacted Graham Schorer, who somehow ran the Golden Courier Service out of North Melbourne—despite a very bad phone service.
Finally, our little group gathered at Sheila’s restaurant in Bourke Street, except for Maureen who couldn’t make the journey from Brisbane. It was Sheila who suggested we call ourselves COT—Casualties of Telstra. This was one of her last actions with the group, as she withdrew shortly after due to ill health.
At the top of the list of problems we held in common were those three little words: “No fault found.” It wasn’t just that we all had to put up with ongoing service faults; Telstra’s evasion of responsibility in this regard made those faults a nightmare. Telstra had a duty to deliver us service up to a recognised network standard, and by failing to “find” their faults, they were effectively avoiding carrying out their statutory obligation.
In October 1992, COT had its first official meeting with Telstra at the Ibis Hotel in Melbourne. We were a united and optimistic group of small-business telephone users, on our way to justice. We had no idea what a long haul we were in for. Indeed, this first meeting felt eminently successful. Telstra sent three executives; they treated us courteously, and we felt that our claims were being taken seriously. We were seen and treated as a concerned group of small-business people whom Telstra had consistently ignored.
We asked for Austel (the government regulator) to be the “honest broker” in our matters, and the executives agreed to this. They took the documentary evidence we had brought, and at the end of the meeting, we were left with the sense that it would all soon be resolved.
Following the initial meeting, there were several meetings with Telstra and Austel. As he was based in the city, Graham Schorer was the COT representative. Under pressure from Austel, Telstra acknowledged that faults existed, although they still withheld admission of the scale of faults that were known to be true—and indeed, as it turned out, that they too knew to be true.
Guaranteed to meet the network standard
Meanwhile, in July 1992, I had been obliged to ask Telstra for a guarantee that my phone service was up to standard. A bus service required such a guarantee (in case of urgent communication needs) before it would contract to transport groups to the camp. Although I did not see how Telstra could guarantee such a thing based on current performance, I thought a guarantee might have some use as leverage.
Not one but two guarantees eventually arrived (in the event, both too late for the purpose of securing the contract with the bus company). The first stated that my phone service was indeed “up to network standard”:
The second stated:
We believe that the quality of your service can be guaranteed and although it would be impossible to suggest that there would never be a service problem we could see no reason why this should be a factor in your business endeavours.
Now I need to jump ahead of myself here; to draw on material I did not have access to at this time, but which reveals something of what was going on in the telephone exchange while my business was sinking.
In 1994 we COT members all ended up involved in arbitrations with Telstra. According to the rules of arbitration, Telstra had a legal obligation to provide us with relevant documents under the Freedom of Information Act. You will hear a lot more about this in due course, not least about the unreasonable time it took for FOI document requests to be delivered (often years too late); enough to say here, that in an FOI release in mid-1994, I received documents referring to the general congestion problem at Cape Bridgewater.
The second paragraph of a document titled ‘Subject PORTLAND – CAPE BRIDGEWATER PCM HBER’ of 12 July 1991, was of particular interest:
When the ‘A’ direction of system 2 was initially tested, 11,000 errors per hour were measured. In the ‘B’ direction, approximately 216 errors per hour were measured; 72 errors per hour is the specified number allowable.
This level of error was in fact known at least as early as February 1990, the very time my complaints were being stonewalled. And nor was it acknowledged to me at the time of writing (July 1991). And in the new exchange, the problems continued, as another document, titled ‘Portland — Cape Bridgewater — RCM System’ showed, referring to information logged in March 1993, long after Telstra had first reported these massive error rates:
|
Initial error counter readings, Portland to Cape Bridgewater direction: |
|||
|
|
System 1 |
System 2 |
System 3 |
|
SES |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
DM |
45993 |
3342 |
2 |
|
ES |
65535 |
65535 |
87 |
|
At this stage we had no idea over what period of time these errors had accumulated. |
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The second page of this document explains why they ‘had no idea over what period of time these errors had accumulated’:
The alarm system on all three RCM systems had not been programmed. This would have prevented any local alarms from being extended back to Portland.
