AbsentJustice.com is a work in progress last edited March 2023.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou
In January 2018 my partner, Cathy, was with me for my first appointment with our local doctor after I had survived a heart attack and double by-pass surgery. Although the doctor was very sympathetic to my situation (and he knows my COT story) he couldn’t help but ask: “Why am I not surprised?”
As I write this it is now March 2023 and still, every time I go back to finalise various parts of our website at absentjustice.com, and I have to re-read all the complex details that make up the whole, true, terrible story, my anxiety levels instantly begin to rise alarmingly. The situation gets worse though because I also find I am just stuck; I seem to be unable to find the right words to finish off this dreadful story. It seems that, no matter what I do, I just can’t find a way to properly explain this disaster that we have all struggled with for so many years. One part of the problem is, of course, that none of the COT cases – all honest Australian citizens – should ever have been forced into a situation that would eventually leave us all dealing with so many still-unaddressed crimes; crimes that were committed against us while we were officially part of a government-endorsed, legal, arbitration process. There are two parts to this problem for the COTs, though: to begin with, there are those who are now identified below, who worked with Telstra to carry out those still-unaddressed crimes, and then there is Telstra, an organisation with so much power that they could stop any authorities (including government authorities) from investigating any of those crimes as Unprecedented Government Corruption so clearly shows.
It is important to stress here that every single detail recorded on this website is not only true but is also supported by irrefutable evidence that can now be readily accessed directly from the website. It is also important to note that, as the result of a recent discussion with other members of the COT group (even though two of them are very sick at the moment) we decided that, considering the stress that we are all still suffering, it would be better to release our stories to the public just as they are on the website now, even if this is not exactly how we had hoped to present them when we began to put the website together.
My name is Alan Smith. This is the story of my battle with a telecommunications giant and the Australian Government, a battle that has twisted and turned, since 1992, through elected governments, government departments, regulatory bodies, the judiciary, and the Australian telecommunications giant, Telstra, or Telecom, as it was known when this story started. The quest for justice continues to this day.
My Casualties of Telstra story started in 1987 when I decided my life at sea, where I had spent the previous 26 or so years, was over. I needed a new land-based occupation to see me through to my retirement years and beyond. Of all the places in the world and in Australia I had visited, I chose to make Cape Bridgewater my home.
My business is hospitality, and I had always dreamed of running a school holiday camp. Imagine my delight when I saw the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Convention Centre advertised for sale in The Age. It was located in rural Victoria, near the small maritime port of Portland. Everything seemed perfect. I performed my “due diligence” to ensure that the business was sound; or at least, all of the due diligence I was aware I needed to perform. Who would have guessed that I had to check whether the phones worked?
Within a week of taking over the business I knew I had a problem. I was receiving correspondence on a regular basis AUSTEL (the government communications regulator) viewed seventy of these plus testaments from customers and suppliers alike that stated they had tried to call and couldn’t get through to me. It was these seventy plus letters that prompted AUSTEL to investigate my complaints (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, at points 1, to 212. It is evident from points 209 to 212 from those government findings that AUSTEL agreed my problems were real.
Point 209 – “Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp has a history of service difficulties dating back to 1988. Although most of the documentation dates from 1991 it is apparent that the camp has had ongoing service difficulties for the past six years which has impacted on its business operations causing losses and erosion of customer base.”
Point 210 – “Service faults of a recurrent nature were continually reported by Smith and Telecom was provided with supporting evidence in the form of testimonials from other network users who were unable to make telephone contact with the camp.”
Point 211 – “Telecom testing isolated and rectified faults as they were found however significant faults were identified not by routine testing but rather by the persistence-fault reporting of Smith”.
Point 212 – “In view of the continuing nature of the fault reports and the level of testing undertaken by Telecom doubts are raised on the capability of the testing regime to locate the causes of faults being reported.”
Government records (see Absentjustice-Introduction File 495 to 551) show AUSTEL’s adverse findings were provided to Telstra (the defendants) one month before Telstra and I signed our arbitration agreement. I did not get a copy of these same findings until 23 November 2007, 12 years after the conclusion of my arbitration.
