Hacked Julian Assange
When the Hackers telephoned COT Spokesperson Graham Schorer telling him Telstra was acting unlawfully towards the COT Cases were they referring to Telstra's use of the known false BCI technical report?
Bell Canada Impracticable test
Why hasn’t the current Telstra Senior Management, advised the Australian Government that, even before my arbitration began, Telstra already knew that the Cape Bridgewater Telecommunications Network that my business was connected to was grossly deficient, i.e. it was not up to network standard?
Why has the same Senior Management never admitted that Telstra was aware of these faults even as they commissioned Bell Canada International Inc. (BCI), from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada during November 1993, to run a series of tests at the Cape Bridgewater (unmanned exchange) and produce a technical report that in May 1994 was lodged with the arbitrator as part of Telstra’s defence of my claims?
Why the Telstra Board along with this management also failed to advise the Senate Secretary (see Absent Justice/ Chapter Six/summary of events) that, when Telstra submitted extracts from their Cape Bridgewater BCI report including letters were allegedly written by BCI staff to the Senate in October 1997 (ON NOTICE), Telstra was already fully aware that the BCI findings were completely impracticable (see Telstra's Falsified BCI Report)
Perhaps the Telstra Board and Senior Management have not revealed any of this information because even though a Telstra internal investigation during my arbitration found that the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests were in fact impracticable and my claims were, therefore, valid Telstra chose to conceal this fresh evidence from the arbitrator and later the Senate secretary?
So, even though Telstra was fully aware that the BCI report was fundamentally flawed, they still decided to allow this report to remain as evidence in support of a Senate Estimates Committee’s official findings! This whole process simply demonstrates Telstra believes they are above the law as the following Cape Bridgewater BCI chronology of show.
On 22 November 1995, Ted Benjamin Telstra's previous arbitration defence liaison officer again wrote to me refuting my Cape Bridgewater BCI claims, stating:
"I note that you raised issues in relation to the Bell Canada International testing results in the arbitration process. As you are aware, the arbitration process dealt with the complaints by you in relation to your telephone service. That process has been completed and consequently, Telstra does not propose to comment further or enter into debate with you on these matters". (See Exhibit AS 200 File AS-CAV 181 to 233)
21st March 1997: On 21 March 1997, Mr Pinnock TIO wrote to Ted Benjamin (Who was also a TIO Council Member) stating
"I would appreciate your advice concerning the matters raised by Mr Smith, in particular and arising out of your letter of 23 December 1994 to Dr Hughes:
- any explanation for the apparent discrepancy in the attestation of the witness statements of Ian Joblin
- were there any changes made to the Ian Joblin statement originally sent to Dr Hughes, compared to the signed statement? (See Exhibit AS 596 File AS-CAV 589 to 647)
The matter concerning why Telstra allowed their lawyers Feehill Hollingdale & Page (FHP) to sign a statutory declaration on 12 December 1994 without the witness being present was not addressed by Dr Hughes (the arbitrator) during my 1994/95 arbitration.
More importantly, did someone other than Mr Joblin change the original assessment (of my mental state) after Mr Joblin had signed and submitted the report? Was this why Mr Joblin’s witness statement was forwarded to Dr Hughes without Mr Joblin’s signature? It has now been confirmed that clause 24 of the arbitration agreement was altered, and the $250,000.00 liability caps in clauses 25 and 26 were removed from my arbitration agreement, sometime after my arbitration advisor had assessed it, but Dr Hughes and Peter Bartlett (TIO Special Counsel) have so far declined to confirm when these alterations took place so we are left wondering: was it before I signed the agreement on 21st April 1994 or after it was couriered to Telstra for signing? How many more arbitration procedural documents were altered to the determent of My claim? Is this why so many submitted claim documents have never been returned to me after my arbitration even though the arbitration agreement I signed stated they had to be returned?
The most alarming points in relation to Ian Joblin’s (not signed) Witness statement are:
- Before Mr Joblin met with me, Telstra provided Mr Joblin with a copy of the Bell Canada International (BCI) addendum report which stated that some 13,590 test calls that were carried out over a staggering five-day period, into the Cape Bridgewater RCM unmanned telephone exchange, using the TELELEC CCS7 monitoring equipment, had a success rate of 99.8%;
- Telstra asked Mr Joblin to assess my mental state after he had read the impracticable Cape Bridgewater BCI report.
