Rupert Murdoch - Hacking Helen Handbury

 

Hacked - Julian Assange. He warned the COT Cases about corruption and legal abuse in Australian conducted arbitrations. He exposed these crimes. Heinous, scandalous crimes that were committed against the COT during their arbitrations. Fraudulant conduct, was rife in those arbitrations

When the British government first learned that there may be some illegal phone hacking going on, did they conceal it? No, they did not. They were prepared to attack whoever might be responsible for this terrible conduct. However, when our politicians discovered that COT claimants, during a government-endorsed legal litigation process, were suffering from phone and fax hacking – including illegal interference in the transmission of legal arbitration documents and Senate estimate committee hearing material – this conduct was deliberately concealed, to the detriment of the claimants.

In Britain, the government acted in the best interests of the victims whose lives were seriously affected by the hacking; yet our government treated the COT cases in the most appalling manner, attacking us as criminals instead of those who used Telstra’s network to hack into our confidential legal documents.

The British Government

In 1999, while I was working on the draft of Absent Justice, I provided it to Rupert Murdoch’s sister, Helen Handbury. She was aghast at the blatant denial of natural justice that I had received. Helen twice visited my holiday camp and, after reading the draft, stated that she would have Rupert publish it. She believed he would be shocked.

Helen was astounded at the amount of evidence I had accumulated, proving how long I had been troubled by illegal fax hacking, as well as the discrimination I had received by those who had administered the process.

Of course, 1999 was before the hacking scandal linked to the News of the World.

Unfortunately, Helen died in 2004. Some years later, on 26 September 2012, I sent a draft of the original version of Ring for Justice to her husband, Geoff Handbury, and told him about my conversation with Helen. I asked whether he could suggest the best way for me to get a copy of the book to Rupert Murdoch.

Mr Handbury replied on 17 October 2012 in a handwritten letter (with beautiful, old-fashioned penmanship that we no longer see). However, he was then 87 years old and although highly respected for his philanthropic support of many worthwhile projects in Victoria, too much time had passed and, sadly, he wasn’t able to help. Still, I have the memory of how the sister of the biggest newspaper-owner in the world believed my “intriguing story” was certainly one that her brother should publish and I’m grateful for her comments.

I do not believe that Rupert Murdoch sanctioned the phone hacking on innocent citizens of Britain.

Ironically, on 13 October 1993, a Telstra auditor visited Cape Bridgewater with his secretary. By 2015, the auditor had become a very senior executive within Telstra and he is now on the board of Murdoch’s Foxtel. I am sure he remembers how shocked he and his secretary were when they saw the information I presented to them in relation to my Telstra problems; they both commented that they could not believe how badly Telstra treated me for the previous five years. That five-year period was confirmed in a 9 June 1993 letter from AUSTEL (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, at points 2, to 212); this9 June 1993 letter and its suggestion that Telstra knowingly misled and deceived me during my first settlement in December 1992 shocked them the most.

I included that letter from AUSTEL in the draft of Absent Justice that I provided to Helen Handbury and I believe that was what prompted her to say I should get Rupert to publish it. The British Government pulled no punches in relation to the ongoing saga now, in 2015, three years after it first went viral across the world. But in Australia, although the government knows that not only did many COT members have their phone lines illegally bugged during their arbitration with Telstra (and, after my arbitration was over), but our faxes were ALSO being screened/intercepted by a secondary fax machine (in my case, for at least seven years before sent on to the intended destinations.

In Australia, the COTs have suffered too, just like those victims of the News of the World disaster in Britain; for instance, we couldn’t make a phone call or send a personal fax without being aware that somebody was probably listening in to those calls or intercepting those faxes., Scandrett and Associates’ prepared the Fax Interception Technical Report exhibit (see Scandrett & Associates report Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13) and Peter Hancock of Total Communications Victoria provided a sworn statement to me on 17 December 2014, stating:

“I still stand by my statutory declaration that I was able to identify that the incoming faxes provided to me for review had at some stage been received by a secondary fax machine and then retransmitted, this was done by identifying the dual time stamps on the faxes provided.” (Front Page Part One File No/14)

It is also clear from Front Page Part One File No/1, File No/2-A to 2-E, File No/3, File No/4 and Front Page Part One File No/5, that numerous documents faxed from my office to the arbitrators office did not reach their intended destination.

as to the validity that report. HOWEVER, Senator Boswell never contacted me regarding any outcome of the Senate estimate’s investigation or any other government investigation into this report, which is easily comparable to the News of the World hacking scandal.

