📖“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Maya Angelou

This website is a work in progress and was last edited in September 2026.

Learn about horrendous crimes and unscrupulous criminals, corrupt politicians and the lawyers who control the legal profession in Australia. Shameful, hideous, and treacherous are just a few words that describe these lawbreakers.

 

Before reading further, examine the evidence. Open Evidence File 1 or Evidence File 2 under “Tampering with Evidence.”

These records raise serious questions about alleged withheld documents, compromised evidence, government accountability, corporate misconduct, conflicts of interest, and a potentially corrupted arbitration process. They document a system in which the truth may have been obstructed, concealed, or denied, and in which ordinary people were left to confront powerful institutions.

 

Do not simply accept my conclusions. Read the documents, follow the chronology, and decide for yourself whether this was merely a few failed arbitration disputes, or evidence of something far more disturbing.

 

This website calls for transparency, accountability, and an independent investigation into the unresolved COT cases. If you believe corruption must be exposed rather than buried, consider supporting Transparency International Australia.

Kleptocracy thrives when institutions built to protect the public are quietly repurposed to shield powerful actors. Foreign corruption networks exploit weak oversight, turning regulators into instruments rather than safeguards. Once captured, these systems do not investigate wrongdoing; they manage it, conceal it, and redirect accountability away from those responsible. In such environments, international fraud becomes easier to execute, harder to detect, and almost impossible to prosecute. Truth is not merely buried; it is systematically erased.

On this website, you will learn about horrendous misconduct: unscrupulous operators, compromised bureaucracies, conflicted decision‑makers, and lawyers who guard the gates of Australia’s legal establishment. Words like shameful, hideous, and treacherous barely scratch the surface.

Until the late 1990s, the Australian government owned Australia’s telephone network and its carrier, Telecom (now privatised as Telstra). With monopoly control and no external scrutiny, Telecom allowed the network to decay. When our telephone services failed, the government‑endorsed arbitration process, the mechanism supposedly designed to deliver justice, became an uneven, pre‑engineered battle we could never win. Our faults were not fixed. Our evidence was not tested. Despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars it cost the claimants to mount their cases, the system ensured Telstra would emerge untouched.

Crimes were committed against us. Our integrity was attacked and undermined. Our livelihoods were ruined. We lost millions of dollars. Our mental health deteriorated under the weight of a process that was never intended to deliver justice. And yet those who orchestrated this treachery, those who manipulated evidence, buried truth, and protected Telstra at all costs, remain in positions of power today.

Our story is still being covered up.

Call for Justice 

My name is Alan Smith, and this is the story of my battle with a telecommunications giant and the Australian Government. Since 1992, this battle has unfolded through various institutions, including elected governments, government departments, regulatory bodies, the judiciary, and the telecommunications behemoth Telstra, or Telecom, as it was known when this story began. The quest for justice continues to this day.

My story began in 1987, when I decided that my life at sea, where I had spent the previous 28 years, was over. I needed a new, land-based occupation to carry me through to retirement and beyond. Of all the places I had visited around the world, I chose Australia as my home.

Hospitality was my calling, and I had always dreamed of running a school holiday camp. So imagine my delight when I saw the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Convention Centre advertised for sale in The Age newspaper. Nestled in rural Victoria, near the small maritime port of Portland, it seemed perfect. I conducted what I believed was thorough due diligence to ensure the business was sound, or at least, all the due diligence I knew about at the time. Who would have thought I needed to check whether the phones worked?

Within a week of taking over the business, I knew I had a problem. Customers and suppliers were telling me they had tried to call but couldn’t get through. That’s right, I had a business to run, but the phone service was, at best, unreliable, and at worst, completely absent. Naturally, we lost business as a result.

 

 

The Camp relied heavily on telephone communication. It was our vital link to city dwellers eager to use our services. One of our most significant oversights—blinded by the charm of this coastal haven—was failing to investigate the existing telephone system. At the time, mobile coverage was virtually nonexistent, and business was conducted through traditional means—not online, and certainly not by email.

We soon discovered that we were tethered to an antiquated telephone exchange, installed more than 30 years earlier and designed specifically for “low-call-rate” areas. This outdated, unstaffed exchange had a pitiful capacity of just eight lines.

The Casualties of Telecom (COT Cases)

• My fight began simply: to secure a working telephone service.
• Despite promises of compensation, the faults persisted. I sold my business in 2002, but the new owners suffered the same fate.
• Other small-business owners joined me, and we became known as the Casualties of Telecom.
• All we ever asked for was acknowledgement, repair, and fair compensation. A working telephone, was that too much to expect?