- Neither Mr Joblin nor the arbitrator was told that the nearest exchange that could accommodate the TELELEC CCS7 equipment was the Warrnambool exchange, 120 kilometres from Cape Bridgewater.
One would imagine that, if Ian Joblin had known that the 13,590 tests calls allegedly carried out by BCI had not terminated through the TELELEC CCS7 monitoring system as the reports provided to him by FHP claimed, because the unmanned Cape Bridgewater RCM and Portland’s main exchange could not accommodate this specialised CCS7 system, then his assessment of my mental state might have been somewhat different, he might have been distressed himself, if he had been aware that Telstra's lawyers had misled and deceived him concerning the alleged BCI Cape Bridgewater tests, just as the Senate Estimates Committee was later misled and deceived by Telstra, concerning the impracticable BCI test as exhibits (AS 546), (AS 547), (AS 548), (AS 551), and (AS 552) at File AS-CAV 542 to 588 so clearly show.
The report prepared by ex-Telstra technical guru Brian Hodge dated 27 July 2007, confirms that none of the BCI tests allegedly conducted over a five day period between the 5th and 9th of November 1993 could have terminated through the TELELEC CCS7 monitoring system allegedly installed at the Cape Bridgewater RCM (see Exhibit AS 486) File AS-CAV 470 to 486
PLEASE NOTE: During the Senate Estimates Committee investigations into COT FOI issues, Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson) raised the possibility of the deficiencies in the Cape Bridgewater BCI tests with Senators Ron Boswell and Chris Schacht. Pages 108 and 109 of Senate Hansard records (AS 549) confirm that Telstra deflected the issue of impracticable tests, stating that my claim that the report was fabricated was incorrect and the only problem with the report was an incorrect date relating to one of the tests. The Senate then put Telstra on notice to provide evidence of that error.
Exhibit (AS 551 File AS-CAV 542 to 588 includes four pages dated 26th September 1997, covering questions put on notice by Telstra to Senator Ron Boswell. I have marked these questions as a, b, c and d. These four pages clearly show that Telstra did not advise Senator Boswell that NONE of the 13,590 could have passed through the TELELEC CCS7 at Cape Bridgewater, because it was not possible to use that equipment at the unmanned Cape Bridgewater RCM, or even the main Portland exchange 20 kilometres away. Point ‘c’ refers to a letter dated 11th August 1995, from Gerald Kealey, the BCI consultant to Telstra, alleging that he did carry out the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests (AS 552. In this letter Mr Kealey states
"I also reviewed my personal travel log to verify the times and dates of my movements from Melbourne to Portland during the testing period".
Why would Mr Kealey travel to Portland when the Portland exchange is 102 kilometres away from the Warrnambool exchange, which was the only exchange in South West Victoria that could accommodate the TELELEC CCS7 monitoring equipment? It is therefore clear that Telstra not only misled and deceived the arbitrator and Ian Joblin in my arbitration procedure they also three years later misled and deceived the Senate Estimates Committee hearing into this matter. If the Senate had been told the truth about this fundamentally flawed BCI Cape Bridgewater report in 1997, an investigation into my long-standing complaints to the TIO and the Ministers’ offices that my telephone problems were still occurring, even after the end of my arbitration would have received the response they deserved, instead of being ignored.
The collusion continues
It is also important to note that, according to Senate Hansard records (see page 109 and 110 COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA - Parliament of Australia that John Pinnock (TIO) was present when Senators Schacht and Senator Boswell questioned Telstra about the possibility that the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests were flawed. Why didn’t Mr Pinnock step forward as the independent administrator of my arbitration and advise the Senate Estimates Committee that the TIO’s office had known since at least before 6th November 1995 that the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests could NOT have been performed as recorded in the 10 November 1993 BCI Addendum report?
