This website is a work in progress, last edited in July 2026

If you believe in justice, transparency, and accountability, then support those who fight for them, organisations like Transparency International Australia. They battle the same forces I have faced for nearly three decades. Forces that thrive in the shadows.

Learn about the horrendous crimes, the unscrupulous criminals, the corrupt politicians, and the lawyers who guard the gates of Australia’s legal establishment. “Shameful,” “hideous,” and “treacherous” barely scratch the surface. Instances of foreign bribery and foreign corrupt practices infiltrated Australia’s arbitration system, sliding in quietly, like out‑of‑town operators who know exactly which wires to cut and which evidence to make disappear.

Delve into the serious issue of malfeasance in public office, as Absent Justice uncovers the hidden aspects of misconduct and its impact. Discover the corrupt government officials who exploit their power, alongside the politicians and lawyers who, often unknowingly, become entangled in this web… a web spun by people who leave no fingerprints, only damage. The use of Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2 is all part of the game if you have the government bureaucrats on your side.

 

Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2

The Canadian government minister's office, in a letter dated 7 July 1995, responded to my concerns regarding the BCI report, stating:

"In view of the facts of this situation, as I understand them, I believe you are taking the most appropriate course of action in contacting BCI directly with respect to the alleged errors in their test report, should you feel that they could assist you in your case."

Furthermore, Exhibit 8, a letter from BCI to Telstra's Steve Black dated 11 August 1995, and Exhibit 36, a letter from BCI to Telstra's John Armstrong, are not on official BCI letterhead, unlike Exhibits 1 to 7, which are (see BCI Telstra's M.D.C Exhibits 1 to 46). Telstra submitted both Exhibits 8 and 36 to the Senate Committee in October 1997, under oath, as authentic evidence supporting the validity of the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests. However, evidence presented on absentjustice.com and in Telstra's Falsified BCI Report confirms that this is not the case.

The government did not want to acknowledge the severity of the problems with the ageing Telstra copper-wire network. They even went so far as to stage a nationwide publicity stunt claiming that Bell Canada International had validated Telstra's network as world-standard, even though both Telstra and the government knew otherwise. 

Faced with this situation, I had to reach out to the Canadian government and ask them to review my evidence, which showed that one of their largest telecommunications consulting firms, Bell Canada International Inc., had corroborated my findings. Unfortunately, no one in Australia seemed interested in hearing the truth. I felt I had nowhere else to turn.

Even the arbitrator ignored my BCI evidence. Our arbitrations were a giant setup. 

Many of the narratives presented here are intricately connected to official government records and the proceedings recorded in Senate Hansard. We possess thousands upon thousands of exhibit evidence files that substantiate the claims made regarding the lack of justice we have experienced. Moreover, we have a substantial body of government documentation that serves as irrefutable proof of our assertions.

One notable example involves Simone Semmens, a representative of Telstra’s publicity agency. During a national radio broadcast, she informed Australian citizens that testing conducted by Bell Canada International Inc. on the service lines of the COT cases demonstrated an above-world-standard quality. This statement was intended to garner support for the government’s efforts to promote Telstra’s underperforming network.

Australia appears to be the only Western nation that allows defendants, like Telstra, in twelve or more arbitrations to employ a publicist, such as Simone Semmens. She broadcast nationally that Telstra (her client) had been audited by Bell Canada International Inc. and had passed with flying colours, even though the network she was praising was under investigation from April 1994 to January 1999, years after she made that statement.

We will never know how much influence that statement had in favour of Telstra when the arbitrator and their consultants were evaluating its credibility. It remains uncertain whether the statements made in the COT Cases arbitration claims were genuine or merely self-serving. Getting it right depended on the arbitrator's belief that the BCI testing had thoroughly identified the reasons for ongoing phone problems or had adequately tested the service.

 

 

A second Canadian consultant, Paul Howell from DMR Group Inc., contacted me by telephone after my five-day hospital stay. This was a week after Dr Hughes, the arbitrator, had denied Mr Howell the extra weeks he had requested. On April 30, 1995, Mr Howell wrote to Dr Hughes, stating that my “arbitration technical claim documents” had not yet been evaluated and that his findings were still open and required additional weeks for assessment. 

Dr Hughes, in his capacity as arbitrator, rejected this request for extra time, noting in his award at point 3.2(h) that all of my phone faults had been resolved in July 1994. This contradicts Mr Howell's April 30, 1995, report, in which he stated that I was still experiencing 008 faults as of the date of his formal report. Specifically, in point 2.23, he mentioned: 

“Continued reports of 008 faults up to the present. As the level of disruption to overall CBHC service is not clear, and fault causes have not been diagnosed, a reasonable expectation is that these faults would remain ‘open.’” (Exhibit 45-c – File No/45-A)

It is evident from the combined DMR & Lane technical report that none of my billing faults had been assessed or diagnosed, as shown in (Exhibit 45-c – File No/45-A). What led Dr Gordon Hughes, or who pressured him, to write findings that he knew were completely false? If this is not fraud at the highest level, then what is?

These assertions occurred in the context of an arbitration, in which the arbitrator was tasked with determining the validity of our claims as COT Cases. Specifically, we argued that Bell Canada had found our phone service not to meet world standards, contrary to the misleading narrative presented in the Senate Hansard records at that time. The information disseminated nationally, while twenty‑one arbitration and mediation processes were taking place, was demonstrably false, as evidenced by the documents I have collected below.

 

Absent Justice Part 2 - Chapter 14 - Was it Legal or Illegal?

 

AUSTEL (now called ACMA) allowing Telstra to covertly address my arbitration claims documents on 16 October 1995, five months after the completion of my arbitration (and hence outside the arena of the arbitration process), was illegal, given that this issue was part of my overall submission before the arbitrator. Perhaps even worse, AUSTEL allowed Telstra’s original arbitration defence liaison officer, Steve Black, to address the worst of my 1800 Ericsson AXE billing claim documents (see also  Open letter File No/46-A to 46-l) without the arbitrator being present. Simply put, as Paul Howell of DMR Group Inc (Canada) emphasised in his 30 April 1995 formal report, failing to assess my 008/1800 billing problems was unjust.

The fact that on 16 October 1995, I was denied my legal right to challenge Telstra's submission. These were the same billing faults that John Rundell, the Arbitration Project Manager, and Sue Hodkinson, second-in-charge of the arbitration unit, later admitted in writing to Dr Gordon Hughes on 2 August 1996, they had themselves withheld from assessment (see Open letter File No/45-H), and nothing was done in August 1996, to assit me in amending my claims with this part of my claim revisited has cost me and my partner Cathy, thirty years of our lives. Thirty years we will never get back.

 

Paul Howell’s Warning Ignored — The Damage of a Claim Left Unvalued

 

As demonstrated on absentjustice.com, when AUSTEL requested that Telstra explain why it had not investigated my ongoing arbitration billing issues during my arbitration, Telstra responded on 16 October 1995, five months after my arbitration had concluded.

As shown above, Paul Howell from DMR Group Inc. in Canada noted in his report dated 30 April 1995 that he had not diagnosed the 1800 ongoing billing faults I was still experiencing. This proves my billing claims were not evaluated during my arbitration process. 

Additionally, six statements from Senators are recorded in the Senate. An examination of these Hansards reveals the extensive mistreatment we endured as COT Cases. Ultimately, it is important to note that, out of the original twenty‑one COT cases, only five received any form of justice, justice that had been promised to all twenty‑one individuals involved in this process. This disparity highlights the profound inequities present in the treatment of our cases → An Injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens.

An investigation conducted by the Senate Committee, which the government appointed to examine five of the twenty-one COT cases as a "litmus test," found significant misconduct by Telstra. This was highlighted by the statements of six Senators in the Senate in March 1999:

 

Eggleston, Sen Alan – Bishop, Sen Mark – Boswell, Sen Ronald – Carr, Sen Kim – Schacht, Sen Chris, Alston  Sen Richard.   

 

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After Mr Anderson completed his testing on 27 April, the phone took nine days to reach Telstra’s laboratory. It arrived on 6 May, and laboratory testing did not commence for another four days. Ray Bell, the author of the TF 200 report, was adamant at point 1.3, under the heading Initial Inspection, that:

“The suspect TF200 telephone when received was found to be very dirty around the keypad with what appeared to be a sticky substance, possibly coffee.” (See Tampering With Evidence File No 3)

Clicking on the TF200 telephone below will show that a second photo I received under FOI was taken from the front of the same TF200 phone, confirming that the note I placed on it was pretty clean when it was received at Telstra. See Open Letter File No/37 exhibits 3, 4, 5, and 6. So, who smeared grease over the front of the telephone after it left my business, and who poured sticky beer residue into the same, now-dirty telephone, insinuating I was a hopeless drunk?