During a typical week, picturesque Cape Bridgewater was home to 66 residential families, not including those who used their coastal retreats to escape the bustle of city life. This created a significant challenge, particularly because many of these families had children.

The eight service lines struggled to support a growing population of 130 adults and children. By the time a modern Remote Control Module (RCM) was finally installed in August 1991, twelve children had been added, bringing the total population to 144. Weekend visitors often increased that figure to 150 or more.

The Hidden Cost of Cape Bridgewater’s Failing Lines

No wonder I was financially broken by the end of 1988, barely a year after taking over the business in late 1987. The reality was brutal: Cape Bridgewater’s telecommunications system was catastrophically inadequate.

In stark terms, if just four of the 144 residents were making or receiving calls, only four lines remained for the other 140 residents. This was not simply poor planning; it was a systemic failure. My business was strangled by a network that could not support even the most basic communication needs. Every missed call was a missed opportunity. Every failed connection was another nail in the coffin of a venture into which I had poured everything.

We entered this landscape of limited connectivity and coastal beauty with ambition and optimism. The Camp was more than a business; it was a dream made real—a serene retreat where the stresses of city life could dissolve into the ocean mist. Yet, as we soon learned, dreams require infrastructure to survive.

Our telephone lines became both our lifeline and our greatest obstacle. Booking inquiries, supply orders, emergency calls, and even simple conversations with clients all had to pass through those eight fragile channels. During peak periods, the lines were constantly engaged. Guests complained that they could not reach us. Suppliers missed confirmations. Opportunities slipped through our fingers like sand.

The Arbitrator and the Corruption of Arbitration in Australia

Introduction: A System Built on Betrayal

The arbitration system in Australia was presented to us as fair, transparent, and government-endorsed. In reality, I believe it was anything but. The Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia (IAMA) was supposed to be independent, yet time and again it appeared to bend to political and corporate influence. What should have been a safeguard for justice became, in my experience, an instrument of betrayal.

The COT Cases: Cracks in the System (1990s)

During the 1990s, the Casualties of Telstra (COT) cases exposed what I believe was a deeply compromised system. Telstra and government officials allegedly withheld documents, misled arbitrators, and left claimants fighting in the dark. Arbitrators ignored evidence that should have been central to their rulings.

The result was that ordinary Australians were systematically disadvantaged, while Telstra and its allies escaped accountability. The cases demonstrated one thing clearly: when corporate power combines with political silence, justice collapses.

The Telstra Briefcase Incident (1992–1993)

I witnessed this corruption firsthand. Two Telstra executives left an unlocked briefcase in my Cape Bridgewater office. Inside were documents that, in my view, revealed Telstra’s board and management orchestrating a campaign to mislead the public.

They knew that their copper-wire network and Ericsson equipment were faulty. Overseas, this equipment was being removed from exchanges. In Australia, Telstra continued rolling it out, placing vulnerable customers at risk.

When I raised these issues, the arbitrator ruled that the faults had not affected my business viability. That was not negligence, in my view—it was complicity. Later, documents dated July to December 1992 and formalised under the Freedom of Information Act appeared to confirm what I had already believed: that I had been deliberately misled about the reliability of my telephone service for years.

Continuity of Corruption: 2000–2025

Some people believe this corruption was confined to the past and resolved during the 1990s. I do not. Between 2020 and 2025, I witnessed what appeared to be the continuation of similar practices: altered court documents, perjury, and allegations of criminal conduct within government ranks.

In both State and Federal Parliament, betrayal appears to run rampant. Colleagues are destroyed through malicious falsehoods, just as claimants were destroyed during the arbitrations. The corruption did not end; it mutated.

The Human Cost

This was never only about faulty equipment. It was about lives. My business was dismissed, my credibility undermined, and my livelihood jeopardised. Customers were left exposed to dangerous infrastructure, while Telstra and government officials escaped accountability.

The human cost of this betrayal is immeasurable.

Conclusion: The Arbitrator’s Legacy

The arbitration system failed because it was never truly independent. Political and corporate influence corrupted it from the beginning. The COT cases peeled back the layers, but the treachery has only deepened since.

My role now is to document the truth, ensure that these betrayals are not forgotten, and empower others to challenge the silence.

Reflections on Democracy and Accountability

My struggle was never only about me. It was about whether democratic systems can be trusted to uphold transparency, fairness, and accountability.