While the following ‘COT strategy’ has been discussed elsewhere on absentjustice.com we have also raised it here because of the promises we received from AUSTEL (now ACMA) that Freehill’s, who put that strategy together, would not be used in any way, in connection with our arbitrations. As absentjustice.com shows, however, not only were Freehill’s appointed as Telstra’s main arbitration defence lawyers, and not only did they produce the COT strategy, but they also assisted Telstra in drafting the COT Arbitration Agreement that was used for the first four COTs to go through the process. In simple terms, the promises made to the four COT cases concerning the use of Freehill’s, and the COTs’ rights to have an independently drafted arbitration agreement never eventuated. It is, therefore, most important that the 25 June 1997 SENATE Hansard record is raised here, again.
On 25 June 1997, the day after the Senate committee were told we five COT cases had to be stopped at all cost from proving our claims, a number of senators discussed Telstra’s legal firm and its COT strategy, dated 20 September 1993. This strategy advises how Telstra can conceal technical information from the four COTs under Legal Professional Privilege, (naming me and my business as one of the four) even though the documents were not privileged (see SENATE Hansard, page 5169). The COT strategy is available at Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C
The author of this COT strategy is the same lawyer with whom I was forced to register each of my phone complaints, in writing, before Telstra would address these problems. NONE of the fault information I provided to this lawyer, concerning ongoing telephone problems and Telstra’s response to those problems, were ever released to me during my arbitration.
To add further insult to these injustices, as stated above, on 12 September 1994, as part of the arbitration process, I was obliged to meet with Telstra’s consulting forensic psychologist Ian Joblin in Portland’s Richmond Hotel so he could analyse my mental health as part of Telstra’s defence of the arbitration process. One of the most important issues I raised with him (see also Absentjustice chronology of events part two) was the trauma I suffered at the hands of the legal firm that hired him. He appeared to listen carefully to what I described and he said being directed to register phone complaints, in writing, with Telstra’s lawyer, before they would be investigated, was most disturbing. I provided confirmation that losing six incoming calls in a single day was common. Writing to a lawyer, explaining lost calls, was more than just soul-destroying, it just about broke my will power to carry on. He said he was shocked Telstra and its legal firm forced this on me and agreed this would certainly affect my mental state over the many months I had to do this.
However, when Telstra’s lawyers, which the government assured us would not be used in our arbitrations (see Prologue Evidence File No/2), provided this clinical psychologist’s witness statement to the arbitrator, it was only signed by a lawyer from this legal firm. It bore no signature of the psychologist and didn’t contain his concerns regarding me having to first contact this legal firm, in writing, before Telstra would address my telephone problems.
But please remember, in the same Senate Hansard, dated 24 June 1997, in which ex-Telstra technical guru Lindsay White (now turned whistleblower) says he was told by to Telstra technicians that the first five COT Cases (naming me as one of the five) had to be stopped at all cost, from proving our claims. Similar injustices were experienced by COT case Sandra Wolfe during a Mediation Process in the early 199)'s are also discussed in this Senate Hansard. These injustices included her having a warrant executed against her by Telstra employees under the Queensland Mental Health Act (see pages 82 to 88, Introduction File No/9). Had Sandra not acted in the manner she did, it is possible she could have been lost in an institution for the insane. Addressing Telstra regarding this matter, Senator Schacht says:
“No, when the warrant was issued and the names of these employees were on it, you are telling us that it was coincidental that they were Telstra employees.” (p87)
Is this warrant issued under the Queensland Mental Health Act, against Sandra Wolfe, akin to the false information provided by Telstra to the clinical psychologist before he assessed my mental health? In my case, the consultation by this psychologist was not conducted in private surroundings, but in the Portland Richmond Henty Hotel’s saloon bar! When I questioned Ian Joblin Telstra's clinical psychologist's his reason for him choosing this public venue for this consultation his remark was his appointment had been at short notice and he had been unable to require a suitable venue for the date in question. In simple terms, not only did Telstra the defendants in the COT arbitrations control the flow of what documents were provided to the COT Claimants as the above Senate Hansard shows, Chapter Seven Arbitrator / Part Two shows they controlled what relevant procedural documents were also supplied to the arbitrator. Add this into the mix and the fact they also could determine where the arbitration clinical psychologist would hold his assessment process and it becomes obvious the government endorsed arbitration was just a total facade designed to destroy us COT Cases "at all cost".