They didn’t know how long these errors had been accumulating because, from 18 August 1991, when the new exchange (RCM) was installed at Cape Bridgewater, the fault alarm system had been left unconnected. Since this was an unmanned exchange, no one could know when faults occurred — except, of course, us poor, defenceless customers.
This means that in September 1992, when Telstra management wrote to me stating that the quality of my telephone service was guaranteed up to network standard, they failed to realise that this alarm had not been connected. Even the local telephone technicians were oblivious to the call loss due to the unconnected alarm system in the exchange. What kind of investigation into the faults I had reported over several years does this demonstrate? A farcical one. How, for several years, could they fail to notice that the alarm wasn’t connected?
A compensation deal
The formation of COT had come not a moment too soon for me. The frustration of struggling with problems that seemed immune to complaints, and about which I could do nothing but complain, could finally be shared. I had lost faith in my own judgement by this time; I had let down two different partners who had trusted me, and I was now borrowing from friends just to keep the camp running on a day-to-day basis. Through all of this, of course, the phone faults implacably continued.
The COT group continued to negotiate with Austel and Telstra, and in late 1992 our combined pressure finally produced results: Telstra approached me with a proposal for a compensation payout which included a confidentiality agreement to the effect that I would not disclose the value of any settlement which resulted from this. I signed this agreement on 11 December 1992, and I have honoured my word not to disclose the amount of the payout without prior approval by Telstra.
That same day, I went to Telstra’s city fault centre where the area general manager and I began a long discussion regarding the extent of my financial losses over the four and a half years since I first complained about the phones. This manager and I were the only people involved in this discussion. I provided her with copies of numerous letters I had received from clients and tradespeople, describing their experiences trying to ring me, and I explained how I had calculated the sum of my losses.
On several occasions, the manager left me alone to examine documents she had given me. As she left on the first occasion, she explained that she would close the door so I could read in private and added that, if I needed to discuss anything with my advisors I was free to use the telephone: there was a direct outside line available at all times so I wouldn’t need to speak to an operator within the building. I made use of the phone a couple of times to ring Karen and talk over the offer; together we calculated how much I needed to repay her.
The documents provided by the manager were mostly hand-written and included copies of the so-called ‘guarantees’ I had received. According to one of the documents, there was only a ‘single’ fault, lasting only ‘three weeks’, that triggered the recorded message (RVA) that my number was not connected. This document claimed that the RVA probably caused me to lose only about 50% of all incoming calls over this three-week period. Other documents referred to a minor fault in the phone exchange at Heywood plus some other minor faults which may have contributed to some call loss. The manager told me that Telstra agreed to accept responsibility for these faults if I accepted their offer.
I protested and reeled off again the continuing and constant complaints I had been and still was getting from customers. Her response was a simple ‘take it or leave it’: this was Telstra’s last offer, she told me, and the only other avenue I could follow would be court proceedings. Her final comment was along the lines that, ‘Telstra has more time than you have money to fund court proceedings.’ Reluctantly, but feeling I had no other choice, I accepted. My reluctance was well justified.
By August 1993 came my first bundle of FOI documents from Telstra. In it, astonishingly, was a Telstra minute of 2 July 1992, which revealed that local Telstra technicians regarded my complaints were correct about the ‘service disconnected’ RVA on my line. Not only that, but the observation was also made that the problem, ‘is occurring in increasing numbers as more and more customers are connected …’ Senator Alston raised this document in Senates Estimates in February 1994, demanding a response from Austel. No response was forthcoming, and nowhere else did this revelation gather any advance for my cause.
And two years later I received a copy of an FOI document headed Telecom Secret. This was a copy of the notes brought by the manager to the settlement meeting. The opening page, reproduced here, shows all too clearly that Telstra knew how solid my case was. The manager had blatantly misled me into agreeing to sign.
The document goes on to state,
‘Mr Smith’s service problems were network related and spanned a period of 3–4 years,’ and ‘Overall, Mr Smith’s telephone service had suffered from poor grade of network performance over a period of several years; with some difficulty to detect exchange problems in the last 8 months.’