Canada’s handling of the Cape Bridgewater report, together with Australia’s willingness to allow witnesses to be compromised, revealed a disturbing truth: when powerful interests are threatened, the rule of law bends. It delays. It ignores.

So I ask you, my readers, to consider this:

Do we truly live under systems that protect the vulnerable and hold the powerful to account? Or are we expected to accept corruption disguised as process and silence masquerading as resolution?

For me, the answer is clear. The COT arbitrations were neither transparent nor unbiased. They were riddled with what I regard as sinister machinations.

While I continue to fight for the return of my rightful documents, I am also fighting for something larger: the principle that truth must never be buried, and that democracy cannot survive if corruption is allowed to flourish unchallenged.

Why This Website Exists

This website examines allegations of serious misconduct involving corporate actors, government agencies, compromised bureaucracies, conflicted decision-makers, and legal professionals whose conduct may have shielded powerful institutions from scrutiny.

The evidence raises important questions about government accountability, withheld documents, Freedom of Information failures, corporate misconduct, alleged bribery, intimidation, and other forms of institutional wrongdoing. It also asks whether Australia’s legal and administrative systems became a fortified citadel of self-protection, protecting institutions while leaving affected citizens without a meaningful remedy.

The language used throughout these pages is strong because the consequences described were severe. Businesses were destroyed, families experienced prolonged pressure, health was affected, and evidence was allegedly withheld, lost, or disregarded.

This is not simply a story about technical failures or poor telephone services. It is an account of alleged institutional misconduct, conflicted arbitration, and the progressive denial of a fair opportunity to present evidence. The surviving records raise serious questions about whether Telstra, government agencies, and arbitration officials:

• withheld or failed to disclose relevant documents;
• provided explanations that were incomplete or misleading;
• failed to investigate credible complaints;
• intimidated or discredited claimants;
• permitted a compromised process to continue; and
• avoided accountability after the integrity of the process had been challenged.

If substantiated, these matters would represent more than administrative error. They would suggest a profound failure of public trust involving a government-backed corporation, officials who allegedly failed to act on credible complaints, and an arbitration system whose transparency, independence, and procedural fairness require independent examination.

The central issue was never only the failure of telephone services. It was whether evidence was buried, whether legitimate complaints were suppressed, whether claimants were discredited for exposing possible misconduct, and whether the arbitrator allowed a process of questionable integrity to continue.

Absentjustice.com records the human consequences described by the COT claimants: businesses lost, families placed under intolerable strain, health damaged, evidence becoming unavailable, and justice delayed until delay itself became indistinguishable from denial.

The website does not ask visitors to accept every allegation as proven. It asks them to examine the chronology, documents, correspondence, FOI material, arbitration records, and official responses for themselves.

The essential question is whether the surviving evidence warrants an open and independent investigation, one conducted without the institutional conflicts and restrictions that, according to the records presented here, affected the original process.

This website is not meant to replace an investigation, but to explain why one remains necessary.

 

Don’t forget to hover your mouse over the images as you scroll down this homepage to reveal additional information.

These 23 points provide a comprehensive and accessible guide to the narrative featured on this website. Rather than overwhelming readers with an intricate and lengthy historical context to grasp its significance, the chapter summaries provide an efficient way to navigate the homepage, allowing visitors to quickly discern the major themes at a glance. 

The summaries bring to light several crucial issues, including contentious evidence, claims of document suppression, instances of unequal treatment, pressures from institutions, stalled investigations, and the profound personal toll experienced by those involved in these cases. Each point acts as a gateway to a more elaborate account, backed by a wealth of documents, records, and evidence files that substantiate the claims.

 

Together, these elements create a cohesive timeline and articulate the purpose of the project: to preserve the intricate history of the COT cases, foster a thorough and informed examination of the available evidence, and underscore the necessity of an independent review of the unresolved claims. This approach not only invites engagement but also highlights the significance of understanding and addressing these important issues.

🕯️The Suppression of Truth

The process began with what appeared to be minor irregularities: a missing attachment, a delayed file, an unexplained omission. Any one incident might have been dismissed as administrative error. Taken together, however, the missing material formed a pattern that demanded examination.

As the arbitration progressed, more serious questions arose. Documents reportedly appeared in the arbitrator’s office that, according to my records, had previously been seen only by the Australian Federal Police and me. If accurate, that circumstance raises a serious question about confidentiality and the movement of evidence within the process.