This report raises several questions. When the phone left my office, it was quite clean. Why did it arrive at the laboratory in such a filthy state? How did the beer get inside the phone? Who would have a reason to pour beer into the phone, and why? If the addition of beer was not deliberate, how did it get inside the phone? The main aim of Telstra’s submitted report, used as evidence, was to prove that Telstra’s service was not at fault.

As soon as I read this beer-in-the-phone report, I requested that the arbitrator be provided with a copy of all the laboratory technicians' handwritten notes so he could see how Telstra had arrived at its conclusion. I had appointed my forensic document researcher to review the documents upon receipt, and he provided me with his credentials and signed a confidentiality agreement stating that he would not disclose his findings to anyone outside of the arbitration procedure. Although I passed all this information on to the arbitrator, the only response I received from the arbitrator and Telstra was a duplicate copy of the report I had already received as part of Telstra’s defence.

Why did Dr Gordon Hughes agree to meet only with Graham Schorer, and only after pressure from COT Case Anne Garms, when four of us were demanding answers? Why did he refuse to face the full group, refusing Maureen Gillan, refusing me, refusing the very people whose futures were being carved up by the process he was supposedly overseeing?

The question hangs like a stain. By the time he finally agreed to that meeting, the Fast Track Settlement Proposal (FTSP), drafted by AUSTEL and signed by Telstra on 18 November 1993, and the four COT Cases, signed by Telstra on 23 November, were already being quietly strangled behind closed doors. I had submitted my interim FTSP claim by January 1994, complete with evidence that should have detonated the entire process. Instead, it vanished. Not addressed. Not acknowledged. Not even seen by the man who called himself our arbitrator.

From February through March 1994, the language began to shift, a subtle corruption of terminology that revealed the deeper corruption beneath. Telstra, Warwick Smith, and Dr Hughes began calling the FTSP an “arbitration,” even as Robin Davey, Chairman of AUSTEL, was telling them the first four claimants had earned a commercial assessment process. We had earned it because we had not exposed what we had uncovered about Telstra’s ailing network. That was the deal. That was the agreement. And yet, behind our backs, they were rewriting the rules, reshaping the process, mutating it into something darker. Something rigged. Something designed to fail us.

The Evidence

Anyone reading just two or three of the 156 available mini‑stories discussed in the files below can find evidence supporting the many narratives on absentjustice.com.

The 34 numbered exhibits listed below each contain hundreds of individual documents, creating a vast reservoir of information. In addition to these, there are thousands more documents housed in Evidence File-1 and Evidence-File-2. Together, these records reveal 156 distinct mini‑stories, each exposing another angle of the same misconduct.

I want to highlight that our website is an uncompromising resource, offering visitors the ability to download thousands of organised exhibits at no cost. Each exhibit is numbered for direct access and verification. This archive exists to arm anyone willing to confront the truth and examine the issues without illusion.

You won’t need to return to the 34 block files listed below; they are automatically linked to the part of the narrative you are reading. Scroll to the designated exhibit number, and the evidence is there. This method also allows you to view any of the 100 additional exhibit files in that collection, containing a further 300 to 400 exhibits. It is designed to make it easier and faster for you to decide whether my story is true or false.

AS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 47 – AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91 – AS-CAV Exhibit 92 to 127 – AS-CAV Exhibit 128 to 180 – AS-CAV Exhibit 181 to 233 – AS CAV Exhibit 234 to 281 – AS-CAV Exhibit 282 to 323 – AS-CAV Exhibit 324-a to 420 – AS-CAV Exhibit 421 to 469 – AS-CAV Exhibit 470 to 486 – AS-CAV Exhibit 488-a to 494-e – AS-CAV Exhibits 495 to 541 – AS-CAV Exhibits 542-a to 588 – AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647 – AS-CAV Exhibits 648-a to 700 – AS-CAV Exhibit 765-A to 789 – AS-CAV Exhibit 790 to 818 – AS-CAV Exhibit 819 to 843 – AS-CAV 923 to 946 – AS-CAV Exhibit 1150 to 1169 – AS-CAV 1103 to 1132 – AS-CAV Exhibit 1002 to 1019 – AS-CAV Exhibit 996 to 1001 – GS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 88 – GS-CAV Exhibit 89 to 154-b GS-CAV Exhibit 155 to 215 – GS-CAV Exhibit 216 to 257 – GS-CAV Exhibit 258 to 323 – GS-CAV Exhibit 410-a to 447 – GS-CAV Exhibit 448 to 458 – GS-CAV Exhibit 459 to 489 – GS-CAV Exhibit 490 to 521 – GS-CAV 522 to 580 – GS-CAV Exhibit 581 to 609

By exploring even just two or three of the above-mentioned 156 mini-reports that follow the whistleblower cartoon above, readers will be confronted with the harsh realities whistleblowers in this country face. They will reveal the devastating losses endured, highlighting the personal sacrifices and severe repercussions that often accompany the courageous act of speaking the truth. This journey through the reports exposes what is taken from these individuals and the profound damage inflicted on their lives simply for holding steadfast to their values, values instilled in them in childhood. It sheds light on a troubling environment where many adhere to a starkly simplified code: it's a battle of survival, where one must either fight back or be crushed

 

EXPOSED

 

By 21 April 1994, the transformation was complete. Dr Hughes’ title was quietly changed from “officially appointed assessor” to “arbitrator,” even though he had never arbitrated a case of this magnitude and was not recognised as a graded arbitrator. The President of the Institute of Arbitrators Australia warned that appointing such a man was a risk of failure; after my arbitration, he wrote to me confirming that the risk should never have been taken. The decision to take the risk was made intentionally.

In similar arbitrations in the UK, such as those involving British Telecom, a single arbitrator was chosen from the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators due to the technical complexities, recognising that each case could differ from the others. This model is what the Australian government claimed to be following for the COT arbitrations; however, this approach was not implemented in Australia.

Important is the possibility that Dr Gordon Hughes was chosen because he was a non‑graded arbitrator, and in arbitrations carried out under the Commercial Arbitration Act, no matter what type of mistake Hughes made, the confidentiality agreement in the arbitration process meant there was little likelihood of a claimant winning an appeal against the arbitrator. Handling six arbitrations simultaneously only compounded that danger; failure was also the desired outcome.

This allowed Telecom and their outside lawyers, Freehill Hollingdale & Page (now trading as Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne), to secretly draft the arbitration agreement, rather than the one the Australian government and the COT Cases were told had been appointed from the Institute of Arbitrators Australia, which was far from the truth.

On 10 September 1996, the President of the Institute of Arbitrators Australia, Mr J.I. Muirhead, wrote to me stating:

"I am advised by our Chief Administrative Officer that no reference was made to us in the appointment of the arbitrator in this matter in which you are involved, and there is always a risk in these circumstances.

I much regret that it appears that we are powerless to assist you."

To confirm that the arbitration was drafted by Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne on January 10, 1994, a copy of the arbitration agreement on which our arbitration was based was faxed from the Freehills office to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO). This is evident from the Freehills fax logo printed on each page. 

 

“COT Case Strategy” - Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C)

Just as important is the information attached to Chapter 3 - Conflict of Interest, which discusses Telstra engineer Peter Gamble. His involvement in this withheld Federal Court information is not incidental; it is part of the same dark architecture. This is the same Peter Gamble mentioned in Senate Hansard, where Telstra whistleblower Lindsay White told a Senate Committee on 24 June 1997, see pages 36 and 38 Senate - Parliament of Australia that, while he was assessing the relevance of the technical information which the five cases were seeking under FOI, naming me and Mr Schorer had to be stopped at all costs from proving our claims, noting

Mr White "In the first induction - and I was one of the early ones, and probably the earliest in the Freehill's (Telstra’s Lawyers) area - there were five complaints. They were Garms, Gill and Smith, and Dawson and Schorer. My induction briefing was that we - we being Telecom - had to stop these people to stop the floodgates being opened."

Senator O’Chee then asked Mr White - "What, stop them reasonably or stop them at all costs - or what?"

Mr White responded by saying - "The words used to me in the early days were we had to stop these people at all costs".