My acceptance of the offer notwithstanding, I continued to experience faults in my phone service, particularly call dropouts when, part-way through a conversation, the line would simply go dead, and short duration rings when the phone would ring once or twice and then stop, with no-one there if we picked up the receiver. Finally, in October of 1992, the area general manager arranged for two testing machines (called ‘Elmi’ machines) to be installed, one at the local Cape Bridgewater exchange and the other at my office.
On 13 October I reported four calls dropping out, at 1.20, 1.40, 2.00 and 3.00, and an occasion when I had answered the phone to find a deadline. Despite the Elmi machines, the Telstra technicians found, as they had in so many instances before, no faults that they could detect. What was going on?
It was two years before I got any elucidation from Telstra, and even then, it shed no light on the matter. In 1994, in a bundle of FOI documents I received was a hand-written file note stating,
‘We had the Elmi disconnected at the RCM and were installing it at Mr Smith’s house and the CCAS showed no evidence of above 1.20, 1.40, 2.00 and 3.00.
This was simply not the case at all; I knew they were not installing it at my house at this time; it was already installed. So, I asked Telstra to supply their Elmi printouts from September–October 1992. Some weeks later several documents arrived, including tapes which show that the call dropouts and deadlines that I had experienced appeared on Telstra’s monitoring equipment (CCAS) records as answered calls at approximately 1.30 pm and 3 pm.
I could not fathom why a local technician would state that the Elmi equipment was disconnected at the exchange and to be installed at my house when these two print-outs show that it was installed and operating at both locations, albeit incorrectly. I could only assume that all this reflected the competence and capacity of Telstra’s fault centre, as well as the accuracy of their records and reportage. That thought alone was very worrying when you are reliant on the telephone.
And now I began to suspect that there might not be a simple answer to the phone faults, just waiting to be discovered and fixed. It looked as if the problems were endemic throughout the organisation and its infrastructure.
As I struggled from the end of 1992 to the New Year of 1993 I began to wonder if ‘settling’ with Telstra had been such a good idea. Nothing had changed. I had been forced to re-finance, incurring more set-up fees, and because I still couldn’t afford to maintain the camp properly the place was looking decidedly abandoned. I felt as if I had been abandoned too. Both the buildings and I were tired, run-down and in need of a face lift!
The other COT members were no better off. Maureen and Ann had also accepted settlements directly from Telstra, while Graham had his through the courts. And for each of us, poor and faulty phone service continued unabated.
My only source of strength at this time was from my fellow COT members. One Saturday evening a couple of Scotches left me in tears of complete frustration. I knew I was easily capable of running the camp as I pictured it but instead, I was trapped in a vicious cycle. Without customers I would soon be completely broke, but the customers couldn’t reach me because the phones didn’t work. Right then Graham Schorer rang, urging me to hang in there, convinced that we would win out in the end.
Yes, some calls did get through, in what proportion I shall never know, though perhaps the rate is indicated by the following story. In personal desperation, I decided to ring Don Burnard, a clinical psychologist the COT members had contacted when we were first creating the group. Dr Burnard had written a report regarding our individual conditions, noting the breakdown in our psychological defences due to the excessive and prolonged pressures we endured:
All these clients have been subjected to persistent environmental stress because of constant pressure in their business and erratic patterns of change in the functioning of their telephones which were essential to the success of their businesses.
I rang Dr Burnard for support, but my conversation with his receptionist was interrupted three times by phone faults. Later I received a letter from his office, saying:
I am writing to you to confirm details of telephone conversation difficulties experienced between this office and our residence mid-morning this day, 5 May 1993. At approximately 11.30 am today Mr Alan Smith telephoned this office requesting to speak with Don Burnard. Mr Burnard was not available to take his call. During this time the telephone cut out three times. Each time Mr Smith telephoned back to continue the call.
Ann Garms and Graham Schorer had, by now, become my ‘comrades in arms’ in this war we were fighting, and we had many group discussions as we tried to find a way to deal with the evasions and deceptions of Telstra management. But we were simply three small-business people struggling against the might of a huge corporation. Not encouraging odds! We wondered if we could ever be able to expose Telstra’s unethical corporate strategies and continued and apparently deliberate mishandling of our complaints. And Ann, like me, had begun to suspect that our phone lines were being bugged. I will return to this later, once we were able to provide evidence that our concerns were valid.