Deadlines changed, important material was not considered, and findings appeared to take shape before all relevant evidence had been examined. The record does not establish every explanation, but it does demonstrate why the handling of evidence requires independent scrutiny. The central issue is whether truth was merely overlooked—or systematically excluded.

🕵️‍♂️  Surveillance and Loss of Privacy

Arbitration was presented as a confidential process in which claims and evidence could be examined without outside interference. That expectation changed when unexplained fax records, call traces, and other communications data appeared in the documentary record.

These records raised concerns that private communications connected with the dispute may have been monitored, recorded, or otherwise accessible to people who were not authorised to receive them. The extent, purpose, and responsibility for any such monitoring remain matters requiring proper investigation.

For the claimants, the consequence was profound. A process intended to provide a secure avenue for redress began to feel like an environment of observation and exposure. Whether every suspected instance can be proved or not, the apparent loss of confidentiality undermined confidence in the fairness of the arbitration.

🗂️ A Culture of Concealment

The pattern began with omissions: a missing page, a redacted passage, or a file described as unavailable. Each incident could be explained in isolation. The larger record, however, suggested that the arbitrator may not have received a complete account of the relevant events.

Technical failures were sometimes presented as individual claimant problems rather than as possible evidence of wider network or equipment defects. Reports and correspondence appeared to frame the dispute in ways that favoured Telstra’s position. These matters should be assessed against the original records, not accepted or dismissed without examination.

The concern is therefore larger than a single missing document. It is whether concealment became embedded in the handling of the claims—whether the process selected, narrowed, or reinterpreted the evidence to protect the institution rather than discover the truth.

⚙️ Corruption Through Structure

On paper, the arbitration framework contained rules, procedures, and oversight. Yet the operation of those safeguards is as important as their existence. Questions arose concerning altered provisions, reduced oversight, and the removal or weakening of protections available to claimants.

Evidence also appears to have passed through intermediaries before reaching the arbitrator. If a third party determined which documents or issues could be considered, the process's independence was seriously compromised.

This does not by itself prove a criminal offence. It does, however, raise the possibility of structural corruption: a process that could appear legitimate while restricting access to the very evidence required for an impartial decision.

📣 The Whistleblower’s Burden

I did not set out to become a whistleblower. I began as a business owner seeking a reliable telephone service and a remedy for serious problems. Each attempt to resolve the dispute, however, raised further questions about missing records, contradictory explanations, and the handling of evidence.

When attempts to raise those concerns were met with hostility, dismissal, or attacks on my credibility, silence became increasingly difficult. Speaking out carried personal and financial consequences, but remaining silent would have allowed unresolved questions to disappear.

Whistleblowing was not a role I chose for recognition. It became the responsibility imposed by a system in which the person raising the concern appeared to bear greater risk than the institution facing it.

🤐 The Architecture of Silence

The initial responses were familiar: the matter was being reviewed, correspondence would be answered, and concerns would be considered. Then replies became delayed, incomplete, or absent. Meetings were postponed, and responsibility moved from one office to another.

The records suggest a recurring pattern of avoidance involving corporate, administrative, and governmental bodies. Whether this amounted to formal coordination must be determined by an independent investigation. What is clear, however, is the cumulative effect: no institution accepted responsibility for resolving the central questions.

Silence was not simply an absence of information. It became a practical shield. The longer the unanswered questions remained unresolved, the harder it became for claimants to challenge the official account.

⚖️ An Arbitration Under Question

The arbitration was presented as an independent process offering fairness, evidence-based assessment, and equal treatment. Those assurances were weakened by allegations that important material was withheld, that reports were selectively presented, and that conclusions were reached without considering all relevant documents.

If the arbitrator was denied access to evidence capable of changing the outcome, then the process could not provide a reliable assessment of the claims. The issue is not merely whether the final decisions were favourable or unfavourable. It is whether the decisions were reached on a complete and accurate evidentiary foundation.

The arbitration may have appeared formal and orderly. The unresolved question is whether that appearance concealed a process in which the outcome was effectively shaped before the evidence had been fully tested.

🔒 Justice Withheld

Justice was first experienced as delay: postponed meetings, unanswered correspondence, and rulings that failed to address central issues. Delay alone does not prove misconduct, but repeated delay can become a form of denial when it prevents a claimant from obtaining meaningful review.

The more serious concern is that evidence said to support the claims was excluded, overlooked, or never made available to the decision-maker. Complaints were dismissed without, in the claimants’ view, adequate investigation.