The Australian Communications Regulator, AUSTEL, the Arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, the TIO, John Pinnock, and numerous Coalition Government Members of Parliament have all known about this deceptive Telstra behaviour for more than twenty-two years, just as they have all known that it occurred during my Government-authorised arbitration, and just as they have known that this was part of a plan for Telstra to gain an advantage in the whole arbitration process. During that twenty-two, however, NO-ONE has EVER challenged Telstra, or Freehill's, on my behalf to why I was subjected to such appalling conduct when everyone new truth has been on my side from before the arbitrations began.
A newspaper article that appeared on 23 March 1999, in the Australian Financial Review, on the conclusion of the Senate Estimates committee hearing into five of the twenty-one COT cases claims. Those claims being that Telstra had continued to conceal their arbitration requested documents even during the aforementioned Senate investigation. I was not fortunate enough to have been one of the five cases who were awarded more than twenty million dollars between them for the injustices they had clearly suffered during their arbitrations (see An injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens) This statement in the Australian Financial Review notes:
“A Senate working party delivered a damning report into the COT dispute. The report focussed on the difficulties encountered by COT members as they sought to obtain documents from Telstra. The report found Telstra had deliberately withheld important network documents and/or provided them too late and forced members to proceed with arbitration without the necessary information,” Senator Eggleston said. “They [Telstra] have defied the Senate working party. Their conduct is to act as a law unto themselves.”
One of the main Telstra players Senator Alan Eggleston referred to when he said, “They [Telstra] have defied the Senate working party. Their conduct is to act as a law unto themselves” was Sue Laver (now Telstra’s corporate secretary). Front Page Part One File/No15-A and Front Page Part One File/No 15-B shows Sue Laver was in possession of Senate working party COT case technical information confirming the Cape Bridgewater Bell Canada International Inc (BCI) test were impracticable.
Please note:
On 12 January 1998, during the Senate estimates committee investigations into COT FOI issues, Graham Schorer provided Sue Laver (now Telstra’s general counsel and who we have now renamed with a number of documents. On page 12 of his letter, Graham states:
“Enclosed are the 168 listings extracted from Telstra’s Directory of Network Products and Network Operations, plus CoT’s written explanation, which alleges to prove that parts of the November 1993 Bell Canada International Report is fabricated or falsified.”
On pages 23-8 of this letter, and using the Cape Bridgewater statistics material, Graham provided clear evidence to Sue Laver and the chair of the Senate legislation committee that the information Telstra provided to questions raised by the Senate on notice, in October 1997, was false (see Front-Page Part One File/No15-A and Front-Page Part One File/No 15-B. Telstra was in contempt of the Senate. No one yet within Telstra has been brought to account for supplying false Cape Bridgewater BCI results to the Senate. Had Telstra not supplied this false information to the Senate, the Senate would have addressed all the BCI matters I now raise on absentjustice.com, in 1997.
If the 12 January 1998 letter to Sue Lava, with the false BCI report attached, is not enough evidence to convince the Australian Government that Sue Lava cannot continue pretending she knows nothing about the falsified Cape Bridgewater BCI tests, Sue Lava and the Senate estimates committee chair was again notified, on 14 April 1998, that the Cape Bridgewater BCI tests were impracticable. When is Sue Lava going to come forward and advise the Telstra board that my claims are right and that indeed it was unlawful to use the Cape Bridgewater BCI tests as arbitration defence documents as well as grossly unethical to have provided the Senate with this known-false information when answering questions on notice?
Back to 1994
Burying The Evidence is designed to help the reader fully understand the ramifications of what occurred. The COT cases were formally advised before we signed our government-endorsed arbitration agreements, that we would receive the documents needed to fully support our claims (see Arbitrator File No/71). When this government promise was broken and we were left without the documents to fully support our claims, this set up a trail of events that have now left us COTs as victims of a crime (a giant cover-up by the Australian Establishment) in order to protect Telstra at all cost.
