The Briefcase
Ericsson AXE faulty telephone exchange equipment (1)
Telstra senior management finally visited my business, a five-hour drive from Melbourne. Within five minutes of saying hello, In knew, I knew I was in for another round of untruths.
I should have known better. It was just another case of 'No fault found.' We spent some considerable time 'dancing around' a summary of my phone problems. Their best advice for me was to continue doing exactly what I had been doing since 1989, which was keeping a record of all my phone faults. I could have wept. Finally, they left.
A little while later, in my office, I found that Aladdin had left behind his treasures: the Briefcase Saga was about to unfold.
Aladdin
The briefcase was not locked, and I opened it to find out it belonged to Mr Macintosh. There was no phone number, so I was obliged to wait for business hours the next day to track him down. But what was in the briefcase was a file titled ‘SMITH, CAPE BRIDGEWATER’. After five gruelling years fighting the evasive monolith of Telstra, being told various lies along the way, here was possibly the truth, from an inside perspective.
The first thing that rang a bell was a document that revealed Telstra knew the RVA fault they recorded in March 1992 had actually lasted for at least eight months, not the three weeks that was the basis of their settlement payout. Dated 24/7/92, and with my phone number in the top right corner, the document referred to my complaint that people ringing me get an RVA ‘service disconnected’ message with the ‘latest report’ dated 22/7/92 from Station Pier in Melbourne and a ‘similar fault reported’ on 17/03/92. The final sentence reads:
‘Network investigation should have been brought in as fault has gone on for 8 months.’
I copied this and some other documents from the file on my fax machine, and faxed copies to Graham Schorer. The next morning I telephoned the local Telstra office, and someone came out and picked the briefcase up.
The information in this document, dated 24 July 1992, was proof that senior Telstra management had deceived and misled me during negotiations with me, and it also showed that their guarantees that my phone system was up to network standard were made in full knowledge that it was nowhere near ‘up to standard’.
Not only was Telstra’s area general manager fully aware at the time of my settlement on 11 December 1992 that she was providing me with incorrect information which influenced my judgement of the situation, placing me at a commercial disadvantage, but the General Manager, Commercial Victoria/Tasmania was also aware of this deception.
The use of misleading and deceptive conduct such as this in a commercial settlement such as mine contravenes Section 52 of the Australian Trade Practices Act. Yet this deception has never been officially addressed by any regulatory body. To get ahead of my story here, even the arbitrator who handed down his award on my case in May 1995 failed to question Telstra’s unethical behaviour.
I took this new information to Austel, and on 9 June 1993, Austel’s John MacMahon wrote to Telstra regarding my continuing phone faults after the settlement, and the content of the briefcase documents:
Further he claims that the Telecom documents contain network investigation findings which are distinctly different from the advice which Telecom has given to the customers concerned.
In summary, these allegations, if true, would suggest that in the context of the settlement Mr Smith was provided with a misleading description of the situation as the basis for making his decision. They would also suggest that the other complainants identified in the folders have knowingly been provided with inaccurate information.
I ask for your urgent comment on these allegations. You are asked to immediately provide AUSTEL with a copy of all the documentation which was apparently inadvertently left at Mr Smith’s premises for its inspection. This, together with your comment, will enable me to arrive at an appropriate recommendation for AUSTEL’s consideration of any action it should take.
As to Mr Smith’s claimed continuing service difficulties, please provide a statement as to whether Telecom believes that Mr Smith has been provided with a telephone service of normal network standard since the settlement. If not, you are asked to detail the problems which Telecom knows to exist, indicate how far beyond network standards they are and identify the cause/causes of these problems.
In light of Mr Smith’s claims of continuing service difficulties, I will be seeking to determine with you a mechanism which will allow an objective measurement of any such difficulties to be made.
I can only presume that Telstra did not comply with the request ‘to immediately provide AUSTEL with a copy of all the documentation which was apparently inadvertently left at Mr Smith’s premises,’ for on 3 August 1993, Austel’s General Manager, Consumer Affairs wrote to Telstra requesting a copy of all the documents in this briefcase that had not already been forwarded to Austel. The following Telstra internal document, dated 23 August 1993 and labelled as ‘folio R09830’ with the subject listed as ‘The Briefcase’, is alarming to say the least. This document, which had been copied to Telstra’s Corporate Secretary, notes:
“Subsequently it was realised that the other papers could be significant and these were faxed to but appear not to have been supplied to Austel at this point.
"The loose papers on retrofit could be sensitive and copies of all papers have been sent to Ross Marshall
I sent off several Statutory Declarations to Austel explaining what I had seen in the briefcase.