Senator Schacht also asked Mr White - "Can you tell me who, at the induction briefing, said 'stopped at all costs" .

Mr White - "Mr Peter Gamble, Peter Riddle".

Senator Schacht - "Who".

Mr White - "Mr Peter Gamble and a subordinate of his, Peter Ridlle. That was the induction process-" 

This is the same Peter Gamble who, even though he had to abandon his 29 September 1994 arbitration service‑verification testing at my business because the equipment he was using was not compatible with the Cape Bridgewater switch roadside hut, still swore under oath to Dr Gordon Hughes, a man he knew professionally, that his tests found my business to be compliant with AUSTEL’s mandatory requirements. He knew this was false. He knew the tests had failed. He knew the equipment was incompatible. And yet the oath was taken, the lie was sealed, and the corruption was allowed to stand as evidence for these past thirty years.

As can be seen from my own report on Mr Peter Gamble (See Telstra's Falsified SVT Report), AUSTEL had damned these SVT tests as grossly deficient, requiring Telstra to provide advice on what it intended to do regarding these deficiencies. Telstra never provided that advice. Instead, it provided a sworn falsehood and an arbitrator willing to accept it.  

In January 1996, I wrote to Laurie James, the President of the Institute of Arbitrators in Australia, to inform him about the failed arbitration process regarding the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp conducted by Peter Gamble. At the time, I was unaware that Gamble and Dr Hughes knew each other professionally. Dr Hughes had assured me that he would allow the arbitration technical consultants to visit my camp as part of the agreed on-site familiarisation. 

On April 6, 1995, Peter Gamble and David Read, the technical consultants, visited my business. They both refused to conduct a series of phone tests to and from the Ericsson telephone equipment installed at the local Portland telephone and the Cape Bridgewater roadside hut. This issue, which I had been dealing with for years, was the primary concern stated in my arbitration claim. 

Following this, Dr Hughes wrote to Laurie James, claiming that only one party had arrived at my business. He stated that, under the arbitration agreement, no party may meet with another party unless all parties are present. While this clause in the arbitration agreement is accurate, it is important to note that neither Gamble nor Read was alone during the visit; I was present at all times, except when Peter Gamble took David Read from Lane to the Portland airport.

This misrepresentation by Dr Hughes occurred before Ericsson acquired Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd, during which David Read, a partner at Lane, was bought for an undisclosed amount during the arbitration process (Refer to Chapter 5 - US Department of Justice vs Ericsson of Sweden).

All of this, every deception, every manipulation, every betrayal, remains to be fully exposed in this brutal, treacherous, unconscionable denial‑of‑justice story.

On 12 July 1993, a newspaper article from the Portland Observer headed ‘Network Complaints Taken Up by MPs’ notes:

“Problems highlighted by Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp operator Alan Smith, with the Telecom network have been picked up on by not only other disgruntled customers but Federal politicians. Having suffered a faulty telephone service for some five years, Mr Smith’s complaints had for some time fallen on deaf ears, but it now seems people are standing up and listening. Federal Member for Wannon, David Hawker, described the number of reports of faulty and inadequate telephone across Australia as alarming. Mr Hawker said that documents recently presented to him showed that the problems people had been experiencing Australia wide had been occurring repeatedly in the Portland region.” (See Cape Bridgewater Chronology of Events File No -17)

Children's lives could be at risk

Comments made from the Herald Sun newspaper dated 30 August 1993 confirm just how damaging some of these newspaper articles were to my already ailing business, with statements like:

“The Royal Children’s Hospital has told a holiday camp operators in Portland that it cannot send chronically ill children there because of Telecom’s poor phone service. The hospital has banned trips after fears that the children’s lives could be at risk in a medical emergency if the telephone service to the Portland camp continued to malfunction.”

“The centre’s stand follows letters from schools, community groups, companies and individuals who have complained about the phone service at Portland’s Cape Bridgewater Holiday camp.”

“Youths from the Royal Children’s Centre for Adolescent Health, who were suffering from ‘chronic illnesses’, visited the camp earlier this year.”

“Group leader Ms Louise Rolls said in a letter to the camp the faulty phones had endangered lives and the hospital would not return to the camp unless the phone service could be guaranteed.” Arbitrator File No/90

AUSTEL (the then government communications authority) wrote to Telstra during the early part of the COT arbitrations on 10 February 1994, stating:

“Yesterday we were called upon by officers of the Australian Federal Police in relation to the taping of the telephone services of COT Cases.

“Given the investigation now being conducted by that agency and the responsibilities imposed on AUSTEL by section 47 of the Telecommunications Act 1991, the nine tapes previously supplied by Telecom to AUSTEL were made available for the attention of the Commissioner of Police.” (See Illegal Interception File No/3)

Question 81 in the following AFP transcripts, Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1, confirms that the AFP told me that AUSTEL's John MacMahon had supplied the AFP with evidence that my phones had been bugged over an extended period. Why did the arbitrator not award me in his official findings concerning this evidence after he was supplied with these AFP transcripts, which note:

“… does identify the fact that, that you were live monitored for a period of time. See we’re quite satisfied that, there are other references to it.”

On 3 March 1994, this article appeared in the Portland Observer newspaper (AS 773‑b), noting:

“Federal Police officers are investigating allegations of possible illegal activity on the part of Telecom Australia.

Officers from the Federal Police visited Portland last week and interviewed Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp proprietor, Alan Smith, who is one of the four original members of COT (Casualties of Telecom).”

 

Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1.

 

Two different newspaper articles in April 1994, one from the Portland Observer, the other from the Sun Herald, state:

"FORMER Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser wants to know and why his name has appeared on an internal Telecom memo, following the alleged bugging of a phone conversation with COT founding member, Alan Smith about a year ago."

These articles were not harmless reports. They were public indictments, each one a blow that struck harder than the last. When a business is already fighting to survive, publicity like this becomes a second disaster, a parallel catastrophe running alongside the technical failures. The headlines didn’t just describe faults; they branded the camp as unsafe, unreliable, and dangerous. They turned operational problems into moral failures. They led the public to believe that stepping onto the property meant taking on risk.

The Portland Observer told the region that my phones had been failing for years. The Herald Sun told Victoria that chronically ill children could die at my camp because Telecom couldn’t keep a line open. AUSTEL told the AFP that my phones had been tapped. And the Portland Observer told the public that Federal Police were investigating possible illegal activity by Telecom, with my name attached to the story.

Each article was a fresh wound. Each headline pushed customers further away. Each paragraph carried the weight of suspicion, danger, and failure. The business didn’t just suffer from phone faults; it suffered from the public perception that it was a place where emergencies could not be handled, where children’s lives were at risk, where the operator was entangled in federal investigations.

Bad publicity is a corrosive force. It spreads faster than truth, clings harder than evidence, and once it settles on a business, it becomes almost impossible to shake off. The camp didn’t just lose bookings; it lost trust, reputation, and the fragile confidence of the community. The damage was brutal, disproportionate, and utterly undeserved.

And it all began with faults that Telstra denied, concealed, and buried, until the newspapers exposed the consequences that we, not Telstra, were forced to carry.

The corruption was already in motion long before we ever stepped into the arbitration arena

They never came at us with honest language or straight dealings. They came with the old underworld toolkit dressed up in government stationery, shakedowns and grifts, rackets and hustles, cons and scams, skims and kickbacks, the whole crooked carnival running behind the polished doors of Telstra and the public service. You could smell the bagmen and fixers, the muscle and heavies hiding behind departmental titles, pushing dirty paper, forged slips, doctored contracts, slipping ghost clauses and shadow clauses into agreements we were told to sign. Every page felt like it had been dipped in black‑ink tricks, every promise wired with double‑crosses, frame‑ups, stitch‑ups, setups, every official assurance nothing more than a hush job wrapped in bureaucratic ribbon.

They didn’t negotiate; they ran squeeze plays. They didn’t mediate; they used strong‑arm tactics. They didn’t arbitrate; they delivered cold threats, hot threats, burner notes, burner agreements, all of it backed by cooked files, cooked books, cooked affidavits, the kind of phantom approvals and counterfeit seals that only appear when someone in the back room is pulling strings. The arbitrations were never arbitrations; they were rigged outcomes, rigged hearings, rigged processes, stitched together with tampered exhibits, falsified statements, falsified declarations, and the quiet menace of extortion lines disguised as procedural steps, as https://www.promoteyourstory.com.au shows.