Early in 1993, as spokesperson for COT, Graham Schorer met with Robin Davey, the chairman of Austel (the telecommunications industry regulator) to discuss our way forward. Austel was sympathetic to our situation. It recognised we had been let down in our settlements and sought to establish a standard of service against which Telstra’s performance could be objectively measured in any future settlements.
Meanwhile, COT decided it was time to try to inform the Australian Senate of our plight. We sent submission after submission, with supporting FOI documents, and followed through with visits to Canberra, financed from our already depleted pockets, to meet with ministers who were sympathetic to our case.
By now I had accumulated more than seventy letters from customers who had been unable to reach me by phone. This example, from a year 7 co-ordinator for Hamilton High School (now Bainbridge College), who brought his group along every February from 1990, is typical:
I wish to acknowledge in writing the repeated difficulty I have had contacting Alan Smith at the Cape Bridgewater convention centre by telephone. In the week March 1st to 5th, I made 5 or 6 attempted phone calls to Alan, but I was unable to get through, indeed the line was ‘dead’. This was extremely frustrating and had I not been aware of Alan’s phone problems, I would have used another camp site.
Astonishingly, one letter, dated 17 May 1993, was from a senior Telstra technical engineer, who wrote regarding his own experience of trying to ring me:
On the 24/2/93 I received a phone call from a technician at Portland who stated he had been given a fault from (1100 fault dept.) indicating a customer in Ballarat had trouble calling your business 055 267 267. I then attempted to ring 055 267 267 myself, the ring was tripped after several bursts, i.e. ‘answered’ and I received a loud noise like a radio carrier noise and a very faint ‘Hello’.
At last, a second person inside Telstra acknowledged that I had a problem with the phone service! The engineer had even given me his name. Yet in the course of their defence of my arbitration claims, Telstra proffered a Witness Statement from this man (made in December 1994) that included no reference to this.
Was the engineer pressured to stay quiet during my arbitration? I don’t know. Certainly, not all Telstra engineers or technicians treated COT complaints in good faith. Another Telstra technician, who experienced major problems during his official fax testing process on 29 October 1993, nevertheless advised the arbitrator that I had no problems with that service, even though the Telstra document that discusses these faults notes:
During testing the Mitsubishi fax machine, some alarming patterns of behaviour were noted, these affecting both transmission and reception. Even on calls that were not tampered with the fax machine displayed signs of locking up and behaving in a manner not in accordance with the relevant CCITT Group 3 fax rules.
In a similar incident, an FOI document regarding a complaint I lodged about my own phone service bears a hand-written note which states: ‘No need to investigate, spoke with Bruce, he said not to investigate also.’
Where was this attitude coming from? If from higher management, it seems an odd way to do business: exacerbating our problems so that we would only complain more.
In the first five months of 1993 I received another eleven written complaints, including letters from the Children’s Hospital and the Prahran Secondary College in Melbourne. The faults had now plagued my business, unabated, from April 1988 to mid-1993.
By now, due to COT’s pressure in Canberra, several politicians had become interested in our situation. The question was, would these politicians take any action on our behalf, or would they protect the ‘milking cow’ of the Telstra corporation?
In June 1993 the Shadow Minister for Communications, the Hon. Senator Richard Alston, was showing an interest. He and Senator Ron Boswell of the National Party both pushed for a Senate Inquiry into our claims and, I was recently told by an ex-Telstra employee, they were very close to pulling it off. If this Senate Inquiry had got off the ground, heads in Telstra might have rolled but it this didn’t happen, and those same ‘heads’ continue to control Telstra to this day.
Even though Senator Boswell is based in Queensland and most of the remaining members of COT are in Victoria, he has continued to offer his support. David Hawker MP, my local parliamentary member, was another who saw his ‘duty of care’ to his constituents and so answered our call for help. He took my claims seriously — indeed, he took the problem of poor phone service in his electorate seriously and was appalled at its extent. Mr Hawker sent me letters of support, put relevant people in touch with me, organised assistance for me, and has continued to go into battle on COT’s behalf for ten years now.
