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đź“‚ The Briefcase That Unlocked a National Scandal
In October 1993, I provided Robert Nason—accompanied by his secretary, Ms Hurley—with documentation indicating that the Ericsson-manufactured testing equipment used by Telstra in specific terrain locations across Australia was not compatible.
I first received this information on 3 June 1993, after two Telstra senior technicians from the Victoria Metro Network inadvertently left an unlocked briefcase at my premises in Cape Bridgewater. Inside were details of several complex Telstra Difficult Network Faults (DNF) customers, including myself.
I copied the contents and sent them to AUSTEL (now called ACMA). I also met with AUSTEL representatives in Melbourne twice over the following two weeks, as some of the attached documents couldn’t be transmitted through my older-style roll-paper fax machine.
Rather than leaking the material to the media for a fleeting headline, I chose to alert the government. This decision led Senator Richard Alston, then Shadow Minister for Communications, to write several papers on the matter. The Hon. David Hawker MP also referenced the Ericsson equipment’s failures in his electorate of Wannon, where my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp was located.
On 25 February 1994, Senator Alston addressed the Senate, citing the severity of the Ericsson problem and naming me as the individual who, according to Telstra technicians, had rightly exposed the issue as it worsened.
🧾 Arbitration: Suppressed Evidence and Compromised Testing
Despite Robert Nason’s draft findings in the Coopers & Lybrand COT report, which stated that the Ericsson equipment was obsolete and needed replacement, Telstra continued to use it throughout the COT arbitrations.
On 7 and 8 April 1994, four of the nine COT Cases, including mine, raised concerns about the faulty Ericsson testing equipment with Robin Davey (Chairman) and John MacMahon (General Manager) of AUSTEL. We were assured that this equipment would not be used during the Service Verification Testing (SVT) of our service lines in arbitration and mediation.
However, on 11 October and 16 November 1994, AUSTEL wrote to Telstra condemning the SVT testing conducted at my premises in September 1994 as grossly deficient. I did not see these letters until seven years after my arbitration—one year past the statute of limitations. Had I received them in time, I could have appealed the arbitrator’s findings, which falsely stated my business was no longer experiencing faults after July 1994.
Worse still, on 2 February 1995, I alerted AUSTEL that Telstra had covered their SVT testing with a statutory declaration signed by the same Peter ——— whom AUSTEL had previously criticised in their October and November letters.
This was the same Peter ——— referenced in the Senate Hansard dated 24 June 1997, which revealed he had advised a Telstra whistleblower that I—and four other COT Cases—had to be stopped at all costs.
He also instructed AUSTEL during my arbitration to consult Telstra before releasing technical information to the COT Cases. On 6 April 1995, he refused to conduct further arbitration tests at my camp, despite being reminded of their purpose: to test my Ericsson telephone service.
Lane Telecommunications, the arbitration consultants present that day, also declined to test the service. The arbitrator later acknowledged that Lane had reviewed at least 4,000 of my claim documents—80% of which were Ericsson-related. Yet I have never received these documents back, despite clause 6 of the arbitration agreement requiring their return within six weeks of the decision (11 May 1995 in my case).
Ericsson later purchased Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd during the COT arbitrations. Let me be clear: Ericsson acquired Lane despite Lane’s sworn oath not to disclose any arbitration material to outside parties. Once purchased, all COT Cases’ private business and technical data became Ericsson’s property.
🔄 From 1993 to 2025: The Echoes of a Whistleblower’s Warning
ACMA was the respondent in both my Freedom of Information and government document requests, heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal between February and October 2008, and again from October 2010 to May 2011.
I was seeking Ericsson-related documentation that Telstra had retained—information that, after Ericsson acquired Lane, was reportedly used to assist Telstra’s arbitration defence against the COT Cases. We had alleged that Ericsson’s telephone exchange equipment was responsible for widespread call dropouts and outages.
To this day, I have yet to receive the requested Ericsson data from ACMA.
On 3 October 2008, senior AAT member [Judge] Mr G D Friedman considered these AAT hearings and, on 3 October 2008, stated to me in open court, in full view of two government ACMA lawyers.
“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.”
In 2025, both electronic media and various newspapers reported that Optus is now blaming Ericsson for the same outages and call dropouts that we COT Cases first exposed, beginning with the briefcase left open at my Cape Bridgewater premises on June 3, 1993.
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