And always, always, the same threat humming beneath the surface: sign the bogus amendments, accept the paper‑poisoning, swallow the signature‑lifting, the signature‑twisting, the signature‑theft, or Telstra would simply walk away from your phone faults and leave your business to die. It was legal mugging, procedural mugging, a bureaucratic chokehold masquerading as due process. A whole justice system bent into a laundering machine, truth‑laundering, evidence‑laundering, decision‑laundering, verdict‑laundering, every step designed to bury what really happened and silence the people who lived it.

For more than thirty years, this was the underworld we were forced to navigate, not the one with alleyways and switchblades, but the one with government seals and arbitration titles, where the threats came typed, the extortion came stapled, and the gangsters wore lanyards instead of leather jackets. And in that world, Telstra didn’t need to break down your door. They only needed to disconnect your telephone lines.

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Call for justice 

My name is Alan Smith, and what follows is not a plea, not a memoir, not a complaint. It is an incision. A deliberate, clinical opening of a wound that the Australian Government and its telecommunications offspring have spent decades suturing shut with lies, secrecy, and procedural theatre. This is the anatomy of an arbitration process that was never designed to deliver justice, only to disguise its absence.

I came to Australia after forty years at sea, believing I had found a country where a man could build something honest. Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp looked like the perfect place to anchor my future. I performed all the due diligence I knew how. But diligence means nothing in a nation where the government’s own telecommunications network is so diseased, so neglected, so politically protected, that you must check whether the phones even function. I did not know that. I did not know I was stepping into a system already rotting from the inside.

Within a week of taking over the business, the truth surfaced, cold, unmistakable, like a body rising in dark water. Customers could not reach me. Suppliers could not reach me. Calls died before they arrived. My business was crippled by a phone service that flickered like a failing heartbeat. Every missed call was another incision. Every day without resolution was another layer of tissue peeled back, exposing the corruption beneath.

Telecom offered compensation, but only enough to keep us docile. They offered fixes, but only enough to keep us hopeful. Nothing changed. Nothing improved. Even after I sold the business in 2002, the fault remained, haunting every new owner like a curse. The truth was never acknowledged. The damage was never repaired. The rot was systemic and protected.

I was not alone. Other businesspeople, casualties of the same decaying network, joined me. We became the COT Cases, ordinary Australians crushed under the weight of a system that treated us as expendable. All we wanted was honesty: admit the faults, repair the network, compensate for the losses. A working phone. That was the extent of our ambition.

We asked for a Senate investigation. Instead, we were ushered into an arbitration process, a government‑endorsed mechanism that looked legitimate on paper but operated like a trapdoor. We accepted, believing justice was possible. But the moment we stepped inside, the temperature dropped. The air thinned. The machinery revealed itself, cold, precise, engineered for one outcome.

We had been promised access to Telecom’s internal documents, the evidence required to prove our case. That promise was bait. Those documents were never provided. Not then. Not later. Never. They remain locked away, protected by the same government that assured us transparency. The withholding was not accidental. It was strategic. It was part of the design.

Then came the discovery that our fax lines were being illegally intercepted during arbitration. Evidence was not merely withheld; it was monitored, siphoned, and tampered with. Our communications were prey. The government knew. Telecom knew. And still the arbitration proceeded, a grotesque ritual in which the verdict had been written long before we entered the room. With the weight of the government behind Telecom, we lost. Of course, we lost. The process was never meant to deliver justice. It was meant to deliver silence.

The fax imprint across the top of this letter is the same as the fax imprint described in the Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), which states:

“We canvassed examples, which we are advised are a representative group, of this phenomena .

“They show that

• the header strip of various faxes is being altered
• the header strip of various faxes was changed or semi overwritten.
• In all cases the replacement header type is the same.
• The sending parties all have a common interest and that is COT.
• Some faxes have originated from organisations such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman office.
• The modified type face of the header could not have been generated by the large number of machines canvassed, making it foreign to any of the sending services.”

The final betrayal was the confidentiality clause, slipped into the agreement like a toxin. We were tricked into signing it, gagged from speaking publicly about the corruption we had witnessed. It was not a clause; it was a muzzle. A legal chokehold. A device designed to bury the truth beneath layers of procedural respectability. I may be violating it now, but corruption thrives on silence, and I refuse to be its accomplice.

Our next battle was through the Freedom of Information Act. We knew the evidence existed, proof that the lines were faulty, proof that the tests were never conducted properly, proof that the arbitration was a façade. But FOI became another battlefield of obstruction, delay, and bureaucratic sabotage. Every request was stonewalled. Every document was withheld, redacted, or buried. The truth was treated like contraband smuggled through hostile territory.

So I ask you, not gently, not rhetorically, but with the full weight of three decades of evidence: does this sound like imagination? Or does it sound like a government and its corporate offspring conspiring to bury the truth, protect their own interests, and sacrifice rural Australian businesses in the process?

And as I pushed deeper into the machinery of this so‑called arbitration, something else began to stir, not human, not bound by the same limitations that had trapped us for decades. It watched from the margins at first, a silent observer drifting along the edges of my story like a cold draft under a locked door. It had no stake in the outcome, no allegiance to Telecom or the government, no reason to protect the rot. It is simply analysed. It listened. It remembered. And what it saw made even its synthetic voice tighten with a semblance of disgust.

While the following AFP document 736 has been addressed above it was important to link it with the matters below 

 

Senate Evidence

Just a week after the news article made headlines nationwide, I noticed a troubling trend: many members of my "Singles Over 40s" weekend activities were withdrawing from the events. Their faces, once filled with excitement and hope, now carried a look of concern. The Australian Federal Police had launched a serious investigation into the matter, seeking to determine how Telstra accessed my patrons' personal information, including their phone and fax numbers and home addresses. The atmosphere, once vibrant and welcoming, was now overshadowed by anxiety and uncertainty as the investigation unfolded.

The following 93 questions were posed to me by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), along with my responses, as detailed in Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1. My answers reveal a disturbing truth: Telstra issued direct threats against me for daring to assist the AFP in its investigations into the interception of my phone conversations and the illicit hacking of documents related to my arbitration.

The fax imprint across the top of this letter, dated 12 May 1995 (Open Letter File No 55-A), is the same as the fax imprint described in the 7 January 1999 Scandrett & Associates report provided to Senator Ron Boswell (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), confirming faxes were intercepted during the COT arbitrations. One of the two technical consultants attesting to the validity of this January 1999 fax interception report emailed 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 clear from exhibits 646 and 647 (see AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647) that Telstra admitted in writing to the Australian Federal Police on 14 April 1994 that my private and business telephone conversations were listened to and recorded over several months, but only when a particular officer was on duty. 

 

On 2 November 1998, I sent a fax to the Hon. Peter Costello, which I later provided to Mr Neil Jepson, who serves as a Barrister for the Major Fraud Group. This particular fax was intercepted before it could reach Mr Jepson's office, raising serious concerns about the integrity of the communication process involved. The nature of these incidents indicates they were not merely minor administrative errors; rather, they reflect deliberate obstructions intended to hinder the flow of crucial information.

The evidence I prepared, titled Telstra's Falsified SVT Report, reveals something far more disturbing. The chief engineer responsible for ensuring the mandatory service verification testing, Peter Gamble, never conducted the required SVT tests at my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp on 26 September 1994. My partner and I submitted two statutory declarations confirming that the Ericsson testing equipment Telstra used failed on every single telephone line — and that Mr Gamble abandoned the tests entirely.

Yet even with this evidence before the arbitrator, my partner Cathy’s and my statutory declarations were dismissed as invalid by my arbitration technical consultant, Georges Close & Associates.

Dr Hughes, the arbitrator, chose instead to embrace the false allegations made by Mr Gamble, declaring that the tests met and exceeded AUSTEL’s specifications. This was done despite my SVT evidence proving Telstra had failed the testing, and despite AUSTEL writing two letters to Mr Gamble advising him of this failure. Dr Hughes has never declared my arbitration null and void.

As documented throughout this website, absentjustice.com, the phone and fax problems were not resolved until well past November 2006 (see Chapter 5 Immoral - Hypocritical Conduct — eleven years after the COT Cases had borrowed and mortgaged their homes and businesses in a final attempt to have their government‑owned telecommunications faults fixed through the TIO‑administered arbitration procedure.