Non-connecting calls
While the politicians tried to launch a Senate Enquiry, COT continued to lobby Austel for assistance. Yet another telephone issue was affecting my business. In February 1993 I installed an 1800 free call number to encourage telephone business and right from the start experienced problems. Many calls to this number were not connecting; the caller heard only silence on the line and typically hung up. The business was thus potentially losing a client, but adding insult to injury, I was being charged for these non-connecting calls. Even worse, in many instances the caller heard a recorded announcement from Telstra to the effect that the number wasn’t connected. I first knew this problem was occurring through people reporting their difficulties trying to reach me. After this, I checked my bills carefully.
According to Telstra’s policy, customers are charged only for calls which are answered. Unanswered calls are not charged, and include:
… calls encountering engaged numbers (busy), various Telstra tones and recorded voice announcements as well as calls which ‘ring out’ or are terminated before or during ringing.
Between February and June 1993, I provided Austel with evidence of erroneous charging on unanswered calls on my 1800 service (in fact, it went on for at least another three years after that). John MacMahon, General Manager of Consumer Affairs at Austel, wanted a record of all non-connected calls and RVAs that were being charged to my 1800 account. To provide that, I needed the data from my local exchange.
Both Austel and the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office were aware that I made repeated requests of Telstra, under the rules of FOI, to provide me with the relevant data. Yet despite the involvement of these institutions, Telstra held out on me. In the end, it was more than a decade later that I received any of the relevant information, and that was through Austel. And of course it was too late by then, the statute of limitations on the matter had long expired.
I did not understand then, nor do I understand now, why Austel, as the government regulator of the telecommunications industry, was unable to demand that data from Telstra.
From June 1993 I had proof myself that Telstra knew the faulty billing in the 1800 system was a network problem from its inception.
AOMP: An Ericsson TMOS Network Management System tool for handling Operations & Maintenance functions for one or more AXE exchanges – particularly suited for use as an O&M centre for a number of rural exchanges which are spread over a large geographical area. Please note: while the AOMP has not operated in the Cape Bridgewater location Alan Smith has documented here because documents at hand have discussed this tool.
AOTC: Australian and Overseas Telecommunication Limited – former name of Telstra Corporation Limited – comprising the merged Telecom Australia and Overseas Telecommunication Corporation
ARE-11: Ericsson Analogue Crossbar Controlled Exchange. Please note: this type of exchange was operational during a period Graham Schorer had his problems.
ARF: Urban or large crossbar exchange by Ericsson
ARK: Rural or small crossbar exchange (Ericsson ) Please note: In the Casualties of Telecom (COT) report dated 13th April 1994, AUSTEL reported that the Cape Bridgewater exchange up and until the RCM was installed was an ARK, when in fact the system at Cape Bridgewater was an ‘old’ outdated RAX see below. An ARK crossbar exchange was manufactured approximately 20 years after the RAX system. Portland during the early nineties until August 1991 was an ARK which fed calls to the Cape Bridgewater RAX system.
ATUG: Australian Telecommunication User Group was operating well before the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (office of complaints) was formed in June 1993. ATUG was a voice for small businesses and as such paled a roll in enhancing services in the communication industry. Graham Schorer was a member of ATUG. Deputy TIO Wally Rothwell, before being appointed as Deputy TIO was Chief Executive Officer of ATUG for ten years.
AUSTEL: Australian Telecommunication Regulatory Authority. Please note: in July/August 1992, the then General Manager of AUSTEL’s Consumer Affairs, Amanda Davis, became involved with helping the COT group establish themselves as being responsible small business people who had legitimate phone complaints. It was through Amanda Davis’ stand in helping beyond the normal role as an officer of a regulator that she was literally forced to terminate her position.