On 27 August 1993, Telstra’s Corporate Secretary, Jim Holmes, wrote to me about the contents of the briefcase:
Although there is nothing in these documents to cause Telstra any concern in respect of your case, the documents remain Telstra’s property and therefore are confidential to us … I would appreciate it if you could return any documents from the briefcase still in your possession as soon as possible.
How blithely he omitted any reference to vital evidence which was withheld from me during their negotiations with me regarding compensation.
It is essential to review the witness statements from August 8 and 10, 2006.
The Monster Behind the Curtain: Telstra’s Grip on Justice
In 1999, the Victoria Police Major Fraud Group, through their barrister Mr. Neil Jepson, requested I supply all evidence proving Telstra had used three falsified reports to support its arbitration claims against the Casualties of Telstra (COT) Cases. I did more than that—I provided two additional reports the police were unaware of, each one a thread in the web of deception Telstra had spun to conceal the true state of the Cape Bridgewater telecommunications network.
After I submitted the contents of Telstra’s Falsified BCI Report (see Telstra's Falsified BCI Report to Mr. Jepson, the Major Fraud Group asked me to assist in compiling evidence for their investigation. Over three separate visits to their St. Kilda Road offices, I spent two full days each time helping Victoria Police understand the significance of these flawed reports—documents Telstra used to mislead the arbitrator and his advisors into believing the network was sound.
But it wasn’t. AUSTEL, the government communications regulator, had already investigated the Cape Bridgewater and Portland exchanges during the Fast Track Settlement Proposal process, which later evolved into the arbitration process. Their findings, documented AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, revealed a network riddled with faults. Yet Telstra’s arbitration defence unit concealed these findings, just as they had with the BCI report.
In 2006, — File 517 AS-CAV Exhibits 495 to 541 is a Witness Statement dated 10 August 2006 (provided to the Department of Communications, Information, Technology and the Arts (DCITA) sworn out by Des Direen, ex-Telstra Senior Protective Officer who had become a Principal Investigator. Mr Direen bravely revealed that in 1999–2000, after leaving Telstra, he assisted the Major Fraud Group, particularly Detective Sergeant Rod Kueris, in investigating COT fraud allegations. I was seconded to that investigation as an advisor, guiding the police through the maze of five known fraudulent reports that Telstra had used to convince the arbitrator that all faults had been resolved—when Telstra and its lawyers knew otherwise.
Mr Direen’s statement, especially points 12 to 18, is chilling. He observed firsthand that the phones at Detective Kueris’s home were “possibly interfered with.” Within weeks, it became clear that Kueris was under immense distress. I raise this not lightly, but because during that same investigation, I faxed critical documents to Mr Jepson’s office—documents exposing the falsified Bell Canada International report. Had I not immediately contacted Mr Jepson, we would never have known the faxes were intercepted and never reached the Major Fraud Group’s machine.
This wasn’t just obstruction. It was intimidation. It was power wielded to silence truth.
I reference File 766 and its companion witness statement because they prove a harrowing truth: even a police officer, when confronting Telstra, was left floundering. Just as we were. The arbitrator and administrator of the COT arbitrations were afraid to abandon the process—not because it was just, but because Telstra’s influence over Australia’s legal system was too significant.
I am using the following witness two witness statements File 766 - AS-CAV Exhibit 765-A to 789), because they prove a police officer, when dealing with the Telstra Corporation, was left floundering as were the COT Cases when they were forced into arbitration with the same monster who the arbitrator and administrator of the COT arbitrations were afeared to abandon the COT arbitrations because of the power and influence Telstra has over the legal system in Australia. Please read the following two witness statements.
"I can recall that during the period 2000/2001, I had arranged to meet Detective Sergeant Rod KURIS from the Victoria Police Major Fraud Squad at the foyer of Casselden Place, 2 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. At the time, I was assisting Rod with the investigation into alleged illegal activities against the COT Cases.
Rod then stated that he wanted me to follow him to the left side of the foyer. When we did this he then directed my attention to a male person seated on a sofa opposite our seat. He then told me that the person had been following him around the city all morning. At this stage Rod was becoming visibly upset and I had to calm him down.Rod kept on saying that he couldn't believe in what was happening to him. I had to again calm him down".
Points 21 and 22 in Mr Direen’s statement also record how, while he was a Telstra employee, he had cause to investigate “… suspected illegal interference to telephone lines at the Portland exchange,” but when he “… made inquiries by telephone back to Melbourne (he) was told not to get involved and that another area of Telstra was handling it” and that “... the Cape Bridgewater complainant was a part of the COT cases” (my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp) business.