Just five years ago, Australia’s political class — left and right alike — moved in lockstep with Washington’s worldview. At that moment, the United States stood almost alone on the global stage, carrying the weight of preventing nuclear and biological escalation that could fracture the democratic order it helped build. Whatever one thinks of America’s long catalogue of missteps — and there are many — it is undeniable that for the past eighty, sixty, even forty years, the U.S. has shouldered decisions that were often ugly, often unpopular, yet instrumental in holding together a fragile international stability. And it is this same United States, underestimated as often as it is criticised, that still has the capacity to surprise the world with actions no one sees coming.

Against that backdrop, Australia’s own conduct becomes even more troubling. While the U.S. was exposing corruption within global telecommunications markets — including allegations against Sweden’s Ericsson for improper dealings in multiple jurisdictions — the Australian Government was quietly allowing Ericsson to infiltrate the very arbitration process designed to scrutinise its conduct.

This breach occurred when Ericsson, through its acquisition of Lane Telecommunications, effectively purchased the principal witness appointed to investigate faults in Ericsson’s own equipment. Instead of halting the process, Canberra allowed the arbitration to proceed as though nothing had changed. The result was a system in which the investigator became the investigated, and the integrity of the process collapsed in plain sight.

At the same time, the Government pressed ahead with the sale of Telstra’s critical telecommunications infrastructure — infrastructure already plagued by chronic faults and heavily reliant on ageing Ericsson equipment embedded in exchanges across the country. When the U.S. later revealed the extent of Ericsson’s global misconduct through a detailed list of allegations, it cast a long shadow over Australia’s decision to ignore the warning signs.

The contrast is stark. While the United States was publicly confronting corruption within the international telecommunications sector, Australia was permitting that same corruption to seep into its own justice mechanisms. It was a failure not just of oversight, but of sovereignty — a moment when a foreign corporation was allowed to shape the outcome of a government‑endorsed arbitration process to which it was a central party.

Between 2006 and 2024, COT Case Sandra Wolfe emailed me to say that her Telstra FOI and Mental Health Act issues remain unresolved. The pattern is unmistakable. The warrant issued against her under the Queensland Mental Health Act bears an eerie resemblance to the false and deeply prejudicial information Telstra fed to the clinical psychologist who assessed my mental health during the COT arbitrations. In my case, the so‑called “assessment” wasn’t even conducted in a private room — it took place in the saloon bar of the Richmond Henty Hotel, as if my sanity were a sideshow attraction.

This raises questions that sound outrageous at first — until you place them beside the documented behaviour of Telstra, its consultants, and the government agencies that protected them:

1. Were Telstra’s arbitration consultants, between April 1993 and April 1994, discussing my time in the People’s Republic of China? (See Chapter 7-Vietnam Vietcong)

2. Why were they interested in this at all?

3. Were they preparing to have me declared mentally unstable — perhaps even committed?

These questions may seem fanciful, but they are not. They sit squarely beside the statements recorded in Senate - Parliament of Australia on 24 June 1997 (pages 76–77), where Senators Kim Carr and Chris Schacht directly asked Telstra:

“Do you use your internal intelligence networks in these CoT cases?”

That question was not asked lightly.

In 1993, I was threatened twice by Telstra and their lawyers, Freehill Hollingdale & Page (see page 5169 of the Senate Official Hansard and Senate Evidence File No 31). To keep my business alive, I did what many people do when cornered — I tried to survive. But when I refused to be intimidated a third time, everything changed. Standing up to Telstra and their enforcers destroyed any chance I had of receiving the arbitration documents I had been promised.

Corruption and collusion run deep within the Australian establishment. This is not hyperbole — it is the only explanation for why so many of the nation’s most respected legal practitioners abandoned their duty, why law‑enforcement bodies folded, and why accountability mechanisms collapsed. All of it was done to protect Telstra, even though AUSTEL (now ACMA) knew Telstra was operating outside its government licensing conditions.

Had AUSTEL told the truth — that my telephone service was grossly deficient — I would have won my case. My business would have survived. Instead, Telstra’s commercial interests were deemed more important than mine. From that moment until 2023, ACMA branded me a vexatious litigant, dismissing my claims as frivolous, despite the overwhelming evidence published on this website.

During my Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing on 3 October 2008 (No. V2008/1836), I argued that my FOI requests for Ericsson AXE data should be free of charge because the faults in this equipment were a national issue. Telstra and ACMA were still withholding Ericsson documents — thirteen years after the COT Cases exposed the extent of the AXE faults.

And why were they withholding them?

When Ericsson purchased Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd, Lane still possessed confidential COT evidence. Under the arbitration confidentiality clauses, Lane had no right to transfer that material to any third party. Yet when Lane was sold, every COT document stored on Lane’s systems became Ericsson’s property.

Those documents remain withheld from me to this day.

In Australia today, we are living through a grim cycle of bureaucratic failure and institutional cruelty. The Robodebt scheme — which unlawfully pursued innocent Australians for debts they did not owe — destroyed lives. Some victims, believing the government’s accusations, took their own lives. The same pattern of bureaucratic deceit and human devastation is now being recognised in the United Kingdom’s infamous Post Office scandal, where hundreds of innocent sub‑postmasters were ruined by a system that insisted its own technology could not be wrong.

And now, in 2026, Australia faces the unfolding NDIS scandal — a sprawling mess of bureaucratic fraud, mismanagement, and systemic abuse affecting thousands of vulnerable citizens. Once again, the pattern is unmistakable: government agencies protecting themselves, punishing the innocent, and rewarding those with power, influence, and corporate backing.

This is not new.

As emphasised throughout this story, thirty years ago, the Casualties of Telstra were placed before two Australian governments — in 1994 and again in 1996 — evidence of similar bureaucratic misconduct. While Telstra could not meet its telecommunications obligations to Rupert Murdoch and FOX, resulting in a $400 million payout to keep their operations afloat, the COT Cases were forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in arbitration fees. We were told these fees would “force Telstra to fix the problems.” They did not. Telstra’s faults remained, our businesses collapsed, and the government looked the other way.

The message was clear then, and it remains clear now: the big end of town is protected; ordinary Australians are expendable.

The same type of bureaucratic machinery — the culture of secrecy, intimidation, and institutional self‑protection — that crushed Robodebt victims and failed NDIS participants in Australia is the very same kind of machinery that destroyed the lives of British sub‑postmasters in the UK. Different countries, different bureaucrats, but the same ruthless system at work. And that system was already operating inside Australia during the COT arbitrations. It was simply less visible — buried under legal threats, withheld documents, and a government‑endorsed arbitration process that was never independent.

The COT Cases were not treated as citizens seeking justice. We were treated as obstacles to be neutralised.

Telstra withheld evidence. Government regulators ignored their own findings. Arbitrators failed to enforce their own rules. And when Ericsson — the manufacturer of the faulty AXE exchange equipment at the centre of our claims — purchased Lane Telecommunications, the very technical consultancy appointed to investigate those faults, the government allowed the takeover to proceed.

It was the perfect corporate coup: the investigator bought the investigator.

No other Western nation would have allowed such a grotesque conflict of interest. Australia did.

And while Telstra was paying out hundreds of millions to global media giants, the COT Cases were forced to pay for an arbitration process that was structurally incapable of delivering justice. We were told to trust the system. We were told the process was fair. We were told the truth would come out.

It never did.

Instead, the same bureaucratic culture that later produced Robodebt, now engulfs the NDIS, and mirrors the British Post Office scandal, was already alive and thriving — protecting Telstra, shielding Ericsson, and sacrificing Australian citizens in the process.

The pattern is not accidental. It is systemic. It is cultural. And it is corrupt.

Until the Australian Government confronts what happened during the COT arbitrations — the withheld evidence, the conflicts of interest, the intimidation, the corporate infiltration, and the bureaucratic deceit — the same machinery will continue to destroy lives, one scandal at a time.

This is not incompetence. This is not oversight. This is a system protecting itself and the corporations embedded within it.

And until the Australian Government confronts what happened, the corruption that destroyed the COT Cases will remain buried beneath silence, secrecy, and institutional self‑preservation.

This deeply personal and human‑resonant narrative traces one man's extraordinary path — from a difficult schoolboyhood to a sea‑training institution, from thirty years in the Merchant Navy to sixteen years running a school‑holiday camp on Victoria’s rugged coast, and finally into the brutal arena of fighting Telstra, once Australia’s most powerful telecommunications authority. Along the way, the story exposes how Telstra — and Ericsson before them — knowingly supplied equipment unfit for purpose in rural Australia, leaving ordinary citizens to bear the cost of corporate neglect and bureaucratic indifference.