AXE: Stored Programme Controlled (SPC) Digitally Switched exchange developed by LM. Ericsson, large numbers exist in the Australian network; used also for ISDN
AXE 104: LM Ericsson Digital Switch (Rural). Please note: This is the digital exchange that was installed in Portland in August 1991, cutover from the ARK system (see ARK above). In the AUSTEL COT Report {p 167} and questions raised by Senator Alston in the Senate Estimates 25th February 1994, relating to the problems being experienced by Alan Smith while connected to the AXE 104. The Senate Hansard referred to here can be located in Ted Benjamin (Appendix 16(a).
BS: Base station.
Busy Hour: The hour of the day when the average traffic of an exchange is highest. In Telstra Australia practice, it is defined at the two busiest consecutive half hours commencing at the hour of half hour. NETWORK – The hour during which the total traffic flows through the network under consideration is highest. Please note: The Bell Canada International (BCI) tests were supposed to be generated through the Busy Hour. In the case of Alan Smith it has now been confirmed that the BCI tests (if they were done at all) were not generated through the Busy Hour.
C & BI: Charging and Billing Integrity. Please note: Alan Smith has seen reference to this in his Telstra related billing files (somewhere) and therefore has included the acronym here.
CABS: Charging AND Billing System (CABS) is an automatic system for billing customers. CABS was replaced by FLEXCAB (when Mr Smith is not sure when) however, FLEXCAB was supposed to have improved the billing capabilities.
Call Trace: A feature that allows the Customer to cause the last call received to be traced.
Can: Customer Access Network. The part of the network between the telephone exchange main distribution frame and the Service Delivery Point at the customer premises. Please note: on page 243 in the AUSTEL COT Report point 11.8: “…AUSTEL had written to Telecom informing it that the claim in the Bell Canada International report to the effect that Telecom’s customers received a grade of service that meets global standards goes to far because the study was an inter-exchange study only and did not extend to the customer access network – AUSTEL had agreed to the study being so limited on the basis that other monitoring it had requested Telecom to undertake on AUSTEL’s behalf should provided AUSTEL with the data on the efficacy of the customer access network – See Verification issues LGE 7.
CANES: Customer Access Network Evaluation System – C&C system – provides a complete fault registration, recording, diagnosis & analysis environment aimed at improving responsiveness to reported fault – uses A1 technology – interfaces with SULTAN. Please note: this is another system for fault finding by way of intercepting telephone conversations.
CCAS: Call Charge Analysis System – monitoring charging of selected services in analogue exchanges. CCAS type systems can not detect the answer signal & hence can not determine if the call was effective or what the chargeable time is on an effective call – the CCAS records are still of considerable use i.e. to allow comparison of CCR & CCAS records on a-party number b-party number, date, call clearance time. Please note: The CCAS data which was not provided to Alan Smith during the SVT testing, now confirms that the SVT tests were not generated as stated in Telstra’s arbitration defence – see Verification issues LGE 7
CCAS ELMI: This is the monitoring equipment that Telstra used under direction from Telstra to test Alan Smith’s service lines during 1992/93. Gordon Stokes, a local Portland technician had this equipment attached to Alan Smith’s 055 267267 service on the 13th October 1992, but denied to senior Telstra executives that this equipment had been in use during the day it detected incoming call losses to Alan’s business – see Chronology for this date.
CENTOC: Centralised Traffic Occupancy – computerised traffic recording & monitoring for analogue exchanges. Please note: this information was never provided under FOI by Telstra to either Graham Schorer or Alan Smith during their respective arbitrations. While neither Graham nor Alan actual asked by name they required CENTOC data, as the information being sought under the respective FOI requests, they did ask for all ‘network monitoring’ information. Both Graham and Alan have been advised Telstra’s guards the CENTOC, which is some times referred to as CENTOCTRAXE with armed guards as this data does not lie and will determine whether there are network problems affecting certain locations.
CHARMS: Charging Maintenance System – provides locations, rates & charging scales for Telstra’s customer charging – does not store unique customer details, but significant information to classify customer groupings attached to any exchange within the Telstra network.
CLI: Calling Line Identification – a customer facility in crossbar and SPC exchanges for billing and surveillance purposes – identifies the number of the calling party’s line.
CPE: Customer Premises Equipment. All telecommunications terminal equipment located on the Customer premises, encompassing from the analogue telephone to the most advance data terminals and Customer switches. Please note: Page 53 of the Coopers & Lybrand report acknowledged that Telstra had a habit of blaming CPE for faults instead of proper investigation.