TIO Board and Council
Telstra’s corporate secretary Jim Holmes was advised in three emails TIO Evidence File No 7-A to 7-C: A01554, A06507, and A06508) that the Leopard Fault data – Telstra’s technical data regarding exchange faults – was destroyed after 12 months. Mr Holmes was a member of the TIO board when the first four COT claimants, Gillan, Garms, Schorer and I, signed our arbitration agreements, but it seems Mr Holmes did not warn the government (which, after all, endorsed the arbitration agreements) or the TIO, who administered the arbitrations, that claimants would not be able to support their claims effectively because Telstra destroyed all historical data, at least from 1992 on. Have Telstra and The Hon Richard Alston and his fellow coalition government ministers ever considered what followed, after Telstra kept this serious matter secret? Have Telstra and the Australian government ever considered the financial cost to each claimant as we tried to access information Telstra knew was destroyed years before we went into arbitration? Each COT case accumulated costs that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars while trying to access this non-existent fault data (and other Telstra data) to support our arbitration claims. Has the Senate ever considered the cost – not just in dollars – of the 18 months many senators spent from 1997 to 1999 assisting the COT cases in attempting to access technical documents that Telstra knew were destroyed years before?
Telstra's corporate secretary Jim Holmes knew this, as emails A01554, A06507 and A06508 show, and he signed all four FTSP agreements for the four COT cases on 18 November 1993, while he was a TIO board member attending monthly board meetings where COT cases’ arbitration issues were discussed. Yet he never advised the TIO of what he knew concerning the destroyed documents we were trying to access. This situation is an example of why the COT arbitrations were such a mockery of the Australian legal system.
In order to understand how we got here, we need to rewind a little.
As a reward for standing our ground and NOT faltering under the pressure applied by Telstra and their inner circles within the Establishment, but instead pursuing our claims for a better telecommunications service for all Australians, the government agreed the COT four were to be commercially assessed. Representatives from the Australian communications regulator even visited our businesses premises to ensure the government fully understood what we had uncovered. As a further incentive, the 1993 Labor government assured us that if we refrained from pushing for a full Senate investigation into the gross misconduct of Telstra, then the government would ensure our signed 23 November 1993 commercial assessment process with Telstra would be finalised by April 1994.
It was widely accepted by the Australian government that, because of the complexity of the first four cases, an assessor (not an arbitrator), appointed by AUSTEL, the government communications regulator, would value each case commercially and save the claimants’ time, money and heartache. The following link, Introduction File No/13-A to 13-M, shows, undoubtedly, that our four individual claims were always meant to be commercially assessed.
On 5 October 1993, AUSTEL’s chair Robin Davey provided a draft of the COT Cases Settlement Proposal to Mr Ian Campbell, Telstra’s commercial managing director. This proposal was to be used in the four COT cases’ Fast Track Settlement Proposal (discussed below). The draft notes at point 40:
“Finally, if the attached letter (Attachment ‘D’) dated 7 July 1993 from Freehill, Hollingdale & Page to one of the COT Cases’ solictiors is indicative of the way that Freehill, Hollingdale & Page have approached the COT Cases in the past, I would be more than a little concerned if they were to have a continuing role.” (See Prologue Evidence File No/2)
Introduction File No/13-A to 13-M shows the four COT cases were to have their matters assessed commercially. As you read Burying The Evidence, you will see the government communications regulator, the claimants and Telstra all agreed, in writing, the first four COT cases’ claims would be commercially assessed by a loss assessor (not an arbitrator) under the Fast Track Settlement Proposal (FTSP).
If a business is ruined and a government regulator and/or business ombudsman, who has jurisdiction over those matters, agrees to facilitate a process with a corporation, which appears to be responsible and has agreed to pay compensation, then a commercial assessor is appointed. This is an accepted commercial practice when people in business are seeking damages.
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) media release, dated 17 January 1994, put out by TIO Warwick Smith, the then administrator to the FTSP, states:
“I have appointed Dr Gordon Hughes as Assessor. ... for the purposes of the ‘Fast Track’ Settlement process.” (See Introduction File No/13-F)
Yet, as soon as our four signatures were on the commercial agreement, which Telstra signed on 18 November 1993, those in the Establishment who did not want proof to come to light showing our telephone problems were still ongoing, pressured the administrator of the 23 November 1994 commercial agreement, Warwick Smith (TIO), and assessor Dr Gordon Hughes to switch the assessment process for a highly legalistic arbitration process, which the COT four could not possibly win.