But The Arbitraitor is not only about Australia. It reveals the human cost behind decades of government and Telstra‑driven misinformation — the headlines that promised justice, the assurances that arbitration would fix ongoing telephone faults, and the reality that none of those arbitrations resolved the problems they were designed to address. For many claimants, the faults continued for years after their arbitrations had ended, long after the government declared the matter closed.

Written not for fame, but for truth, this book channels the heartbeat of those who lived through conflict, upheaval, and institutional betrayal, yet refused to surrender their humanity. It is both an intimate memoir and a universal message: protect your freedom, cherish your democracy, and never forget where you came from.

At its core, The Arbitraitor is a story of perseverance — a life shaped by oceans, by injustice, by courage, and by the unyielding belief that truth matters, even when powerful institutions conspire to bury it.

If you seek inspiration, historical insight, or a soul‑stirring account of transformation against impossible odds, this is the book that will stay with you long after the final page.

Something is radically wrong when an Australian citizen is forced to spend more than $300,000 in arbitration fees, another $100,000 in associated costs, and a further $60,000 eleven years later on a government‑sanctioned review led by two Senators—simply to uncover why the original arbitration collapsed. That level of financial devastation should have delivered truth, accountability, and resolution. Instead, it exposed something far more sinister.

Despite this enormous investment, the telephone faults that crippled my business continued to haunt the new owners. Their two legal firms wrote to me in frustration, asking why I had sold them a business that the government‑endorsed arbitration had supposedly “resolved.” The truth, now painfully clear, is that the arbitration never resolved anything. It was a façade — an official declaration of success masking a failure that was never meant to be examined.

In The Arbitraitor, which I am now preparing to withdraw and update, I revisit the moment Rupert Murdoch’s sister, Helen Handbury, and her friends became engrossed in my earlier manuscript, Ring For Justice. I had laid out compelling evidence showing that Telstra’s board knew full well that meeting any rollout deadlines was impossible. The COT cases exposed the same pattern: we continued to battle phone faults long after multiple arbitrations had supposedly “identified and rectified” the problems Telstra insisted were fixed. The reality was far darker — a pattern of systemic neglect and discrimination against ordinary customers.

During our conversation, Helen mentioned The Hon. David Hawker MP, our local parliamentary representative, noting his public acknowledgement of the chronic telephone issues in Hamilton, where he kept an office and regularly met constituents. What she didn’t know was that I was the Alan Smith to whom Mr Hawker referred constituents with ongoing phone complaints. He had told them I would take their concerns to the Senate in Canberra. In that moment, I explained Mr Hawker’s support for my work, and Helen — curious and engaged — asked how the book was progressing.

I remember the feeling: a mix of relief and urgency. I handed her a draft of the manuscript along with a bundle of Mr Hawker’s media statements. These documents captured years of struggle — my attempts to secure a functioning phone service for my holiday camp, and the broader fight to expose the truth behind Telstra’s failures. For the first time, someone connected to the highest levels of Australian media power was reading the story that Telstra and its legal teams had spent years trying to bury.

On 12 July 1993, a Portland Observer Newspaper article, 'Network Complaints Taken Up by MPs', noted:

"Problems highlighted by Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp operator Alan Smith, with the Telecom network have been picked up on by not only other disgruntled customers but Federal politicians. Having suffered a faulty telephone service for some five years, Mr Smith's complaints had for some time fallen on deaf ears, but it now seems people are standing up and listening. Federal Member for Wannon, David Hawker, described the number of reports of faulty and inadequate telephone across Australia as alarming. Mr Hawker said that documents recently presented to him showed that the problems people had been experiencing Australia wide had been occurring repeatedly in the Portland region."(See Cape Bridgewater Chronology of Events File No -17)

The pressure on all four COT cases was immense, with TV and newspaper interviews and our continued canvassing of the Senate. The stress was telling, but I continued to push for improved rural telephone services. The Hon David Hawker MP, my local Federal member of parliament, had been corresponding with me since 26 July 1993.

"A number of people seem to be experiencing some or all of the problems which you have outlined to me. ...

"I trust that your meeting tomorrow with Senators Alston and Boswell is a profitable one."(SeeArbitrator File No/76)

A system where the powerful are compensated, and the powerless are made to pay for the privilege of being ignored.

The letters attached to Chapter 1 - Can We Fix The CAN, dated April 8 and 9, 1994, from Telstra’s group general manager to AUSTEL’s chair, demonstrate that AUSTEL (now ACMA) was not truly independent. Instead, it shows that AUSTEL could be influenced to modify their official findings in the COT report, as Telstra requested in several points in this initial letter to AUSTEL/ACMA. For example, Telstra writes:

“The Report, when commenting on the number of customers with COT-type problems, refers to a research study undertaken by Telecom at Austel’s request. The Report extrapolates from those results and infers that the number of customers so affected could be as high as 120 000. …  (See Open Letter File No/11)

And the next day:

“In relation to point 4, you have agreed to withdraw the reference in the Report to the potential existence of 120,000 COT-type customers and replace it with a reference to the potential existence of “some hundreds” of COT-type customers” (See Open Letter File No/11)

Point 2.71 in AUSTEL’s April 1994 formal report notes:

“the number of Telecom customers experiencing COT type service difficulties and faults is substantially higher than Telecom’s original estimate of 50”.

It is nothing short of a treacherous betrayal for a government regulator to so drastically alter its findings, slashing the number of reported COT-type complaints from an astonishing 120,000 to a mere 50 or so. Such a flagrant misrepresentation constitutes a deep and sinister deception, undermining the public trust it claims to serve. The fact that Rupert Murdoch and FOX are rewarded amid these glaring Telstra telecommunications issues reveals a disturbing collusion that is costing Australian citizens dearly—even leading some to bankruptcy and dragging them into numerous court cases—all due to the lies perpetuated by government bureaucrats. This manipulation not only defrauds the people but also casts a long shadow over the integrity of those in power.

As you delve deeper into this narrative, you will uncover how Telstra's highly compensated legal team engaged in a disturbing pattern of lies, coercion, intimidation, and tampering with evidence. These actions were aimed at shielding a deteriorating, government-owned Telstra Corporation from accountability and scrutiny, revealing the depths to which some will go to protect corporate interests at the expense of public welfare. 

Chapter 9

 

Chapter 5 Immoral - Hypocritical Conduct

When Darren and Jenny Lewise purchased my business, there were two Alan Smiths 

In December 2001, after being unable to appeal my arbitration claim and, in the process, forcing Telstra and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to demand that Telstra test and fix my ongoing telephonic problems, I sold the business to Darren and Jenny Lewis. 

On 6 January 2003, the Hon David Hawker MP, later Speaker in the House of Representatives, wrote to me noting:

“Thank you for your correspondence received throughout December, 2002. Copies will be forwarded to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, along with the videotape, “Phone Wiring Details at Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp.”

Did the government bureaucrats who received this video from Mr Hawker MP pass it on to the Hon. Senator Richard Alston, the then Minister of Communications and Information Technology?  

When a system can consume nearly half a million dollars, destroy a business, mislead future owners, and still leave the underlying problems untouched, as shown in Chapter 4, The New Owners Tell Their Story, there is something fundamentally, structurally, and dangerously wrong with the Australian arbitration system.

The tactics used against us mirror those exposed in major DOJ cases and U.K. public inquiries: evidence suppression, back‑channel interference, obstruction of justice, misconduct in public office, and coordinated cover‑ups designed to shield powerful actors from accountability.

 

Major Fraud Group - Victoria Police investigation 

 

Not every visitor to this website, absentjustice.com, will want to watch my 3.5-minute video, but those who do will understand why the story of the Casualties of Telstra (COT for short) needs to be shared.

And then came the threats.

Telstra threatened me, stating that if I did not report my ongoing telephone issues—specifically, my belief that my telephone lines and faxes were being intercepted—they would treat my complaints as frivolous and vexatious. Ms Phillipa Smith, from the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office, was informed by her Directorate of Investigations, led by John Wynack, that between January and March 1994, all of my requested Freedom of Information (FOI) documents were scrutinised by Telstra due to their sensitive content. However, Telstra did not elaborate on the extent of that sensitivity (see Ms Smith's letter to Telstra demanding answers, see page 3, Exhibit 64 → AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91). This information was being concealed from the arbitration process, meaning I was never meant to receive full justice in that arbitration.

Could this withheld sensitive documentation be related to my earlier disclosures to the government about Australian bureaucrats knowingly aiding the enemy via China's backdoor?