DNF: Difficult Network Fault, Please note: in the Coopers & Lybrand and AUSTEL COT Report, they jointly refer to the COT Cases as DNF customers.
DOTAC: Department Of Transport and Communications. Please note: the abbreviation for the Communication’s Ministers Office being used by telcos DCITA – Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts.
ELMI: Portable Telephone Charge Analyser. Brand of CCAS equipment used mainly in country area’s.
EOS: End of selection code – used to monitor switching & congestion loss. Please Note: this equipment allows the person operating the monitoring switching device to listen in on conversations. See Gordon Stokes witness statements for Telstra’s arbitration defence of Alan Smith’s claims.
FLEXICAB: A system similar to CABS (see above) but, with many more processes and capable of producing very meaningful management reports. Please note: neither Graham Schorer or Alan Smith was provided with any FLEXICAB and/or CENTOCTRAXE data information under their FOI requests (during their respective arbitration’s). This update information would have assisted both the TIO appointed technical consultants as well as the claimant's consultants in determining if the SVT testing was authentic or not.
IRS: Inter-network Routing Service.
ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network (CCITT) – A switched digital transmission network that provides, through a single digital access point, speech, data and other telecommunication sciences. The hierarchy of digital switching & transmission methods.
LEOPARD: Local Engineering Operations Processing and Analysis of Recording data – a plant recording & maintenance system for telephone services; a computerised system to cater for all field technical records associated with provision and maintenance of services. Please note: While Alan Smith has not fully looked into Graham Schores’s technical information regarding Mr Schorer’s registered fault complaints, Alan has been able to determine that even after Mr Smith had supplied fault information to either 1100 or the designated special fault centre at Waverley (Victoria),Telstra did not all ways registered those faults in Leopard.
LOOP: Pair Gain Signalling System
Macrolink: Telstra’s Primary Rate Access ISDN services that provide a high speed service for speech and data.
MCT: Malicious Call Trace: Please Note: During May to August 1993, Telstra connected Alan Smith’s incoming 055 267 267 service as well as his 008/1800 free-call service to MCT. Also during May to September 1993, Telstra connected Alan’s facsimile service line 055 267230 to MCT. The side affect-problem with MCT is that it does not allow any other intended incoming call to connect for a 90 second period – see witness statement of Telstra’s Dave Stockdale.
MDF: Main distribution Frame. Structural hardware, on one part of which terminate the permanent outside lines entering the Customer’s premises and on another part of which terminate the subscriber line multiple cabling, used for associating any outside line with its corresponding internal exchange wiring.
MOSAIC: Trouble Management system – replaced the Leopard system of fault recording.
Multiplexer: The combining of multiple channels onto a single transmission medium; any process through which a circuit normally dedicated to a single user can be shared by multiple users. Please note: The telephone system that service Alan Smith from August 1991 to 2001, operates using a multiplexer system.
MUX: Multiplexer.
NASM: National AXE System Manger.
NCC: Network Control Centre.
Neat System: Network Evaluation and Test System. A test call system consisting of remote transponders, each connected at the network exchange MDF point as a normal customer, and central management and control unit. This system can conduct a schedule of test calls between transponders to measure call set-up, and hold performance, together with transmission, noise, post dialling delay, and other tests. Please note: During the AUSTEL COT Case investigations, AUSTEL implemented through Telstra that all the DNF problem customers had to have Neat Testing performed at their local exchanges. In the case of Alan Smith, it has now been confirmed (see CAV targets) that NEAT testing was performed at the Cape Bridgewater RCM as shown in the AUSTEL report. The NEAT Ericsson equipment used in the Cape Bridgwater tests October/November 1993, allowed for each test to remain open for a minimum of 120 seconds, allowing for transmission testing for noise, post dialling delay faults. This type of Neat transmission testing was used for the SVT tests carried out on Mr Smith’s service during his arbitration (see CAV targets 7 and the Brian Hodge MBE report for more information.
NODE: A point of a network where various links come together and which generally contains a switching element to direct traffic.