Hence, Dr Hughes, originally appointed as the commercial assessor on 17 January 1994 (see Introduction File No/13-A to 13-M, became the arbitrator of seven separate and highly complex arbitration cases and the mediator of two others, all being administered at the same time. This was certainly not how Senators Alston Boswell and other senators were assured the first four cases would be conducted.
Introduction File No/13-A to 13-M shows Dr Hughes was to commercially assess the claims of the first four COT cases. Decide for yourself whether the four COT cases freely accepted having to abandon their FTSP in favour of the more legalistic arbitration process that was forced onto them in April 1994, regardless of having signed the FTSP agreement on 23 November 1993.
During the first week of January 1994, the COTs advised the TIO, administrator of both the FTSP and the Fast Track Arbitration Procedure (FTAP), that AUSTEL’s chair had assured the COTs that Freehill, Hollindale & Page were not to be involved in our FTSP. An internal Telstra email (FOI folio C02840) to various Telstra executives notes:
“Steve Lewis (Australian Financial Review news reporter) is following up on his own yarn NOT with the Davey letter to the minister but with the Davey letter to the CEO raising concerns about our use of Freehill’s.”
Between January and March 1994, when the COTs again spoke to the TIO concerning Telstra using this same legal firm as its FTAP defence lawyers, the TIO’s response was that it was up to Telstra who it appointed as their arbitration lawyers. The TIO made this statement regardless of me having previously advising him I was forced by Telstra to register my phone complaints through this same legal firm, which implied that if I did not do so, then Telstra would not investigate those complaints. (See Prologue Evidence File No/4)
I raised my concerns many times, during and after my arbitration, concerning the arbitrator not addressing this legal firm’s submission of a witness statement only signed by the legal firm and not the person who actually made the affirmation. This is an illegal act in the State of Victoria (see below). Like all of the evidence I provided to the arbitrator and TIO, confirming Telstra relied upon false reporting (see Tampering With Evidence), nothing was transparently done to assist me other than to send this unsigned witness statement back to be signed by the alleged author making the statement.
My appeal lawyers, Law Partners of Melbourne (see Open Letter File No/51-C and File No/51-G) were stunned to learn about this unsigned witness statement issue. They were also astounded to learn none of my fault correspondence (my registration of phone complaints in writing) to Telstra’s legal firm was ever provided to back to me, as it should have been according to the rules of discovery. In fact, Law Partners suggested perhaps Telstra originally appointed this legal firm to be my designated fault complaint managers so any correspondence would form what Telstra believed to be a legal cloak and the ongoing telephone fault evidence I provided to Telstra’s lawyers could be concealed under Legal Professional Privilege (LPP), during the proposed arbitration process. The pressure applied by Telstra to register the worst of my phone problems with Freehill Hollingdale & Page was a deliberate strategy from the very beginning, so the arbitrator could not uncover (during any arbitration process) how bad the service Telstra provided me, during my arbitration, was. The government regulator’s own investigation also confirmed this inadequate service – but this information was concealed from the COT Cases until more than twelve years after their arbitrations had been concluded see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings
Telstra’s continued use of this legal firm throughout the COT arbitrations and the arbitrator’s refusal, in my case, to look into why Telstra was withholding technical data under LPP, suggested, at the time, that the arbitrator was not properly qualified as he didn’t seem to understand that Telstra could not legally conceal technical information under Legal Professional Privilege. Indeed, as we later reveal, the arbitrator was, in fact, not a graded arbitrator at all.
Had Telstra's local Portland technicians (now retried) submitted the truth in their arbitration witness statements provided to the arbitrator on 12 December 1994, concerning how bad they and the government communications regulator knew the Cape Bridgewater network was (see Manipulating the Regulator), then the arbitrator would have had to ensure his arbitration technical consultants investigated my complaints of ongoing telephone problems. As shown in Chapter One of our Prologue page, the arbitrator disallowed his technical consultants the extra time they requested to investigate my claims. If only one of those two local Portland ex-Telstra employees were to come forward and admit they mislead the arbitration process, then the matters concerning my ongoing telephone problems – those not investigated during my arbitration – could be fully reviewed in a new process.