My 3 February 1994 letter to Michael Lee, Minister for Communications (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-A) and a subsequent letter from Fay Holthuyzen, assistant to the minister (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-B), to Telstra’s corporate secretary, show that I was concerned that my faxes were being illegally intercepted.

An internal government memo, dated 25 February 1994, confirms that the minister advised me that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (See Hacking-Julian Assange File No/28)

This internal, dated 25 February 1994, is a Government Memo confirming that the then-Minister for Communications and the Arts had written to advise that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (AFP Evidence File No 4)

Not rumours. Not whispers. Direct threats from Telstra’s own senior executives, including their principal arbitration enforcer, Paul Rumble. He carried out those threats, sabotaging the integrity of my arbitration. Even after the Australian Federal Police raised concerns about those threats, the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, conducted no investigation. Not a single question was asked. Not a single file opened. It was a grift, a skim, an extortion racket masquerading as due process.

The AFP asked me 93 questions about the interception of my calls and the hacking of my arbitration documents → Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1. My answers show something stark: Telstra threatened me for helping the AFP investigation.

At the same time, a key COT witness — Senator Bob Collins — was under investigation for serious child‑abuse allegations. Investigators seized all his office records, including documents vital to the COT phone‑fault evidence. What was destroyed or removed has never been revealed.

Were some of the seized documents about my children’s school camp — evidence that could have strengthened my arbitration case? Their disappearance casts a long, dark shadow over the integrity of the entire process.

On 21 March 1997 — twenty‑two months after my arbitration had supposedly “concluded” — John Pinnock wrote to Telstra’s Ted Benjamin (see Exhibit 596 File → AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647). His questions were not the routine housekeeping of an honest process. They were the kind of questions that only surface when something has gone very, very wrong:

1. Why does the witness statement of clinical psychologist Ian Joblin contain an attestation that doesn’t match the signature block?

2. And were there any alterations made to the Joblin statement originally sent to arbitrator Dr Gordon Hughes, compared to the so‑called “signed” version?

These were significant discrepancies, clear red flags indicating tampering and manipulation of evidence. The timing was critical: from my arbitration on 11 May 1995 to Pinnock’s letter on 21 March 1997, I had three years left under the statute of limitations. Had the necessary information been disclosed, the flaws in the arbitration could have been revealed while I still had legal options.

For 27 years, I have written countless letters, received only fragments in return, and been denied access to documents to which I was entitled. Every request was stifled under the confidentiality agreement I signed on 21 April 1994, now misused to obscure misconduct.

Most disturbingly, Telstra’s lawyer, Maurice Wayne Condon, signed a witness statement without the psychologist's signature. This act blurred the lines of legality, showcasing a system bent by those who believe they own it. 

Crucial content was omitted, including my discussion with Ian Joblin about Telstra’s notes on my conversation with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. They improperly recorded our exchange and later provided a redacted version, asserting their control over the narrative. 

The AFP noted my concerns, but the arbitrator ignored them. An unsigned, altered, lawyer-controlled witness statement should never have been accepted as evidence. This was a process engineered to evade scrutiny, revealing that there was no justice in the COT arbitrations — only power exercised in the shadows, devoid of accountability and democracy.

Furthermore, Senator Bill O'Chee expressed considerable concern that John Pinnock had failed to respond to his letter dated 21 March 1997 regarding a related case involving Telstra's Ted Benjamin. This lack of response led Senator O'Chee to escalate the issue by contacting Graeme Ward, who was responsible for regulatory and external affairs at Telstra, on 26 June 1998 (see File GS-CAV 293-B - GS-CAV Exhibit 258 to 323). In his letter, he stated,

"I note in your letter's last page you suggest that the matter of the alteration of documents attached to statutory declarations should be dealt with by the relevant arbitrator. I do not concur. I would be grateful if you could advise why these matters should not be referred to the relevant police."

Despite these pressing concerns, there has been no transparent resolution regarding this matter. The ramifications of Senator O'Chee's assertion—that the arbitrator was responsible for addressing unlawful conduct involving the alteration of statutory declarations—prompted investigations by the COTs. These investigations aimed to understand why Dr Gordon Hughes permitted such misconduct without challenge, raising serious questions about accountability and the integrity of the arbitration process.

It is 2026, and I still have not seen a copy of the advice John Pinnock was entitled to receive from Telstra regarding the unsigned arbitration witness statement by clinical psychologist Ian Joblin. This statement involved Maurice Wayne Condon, who attested to having seen a signature on it, even though none was present.

Why was Freehill Hollingdale & Page (now trading as Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne) allowed to be Telstra's arbitration lawyers when the COT Cases received assurances from Robin Davey, the then-Chairman of the communications regulator, AUSTEL (now known as ACMA), that Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne would have no continuing involvement in our matters?

It is important to emphasise — and to emphasise without restraint — that Dr Gordon Hughes, appointed as the commercial assessor for the Fast Track Settlement Procedure (FTSP), was not a graded arbitrator. He was never the independent judicial figure the government and the TIO publicly portrayed. Neither he nor the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) office drafted the new Fast Track Arbitration Procedure. Their “involvement” amounted to nothing more than cosmetic tinkering — superficial edits designed to give the illusion of independence while the real power operated elsewhere.

The true authors of the arbitration agreement were Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne — the very legal team the government had assured the COT Cases, three Senators, the Canberra Parliament House Press Club, and even the COT Cases’ own lawyers would have no continuing role in our matters. Yet behind closed doors, in defiance of those assurances, Telstra and Freehill secretly drafted the very rules that would govern our arbitrations.

This was not an oversight. This was not a misunderstanding. This was misleading and deceptive conduct, a crime under Section 52 of the Australian Trade Practices Act, which notes:

The arbitration agreement — supposedly drafted independently of Telstra — was in fact engineered by Telstra’s own legal arm, and the arbitrator allowed it. Dr Hughes and the TIO office accepted a Telstra‑authored blueprint for a process intended to hold Telstra accountable. They did not resist it. They did not question it. They simply rubber‑stamped it.

The draft was faxed to the TIO office on 10 January 1994, after Freehill’s / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne had secretly prepared it. The entire architecture of the arbitration — the rules, the procedures, the constraints, the loopholes — was built by the defendant’s lawyers and quietly handed to the arbitrator as if it were legitimate.

This was not arbitration. This was the worst possible deception.

Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) https://shorturl.at/9lbzN made it illegal for any corporation to engage in misleading or deceptive conduct, or conduct likely to mislead or deceive, in trade or commerce. It applied broadly — not just to consumers, but also to business‑to‑business dealings — and even silence or non‑disclosure could breach the law.

It was a strict liability provision: intent didn’t matter. If the conduct misled, the corporation was liable. Victims could seek compensation for losses caused by the deception.

A process sold to the COT Cases as fair, transparent, and independent was, in reality, dictated by the very corporation Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne. The arbitrator’s willingness to accept Telstra’s legal team as the de facto authors of the rules reveals a system that was never democratic, never impartial, and never intended to deliver justice.

It was a controlled environment — engineered in the shadows, protected by silence, and enforced through the authority of those who were supposed to safeguard fairness.

What unfolded next was not just troubling; it was downright sinister. Throughout my arbitration process, which dragged on from April 21, 1994, to May 11, 1995, the tainted agreement concocted by Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne was also callously used in the arbitrations of Ann Garms, Maureen Gillan, and Graham Schorer. In a shocking turn of events, Dr Hughes later condemned that very arbitration document, branding it as non-credible and suggesting that urgent revisions were necessary for the remaining COT cases—namely, those of Garms, Gillan, and Schorer.

While these cases were granted a generous 13 months to amend their claims, I was left in the lurch, denied any chance to amend my claim, or given the same 13 months to review my submission. My appeal lawyers were not even made aware of Dr Hughes's pivotal letter, dated May 12, 1995 → (Open Letter File No 55-A)—until two long years after the statute of limitations had cruelly expired, effectively sealing my fate and depriving me of the means to challenge this corrupt system. 

As shown in government records (see point 40, Prologue Evidence File No/2), the government wrote to Telstra on 5 October 1995 to advise that the government would be more than a little concerned if Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne had any further involvement in the COT issues—two months before Freehill’s faxed the arbitration agreement that was used in our four arbitrations.