NRR: Not Receiving Ring. Please note: the NRR fault was a major problem uncovered by the COT Cases during late 1992 and into 1994. Example: A caller rings a service and does not get connected either receiving a dead-line, or piecing sounds like a facsimile type noise even though no facsimile is connected at the calling end. In the case of Alan Smith, numerous complaints registered to him by customers (when they finally getting through) or by writing to Alan, was the only way he became aware that a customer was lost.
OAS: Operator Assisted Service.
OFMUX: Optical Fibre Multiplexer Equipment.
OMP: Operations Maintenance Processor.
OPAS: Operations Performance and Support. Please note: from what Alan Smith has observed from reading a number of technical documents is, that OPAS is the last resort used by local rural technicians.
Outrage: Is the time that Service to the customer will be unavailable for. Please note: this type of happening to a customer should be kept to a minimum however, Telstra in the case of Graham Schorer and Alan Smith, their customers experiencing (RVA see below) was an outrage from them twofold.
PABX: Private Automatic Branch Exchange. A small switching system located on a customer’s premises which serves speech and data extensions within a business complex and provides access to the public network. Please note: during the COT arbitrations’ Golden Messenger was operating off of a PABX. System.
PSTN: Public Switched Telephone Network. Public telephone network which generally provides switching and signalling for local, long-distance, and international voice and low-speed data.
RAX: An outdated communications system that only operated in low call rate locations, designed in the 50s. Please note: the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp was connected to an RCM until August 1991.
RCM: Remote Customer Multiplexer – digital pair gain system. Please note: The Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp operates off of an RCM which is housed in a hut. This system is not an exchange and is totally unmanned.
REARK: Private company which produces TELCATS reports. Please note: often –quite often, from 1992 through to 1994, REARK was used by Telstra to enable them to provide reports to the Minister of the day, including the regulator AUSTEL
RUBAS: Traffic figure based on the 50 highest half-hour average traffic figures over a 7 day period. Please Note: like the CENROC TRAXE and CABS data, the traffic information obtained from RUBAS in the Warrnambool and Portland locations (South West Victoria) was also not supplied to Alan Smith under FOI during his arbitration.
RVA: Recorded Voice Announcement. A recorded message is played through to a caller (who might have dialled the right number) but is confronted with a recorded message stating that “the number you have called is not connected.” Please note: Telstra has recognised that the RVA fault was a known National Network Software problem that came about when they implemented the 1800 number. The RAX and RCM system installed at Cape Bridgewater, which suffered congestion, gave the same type of (recorded message) to the caller into Cape Bridgewater when the system was congested.
SMART 10: Subscriber Monitoring & Registration Terminal. This system operates similar to the CCAS see above.
SPC {1} Stored Processor Controlled (Exchange) e.g. AXE, ARE
SULTAN: Subscriber Line Test Access Network – provides test information vital for diagnosis of customer fault reports and network performance monitoring – used with LEOPARD and CANES –C&C system. Please note: this is another tool for voice interception.
TIMS: Telephone Information Management System.
TRAFFIC: A term applying to simultaneous calls in progress, not to total calls generated over a period of time.
TRAXE: Traffic Recording for AXE – data acquisition system – uses Data General minicomputers located in each State – apart from traffic analysis. Please note: Alan Smith has already mentioned above, that CENTOC TRAXE data information should have been provided to him under FOI during his arbitration. The Customer Remote Multiplexer RCM at Cape Bridgewater was service via an AXE in Portland.
The matters discussed on this website absentjustice.com are said according to my interpretation of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013
Download Attachments
AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings
Front Page Part Two 2-A to 2-B
False Witness Statement File No 3-A to 3-D
Cape Bridgewater unidentified faults File 4-A to 4-C
False Witness Statement File No 16-A to 16-B
False Witness Statement File No 17-A to 17-D
Can We Fix The Can - Copper-Wire Network
False Witness Statement File 15-A to 15-N
Front Page Part Two File No/3 A to 3 C
D-Lewis File 1-A to 1-K
SVT Evidence File No 1 to 3
AXE Evidence File 1 to 9
