A free for all at the cost of democracy  

From June 1995 to 2008, after the Australian government refused to investigate my claims that their public servants and the Telstra corporation withheld vital evidence from me during my arbitration in 1994 and 1995, which would have supported my arbitration claims of ongoing telephone problems not addressed in my government-endorsed arbitration. I took these claims to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT - No V2008/1836). The respondents in that AAT hearing were the government communications regulator ACMA, who had access to my previously withheld Telstra documents.

On 3 October 2008, after having submitted approximately ninety-per-cent of the documents that can now be downloaded from this website, the other ten per cent are dated after 3 October 2008, the Judge hearing my case, Mr G. D. Friedman, advised me in front of two government  lawyers, and those in the court chambers:

“Let me just say, I don’t consider you, personally, to be frivolous or vexatious – far from it.“I suppose all that remains for me to say, Mr Smith, is that you obviously are very tenacious and persistent in pursuing the – not this matter before me, but the whole – the whole question of what you see as a grave injustice, and I can only applaud people who have persistence and the determination to see things through when they believe it’s important enough.”

Even though the judge hearing my case, Mr. G.D. Friedman, advised ACMA at this 2008 hearing, he found my request for documents valid. ACMA only provided me with a portion of those requested documents, which I was initially promised during my 1994/95 arbitration would be provided if I entered into my government-endorsed settlement/arbitration process. By 2010, I had yet to receive those documents via the AAT process from ACMA. I again took the government (ACMA) to task at a considerable cost (Refer to Chapter 12 - The twelfth remedy pursued).

After my May 2011 AAT / ACMA hearing (No 2010/4634), I had only received a portion of my requested Freedom of Information documents, which I originally needed to support my 1994 to 1995 Settlement/Arbitration process. This denial by ACMA to release these original requested document was made regardless of John Pinnock Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (who was also the administrator to the COT arbitrations) officially alerting a Senate Estimates Committee (see Prologue Evidence File No 22-D) on 26 September 1997 that: 

"...In the process leading up to the development of the arbitration procedures—and I was not a party to that, but I know enough about it to be able to say this—the claimants were told clearly that documents were to be made available to them under the FOI Act."

"Firstly, and perhaps most significantly, the arbitrator had no control over that process because it was a process conducted entirely outside of the ambit of the arbitration procedures".   

I also reminded ACMA in both the 2008 and 2011 Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing that several Senators confirmed we COT Cases should have received our 1994 requested arbitration documents before and during our arbitrations; and I quote: 

Infringe upon the civil liberties

Most Disturbing And Unacceptable 

On 27 January 1999, after having also read my first attempt at writing my manuscript absentjustice.com, the same manuscript I provided Helen Handbury, sister to Rupert Murdoch, (see Rupert Murdoch - Hacked Documents) Senator Kim Carr wrote:

“I continue to maintain a strong interest in your case along with those of your fellow ‘Casualties of Telstra’. The appalling manner in which you have been treated by Telstra is in itself reason to pursue the issues, but also confirms my strongly held belief in the need for Telstra to remain firmly in public ownership and subject to public and parliamentary scrutiny and accountability.

“Your manuscript demonstrates quite clearly how Telstra has been prepared to infringe upon the civil liberties of Australian citizens in a manner that is most disturbing and unacceptable.” 

Senator Kim Carr criticised the handling of the COT arbitrations on 11 March 1999, as the following Hansard link shows. Addressing the government’s lack of power, he said:

“What I do make a comment on is the question of civil liberties and the rights of citizens to approach this parliament and seek redress for their grievances when corporate power, particularly in a publicly owned corporation, has been abused. And there can be no question that that is what is at the heart of this issue.”

And when addressing Telstra’s conduct, he stated:

“But we also know, in the way in which telephone lines were tapped, in the way in which there have been various abuses of this parliament by Telstra—and misleading and deceptive conduct to this parliament itself, similar to the way they have treated citizens—that there has of course been quite a deliberate campaign within Telstra management to undermine attempts to resolve this question in a reasonable way. We have now seen $24 million of moneys being used to crush these people. It has gone on long enough, and simply we cannot allow it to continue. The attempt made last year, in terms of the annual report, when Telstra erroneously suggested that these matters—the CoT cases—had been settled demonstrates that this process of deceptive conduct has continued for far too long.” (See parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/displaychamberhansards1999-03-11)

Senator Schacht was possibly very vocal when he stated:

“I rise to speak to this statement tabled today from the working party of the Senate Environment Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee—a committee I served on in the last parliament—that dealt with the bulk of this issue of the CoT cases. In my time in this parliament, I have never seen a more sorry episode involving a public instrumentality and the way it treated citizens in Australia. I agree with all the strong points made by my colleagues

 on both sides who have spoken before me on this debate. What was interesting about the Senate committee investigating this matter over the last couple of years was that it was absolutely tripartisan—whether you were Labor, Liberal or National Party, we all agreed that something was rotten inside Telstra in the way it handled the so-called CoT cases for so long.

The outcome here today is sad. There is no victory for citizens who have been harshly dealt with by Telstra.” 

They [Telstra] have defied the Senate working party. 