I have not been contacted by the Federal government concerning this fax hacking/interception issue but, if such hacking had taken place in the halls of Britain’s parliament it would have been even bigger than the News of the World Murdoch hacking fiasco that led to the 2011 shutting down of that newspaper, first circulated in 1847.

In Australia though, during a government-endorsed arbitration process, with faxes traveling between claimants, their lawyers and advisors, various government officials, at least one senator and the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office, the Telstra Corporation had so much power, even over the government-endorsed legal process, that it was able to cover up this hacking scandal.

On page 15 of The Most Dangerous Man in the World, written in 2011 by the ABC’s Four Corners journalist Andrew Fowler, Mr Fowler notes that Julian Assange was one of those who hacked into Telstra’s Lonsdale Street telephone exchange computer system in the centre of Melbourne. The covert AUSTEL draft report (see ) concerning my telephone problems and faults refers to as this same exchange where, for some seven months, Telstra forgot to program in the 055 267 telephone prefix for the Portland/Cape Bridgewater exchange.

Page 21 in the 26 November 1996 Telstra Arbitration Briefing Document for Graham (Golden Messenger) also refers to problems at the Lonsdale Street telephone exchange, stating the problems affected the service lines into Golden Messenger over an extended period. So what did Julian Assange and his friends find at the Lonsdale Street telephone exchange that prompted them to telephone Graham?

My statement to the TIO in my 20 October 1995 letter that, “This phrase has now come home to roost,” (File GS 537 - [sic] which had clear indication of change in the headers, indicating interruption in transmission by a third party or parties.

“He questioned whether it was possible that faxes to and from senators could be interrupted, read or copies.

“My response in the affirmative brought about an expression of extreme anger. Stating that if it could be proven that it occurred the offender(s) would be jailed.

“If required I am prepared to re-state this on an affidavit.”

So far, no one in Australia has even been brought to account, let alone jailed, for the terrible invasion of the COT cases’ private and business lives.

Simply put, the government played judge and jury in deciding whose lives were more important than the others. Stopping the COT Cases from recieving their requested Freedom of Information documnets jeopardised the COT arbitrations to protect the integrity of parliament house.

It is important to introduce here the bribery and corruption issues the US Department of Justice raised against Ericsson on 19 December 2019 (as recorded in the Australia media)

"One of Telstra's key partners in the building out of their 5G network in Australia is set to fork out over $1.4 billion after the US Department of Justice accused them of bribery and corruption on a massive scale and over a long period of time.

"Sweden's telecoms giant Ericsson has agreed to pay more than $1.4 billion following an extensive investigation which saw the Telstra-linked Company 'admitting to a years-long campaign of corruption in five countries to solidify its grip on telecommunications business". (see https://www.channelnews.com.au/key-telstra-5g-partner-admits-to-bribery-corruption/)

The US Department of Justice has accused Ericsson of bribery and corruption. Ericsson is the same company whose telecommunication equipment was under investigation by the COT arbitrator. And, as for bribery in the case against Telstra, Senate Privilege Hansard dated 27 February 1998 shows Telstra paid kickbacks and bribes to several Australian politicians and government bureaucrats.

Will the truth surrounding Telstra's continued use of Ericsson's faulty telephone exchange equipment be exposed? Why was it still being used by Telstra in Australia when other countries around the globe were removing it or had removed it from their telephone exchanges? 

Absent Justice was set up to show how unscrupulous bureaucrats operated a puppet-style arbitration process in order to hide from the Australian public the severity of the faulty Ericsson AXE telephone equipment still being used in Australia’s telephone exchanges in the 1990s when other countries around the world had removed or were removing it from their exchanges.

Since those arbitrations, the government has officially advised that the arbitrator who conducted the process was not qualified to do so and did not conduct those arbitrations under the conditions the claimants were told they would be. Yet the government refuses to reopen those arbitrations.

We are a group of Australians who call ourselves the Casualties of Telstra (COTs). This website stands as a testament to the unlawful conduct we were exposed to.

This is the story of a group of ordinary small-business people fighting one of the largest companies in the country.

For many years, government-owned Telstra refused to address the ongoing phone problems that were affecting the capacity of the COTs to run their businesses and told them ‘No fault found.’ Documents on this website show those faults certainly existed, as government records show (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, at points 10, to 212), but the issue was much bigger than just the COTs’ services. 

I am raising the Ericsson AXE issue here because the reference material I provided Helen Handury after she asked me for a copy of my book discussed vividly how Ericsson was able to purchase Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd during the COT arbitrations even though the administrators of the arbitrations had appointed Lane to assess the COT Cases complaints against Ericsson installed telephone equipment in Australia. (see Chapter 5 - US Department of Justice vs Ericsson of Sweden)