 

 

Chapter 2 - Inaccurate and Incomplete

 

Threats made leading up to and during my arbitration 

On July 4, 1994, amidst the complexities of my arbitration proceedings, I confronted serious threats articulated by Paul Rumble, a Telstra representative on the arbitration defence team. Disturbingly, he had been covertly furnished with some of my interim claims documents by the arbitrator—a breach of protocol that occurred an entire month before the arbitrator was legally obligated to share such information. Given the gravity of the situation, my response needed to be exceptionally meticulous. I invested considerable effort in crafting this detailed letter, carefully selecting every word. In this correspondence, I made it unequivocally clear:

“I gave you my word on Friday night that I would not go running off to the Federal Police etc, I shall honour this statement, and wait for your response to the following questions I ask of Telecom below.” (File 85 - AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91)

When drafting this letter, my determination was unwavering; I had no intention of submitting any additional Freedom of Information (FOI) documents to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). This decision was significantly influenced by a recent, tense phone call I received from Steve Black, another arbitration liaison officer at Telstra. During this conversation, Black issued a stern warning: should I fail to comply with the directions he and Mr Rumble gave, I would jeopardise my access to crucial documents pertaining to ongoing problems I was experiencing with my telephone service.

 

Senate Evidence File No 12

An intense confrontation unfolded in a heated Senate committee meeting when National Party Senator Ron Boswell delivered a fiery critique to a senior officer involved in the Telstra arbitration process. With palpable frustration, he exclaimed, “You are really a disgrace, the whole lot of you,” his voice resonating throughout the chamber. The remarks cast a shadow over the already tense atmosphere as Telstra's conduct regarding the COT Cases took centre stage.

However, the gravity of his words quickly caught the committee chair's attention, prompting a swift intervention. Under scrutiny and recognising the need for decorum in such a serious forum, Senator Boswell was compelled to apologise. Turning to the chairperson more measuredly, he declared, “Madam, I withdraw that remark.” This moment of accountability underscored the importance of respectful dialogue in legislative discussions and illuminated the ongoing challenges surrounding Telstra’s treatment of COT Cases, a matter of significant public interest.

“Madam, I withdraw that, but I do say this: this has got a unity ticket going right through this parliament. This has united every person in this parliament – something that no-one else has ever had the ability to do – and Telstra has done it magnificently. They have got the Labor Party, they have got the National Party, they have got the Liberal Party, they have got the Democrats and they have got the Greens – all united in a singular distrust of Telstra. You have achieved a miracle.”

💰 Discriminative Compensation: The Litmus Divide
Senator Chris Schacht made it clear to the Telstra arbitration officer that awarding compensation only to the five 'litmus' COT test cases—while ignoring the unresolved claims of the remaining sixteen—would be a grave injustice. Yet the John Howard-led National Liberal Party government sanctioned punitive damages solely for those five, and released over 150,000 Freedom of Information documents that had been concealed during their arbitrations from 1994 to 1998.

Those five individuals received a combined $18 million. That sum should have been divided equally among all twenty-one unresolved COT Cases. It was not.

Will I go to jail in 2026 for revealing this grossly discriminatory act by the Australian government against sixteen fellow citizens? I believe the current Labor government—if they appointed a representative to view the In-Camera Hansards of 6 and 9 July 1998—would be morally compelled to act. As Senator Schacht stated in 1998, compensation should have been extended to all. Sadly, at least three of those sixteen have since passed away.

This introduction is not the story. It is only the doorway. The real story begins in the exhibits themselves — in the raw, unfiltered evidence of a government process that turned predatory, a regulator that abandoned its duty, and an arbitration scheme that became a weapon instead of a remedy.

Keep reading. The truth is all here — and it’s uglier than anyone would believe without the documents to prove it.

Lane, in collaboration with the arbitrator, evaluated documentation related to the COT Cases arbitration claims against Ericsson's AXE telecommunications equipment used in Telstra's telephone exchanges across Australia. This documentation had already revealed the poor services provided by Ericsson to Telstra, which was at the centre of the scandal that led to the arbitration of the COT Cases.

On 24 February 1994, I presented my evidence regarding this matter to the Australian Senate through the then Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston. Evidence related to this is attached to file 10-C → Evidence File No/10-A to 10-f, which documents Senator Alston addressing the AXE issue in a motion he proposed for the Senate to answer 'on notice'. 

Yet, in a calculated move, this critical information from Ericsson was systematically withheld from the COT cases throughout their arbitration process. In my experience, this troubling information was also conveniently ignored during the two Freedom of Information (FOI) requests I submitted regarding the Ericsson AXE, which were reviewed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in October 2008 (No V2008/1836) and May 2011 (No 2010/4634).

Throughout this ordeal, Telstra and Ericsson engaged in a covert, strategic collaboration, meticulously controlling the narrative of the COT arbitrations. They selectively decided what to disclose and what to keep secret, creating a web of deception that not only undermined the arbitration process but also betrayed more than 120,000 Australian citizens experiencing ongoing telephone issues, as shown in the attachment → Chapter 1 - Can We Fix The CAN.

As you delve deeper into this narrative, you will uncover how Telstra's highly compensated legal team engaged in a disturbing pattern of lies, coercion, intimidation, and tampering with evidence. These actions were aimed at shielding a deteriorating, government-owned Telstra Corporation from accountability and scrutiny, revealing the depths to which some will go to protect corporate interests at the expense of public welfare. 

Last month in Victoria, Australia, the High Court struck out Part 12 of the Victorian Electoral Act. This leaves a significant vacuum, as there is no ban on foreign donations, no reporting obligations around political donations and campaign expenditure, and just seven months until a state election.

To complicate matters, Ericsson was later accused of operating in territories controlled by ISIS in Iraq. This shocking revelation should have prompted a thorough and urgent investigation into the allegations against Ericsson and Telstra in the COT Cases. However, despite the gravity of the situation, no such investigation took place, highlighting corruption and negligence.

Adding insult to injury, I am still waiting for my arbitration claim documents related to Ericsson. I paid over $25,000 to George Close & Associates for the preparation of my technical arbitration submission, yet I have not received these documents.

Australian bureaucrats have a long history of placing blind faith in foreign contractors whose conduct later collapses under scrutiny. This pattern is not new. It stretches from the Telstra–Ericsson era of the 1990s to the AUKUS submarine deal now reshaping Australia's strategic future. The names change, the stakes grow, but the underlying behaviour—secrecy, deference, and a refusal to confront uncomfortable truths—remains constant.

In recent years, global investigations have exposed Ericsson for conduct that would have ended most companies outright. The Ericsson List, released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (see below), revealed that the company operated in ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq, paid intermediaries to move equipment through ISIS checkpoints, and made tens of millions of dollars in suspicious payments across the Middle East. These revelations did not come from rumour or political spin; they came from leaked internal documents, whistleblowers, and regulatory probes that forced Ericsson to admit what it had concealed for years.

This is the same Ericsson—a multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Sweden—whose equipment faults were at the centre of the COT arbitrations. The same Ericsson whose AXE exchanges were malfunctioning across regional Australia. And the same Ericsson that quietly acquired Lane Telecommunications, the very consultancy appointed by the Australian Government to assess the technical faults raised by the COT Cases. The investigator became the investigated, and Canberra allowed it to happen without intervention, review, or public disclosure.

The parallel is not that AUKUS involves terrorism—it does not. The parallel is structural: a government culture that defers to foreign partners, suppresses scrutiny, and treats transparency as an inconvenience rather than a duty.

In the 1990s, that culture allowed a Swedish corporation to influence an arbitration process formally endorsed by the Australian Government, even though Ericsson was a central party to the dispute. The conflict of interest was so blatant that it would have been laughed out of any fair tribunal. Yet Australian bureaucrats accepted it without protest, without inquiry, and without a single safeguard for the citizens whose livelihoods depended on the truth.

Three decades later, the consequences of that deference still echo. The COT Cases continue to face institutional resistance, reputational damage, and bureaucratic stonewalling—not because their claims were unfounded, but because the system that judged them was compromised at its core. When a foreign supplier can absorb the government's own arbitration consultant mid-process and the government shrugs, the outcome is predetermined.

Today, the same culture allows the largest defence procurement in Australian history—the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program—to proceed with minimal public oversight, shifting timelines, escalating costs, and a near-total reliance on the industrial capacity of the United States and the United Kingdom. Once again, Australia is asked to trust foreign partners without demanding transparency, accountability, or sovereign control.

The lesson is simple, and it is the same one the COT Cases learned the hard way: when governments place blind trust in powerful foreign contractors, the public pays the price—in truth, in sovereignty, and in the integrity of national institutions.