In simple terms, by AUSTEL only providing Telstra with a copy of their AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings in March 1994, not only assisted Telstra during their defence of my 1994/95 arbitration it also assisted Telstra in 2006, when the government could only assess my claims on a sanitized report prepared by AUSTEL and not their AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings.
These actions by AUSTEL allowing me to spend more than $300.000.00 [Three-Hundred-Thousand] in arbitration fees trying to prove something that they had already proved against Telstra was an abuse of process towards me as a citizen of Australia.
Yes, that’s right. I and the other COT Cases were all Australian citizens. We had a business to run and a phone service that was, at best, unreliable, and at worst, just not there at all. Of course, we lost business as a result.
And so, my saga begins. It has been a quest to get a working phone at the property. On the way I have received some compensation for business losses and many promises that the problem is now resolved. It has not been resolved to this day. I sold the business in 2002 and subsequent owners have suffered a similar fate to me (see Chapter 4 The New Owners Tell Their Story).
Other independent business people similarly affected by poor telecommunications have joined me on my journey. We are known as the Casualties of Telecom, or the COT cases. All we want is for Telecom/Telstra to admit to our various problems, fix them all, then pay compensation for our losses. A working phone: is that too much to ask?
We initially asked for a full Senate investigation into Telecom in general and these issues in particular. We were offered, as an alternative, an arbitration process. It seemed like a good way to resolve the problem so we accepted this alternative. At this early stage, we honestly expected that the technical problems that prevented our phones from working would be resolved.
No such luck
Clicking on the caption below exposes how wide the fax hacking of arbitration documents was.
The documents provided were undecipherable
No such luck. Suspicions that something about the arbitration process was not quite right started almost immediately. We had been promised that the Telecom documents we needed to make our case would be made available to us if we entered into arbitration.
Two of the most relevant documents withheld from the arbitrator are exposed here as Folios C04007 and C04008, headed TELECOM SECRET (see Front Page Part Two 2-B) states:
“Legal position – Mr Smith’s service problems were network related and spanned a period of 3-4 years. Hence Telecom’s position of legal liability was covered by a number of different acts and regulations. … In my opinion Alan Smith’s case was not a good one to test Section 8 for any previous immunities – given his evidence and claims. I do not believe it would be in Telecom’s interest to have this case go to court.
“Overall, Mr Smith’s telephone service had suffered from a poor grade of network performance over a period of several years; with some difficulty to detect exchange problems in the last 8 months.”
Despite the promise we received from the government of the day, this type of TELECOM SECRET evidence was concealed from us COT Cases until our arbitrations were over. In my case, I was still trying to access these previously withheld documents by the government as my two Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT) hearings dated 2008 and 2011 (see Chapter 9 - The ninth remedy pursued and Chapter 12 - The twelfth remedy pursued..
I don't consider you, personally, to be frivolous or vexatious
The telephone faults were not fixed during my arbitration
Transcripts from my AAT hearing (respondents ACMA) on 3 October 2008 (No V2008/1836) show I maintained my Ericsson AXE Freedom of Information applications to ACMA (government communications regulator) should be provided free of charge, in the public interest, because of the extent of the problems within the Ericsson AXE installed equipment right across Australia.
Telstra and ACMA were still withholding from me this Ericsson data in 2008, [Judge] Mr G D Friedman considered this AAT hearing on 3 October 2008, stating to me in an 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.”
Even though Mr Friedman advised the government lawyers' case [No V2008/1836], they should provide me with the requested Ericsson AXE telephone exchange documents pertaining to my claims; It has still not been provided to me by ACAM. Had I received it during my arbitration, I could have proved my much loved holiday camp was still suffering ongoing problems during the arbitration process set up to investigate these Ericsson AXE telephone exchange problems. (see Criminal Conduct Example 1 to Criminal Conduct Example 3 @ Unprecedented Government Corruption
This story commenced in April 1988, was reviewed by the government in 2006 (see Chapter 8 - The eighth remedy pursued) and is still, in 2023, being ignored by the government as the following YouTube video shows