On 23 March 1999, after most of the COT arbitrations had been finalized and business lives ruined due to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to fight Telstra and a very crooked arbitrator, the Australian Financial. Review reported on the conclusion of the Senate estimates committee hearing into why Telstra withheld so many documents from the COT cases: 

“A Senate working party delivered a damning report into the COT dispute. The report focused 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.”  

 

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

Other government ministers have shown their disgust at the way Telstra was able to act as a law unto themselves as can be seen from Senator Mark Bishop's statement shown below notes in the following link > aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/displaychamberhansards1999-03-11

Significant issues do arise. I think it is appropriate to refer to the final paragraphs of the committee report. In the second to last paragraph, the report of the committee tabled by Senator Eggleston says:

Estimates of Telstra's costs in relation to the CoTs issue since the claims were made exceed $20 million ($14.285 million to 1997 and rising). Most of the expenditure has been spent, not on settlement but on administrative and legal costs. It became quite clear early in the process that the claimants had in fact been disadvantaged by malfunctions in their telephone system. It is difficult to understand why Telstra appeared to prefer to deny that there was a problem and then prolonged the difficulties in establishing the extent of that problem.

The final sentence reads:

In the Committee's view Telstra should now seek to reach a negotiated agreement with the interested parties.

If fault is to be allocated at this very early stage of the final lap, that fault lies at the door of Telstra. It really is appropriate for Telstra, a $100 billion corporation, to stop using its monopoly power, to stop retaining the services of dozens of highly paid solicitors and to come to the table and to seek to reach a negotiated agreement with these four or five persons. It is simply outrageous that Telstra, which is still a public corporation, can spend something in the order of $20 million - Senator Boswell - Some $24 million.

Senator Mark Bishop -

"I am informed by Senator Boswell it is 24 million - defending a claim when the claim before it is somewhere between $2 million or $4 million. This is simply an outrageous propostion and a waste of public money". 

A fair resolution of all the COT cases claims has still not been reached as the following An injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens shows.

On 25 July 2002, Senator Len Harris travelled from Cairns in Queensland (a trip that took more than seven hours) to meet four other COTs and me, in Melbourne, in an attempt to ensure our claims of discrimination against the Commonwealth were fully investigated. He was appalled 16 Australian citizens were so badly discriminated against, by the then-coalition government, despite a Senate estimates committee working party being established to investigate all 21 COT-type claims against Telstra.

At a press conference on the next day, Senator Harris aimed questions at the chief of staff to the Hon Senator Richard Alston, Minister for Communications:

“Through the following questions, the media event will address serious issues related to Telstra’s unlawful withholding of documents from claimants, during litigation.

• Why didn’t the present government correctly address Telstra’s serious and unlawful conduct of withholding discovery and/or Freedom of Information (FOI) documents before the T2 float?
• Why has the Federal government allowed five Australians (from a list of twenty-one) to be granted access to some of the Telstra discovery documents they needed to support their claims against Telstra, but denied the same rights to the other sixteen?
• Why has the Federal Government ignored clear evidence that Telstra withheld many documents from a claimant during litigation?
• Why has the Federal Government ignored evidence that, among those documents Telstra did supply, many were altered or delivered with sections illegally blanked out?” (See Senate Evidence File No 56)

Also during this same press conference Senator Len Harris asked many other questions including why should an owner of a business such as the holiday camp at Cape Bridgewater literally be forced to sell that business because Telstra had still been unable to fix the ongoing telephone problems that Senator Richard Alston himself had investigated in 1992, ten years previous and concluded were affecting Mr Smith's holiday camp. The same telephone problems which Mr Smith raised in his 1993/94 arbitration and was still raising with Telstra in 2001, seven years after the arbitration process had failed to rectify those problems.

My beloved holiday camp

Nine years after my arbitration the ongoing phone problems ruined the lives of the new owners

 Chapter 4 The New Owners Tell Their Story

On 28 January 2003, a letter from TIO officer Gillian McKenzie to Telstra discusses the ongoing telephone problems being experienced by the new owners of my business noting:

“Mr & Mrs Lewis claim in their correspondence attached:

That they purchased the Cape Bridgewater Coastal Camp in December 2001, but since that time have experienced a number of issues in relation to their telephone service, many of which remain unresolved.

That a Telstra technician ‘Mr Tony Watson’ is currently assigned to his case, but appears unwilling to discuss the issues with Mr Lewis due to his contact with the previous camp owner, Mr Alan Smith.” (See Burying The Evidence File 10-A)

Was there a more sinister motive involved in Telstra’s technician refusing to help Darren Lewis with the ongoing phone/fax problems that, nine years before, Telstra and the arbitrator assigned to my case failed to investigate transparently? Why was this Telstra technician still holding a grudge against me in 2002/3 because of something my 1994/95 arbitration should have addressed – i.e., the ongoing phone and facsimile problems that this same Telstra technician was now refusing to help Mr Lewis with, nine years later?

A fair resolution of all the COT cases claims has still not been reached as the following An injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens shows.

Refer to also to Price Waterhouse Coopers and Australian Federal Police Investigations-1