By the conclusion of the arbitration, the issue was no longer simply whether justice had been slow. It was whether the process had been structured in a way that made justice unattainable.

🎯 Retaliation and Pressure

The alleged retaliation began with incidents that were difficult to interpret: hostile correspondence, dismissive treatment, and unexplained problems affecting services or communications. Each event could be viewed separately. Together, they created a sense of escalating pressure.

As complaints continued, the administrative and financial burden increased. Every effort to challenge the process required further time, expense, and emotional energy. The question is whether those burdens were accidental consequences of bureaucracy or whether some actions were intended to discourage continued scrutiny.

A pattern of retaliation should not be asserted lightly. It should be tested against dates, records, witnesses, and the sequence of events. If substantiated, it would show that the cost of seeking accountability extended beyond the original dispute.

🔑 Influence and Unequal Access

Influence does not always appear as a payment or an explicit exchange. It can operate through access, proximity, professional relationships, and the ability to secure attention that ordinary claimants cannot.

The concern in this case is whether corporate and institutional relationships affected the way information was received, considered, or withheld. Any alleged conflict of interest should be identified precisely and supported by records, not described only in general terms.

The central issue is equality before the process. If one side possessed privileged access to decision-makers, information, or institutional protection, then the arbitration was not a level contest of evidence.

🎭 Deception as Method

The alleged deception did not depend on one dramatic falsehood. It appeared, rather, through omissions, selective descriptions, technical explanations, and statements that consistently favoured one interpretation of events.

Reports and correspondence must be compared with the underlying records to determine whether material facts were altered, reframed, or withheld. Where information passed through an intermediary, the chain of communication becomes especially important.

If the documentary evidence confirms a repeated pattern of selective presentation, then deception was not an isolated mistake. It became a method of constructing the official account and keeping competing evidence outside the process.

 🔍 The Disputed Evidence

Evidence did not necessarily disappear in a single act. It became difficult to obtain through delays, incomplete disclosures, missing attachments, and files described as misplaced or unavailable.

The most serious allegations concern records that may have been altered, withheld, or removed from the arbitration trail. Those allegations require careful forensic examination, including comparison of versions, dates, metadata, transmission records, and archival copies.

The question is not simply where the evidence went. It is who controlled its movement, who benefited from its absence, and whether the decision-makers knew that the record before them was incomplete.

📎 Bureaucracy as Pressure

The process began with ordinary requests for forms, explanations, and supporting information. Over time, the demands appeared to multiply, sometimes becoming contradictory or difficult to satisfy within the available deadlines.

Administrative requirements are not inherently improper. They become oppressive when they are applied inconsistently, when complete responses are repeatedly rejected without explanation, or when procedural demands prevent the substance of a claim from being heard.

For the claimant, the paperwork became more than administration. It became a source of exhaustion and uncertainty, a form of institutional pressure that could weaken a person’s ability to continue pursuing accountability.

 🌍 Arbitration Across Borders

The dispute initially appeared to concern a rural business and a national telecommunications provider. Research into comparable equipment, network failures, and corporate responses in other countries suggested that some of the underlying problems may not have been confined to Australia.

International similarities do not, by themselves, establish a coordinated global conspiracy. They do, however, justify examining suppliers, technical histories, infrastructure decisions, and whether defective equipment had already been removed elsewhere while remaining in use locally.

The broader question is whether the arbitration treated a potentially systemic technical and corporate problem as an isolated customer complaint.

💾 Forensic Signs of Interference

The digital record contains anomalies that warrant examination: inconsistent timestamps, corrupted files, altered metadata, and records apparently modified after submission.

Such anomalies can have innocent explanations, including system migrations, routine editing, or archival practices. They can also indicate unauthorised access or alteration. Their significance depends on a properly preserved chain of custody and an independent technical analysis.

The forensic trail is therefore not a substitute for proof. It is a map of questions. Each alteration, mismatch, or unexplained access point may help establish whether the record was preserved faithfully, or changed after the fact.

🕳️ The Disappearance of Accountability

Accountability receded behind repeated assurances that matters were being reviewed or investigated. It then became harder to locate behind confidentiality provisions, procedural barriers, and legal protections.

The removal or weakening of claimant safeguards is particularly significant. If oversight provisions were deleted, diluted, or rendered ineffective, claimants may have been left without a meaningful way to challenge errors or misconduct.

Accountability was not necessarily lost through one decision. It may have been displaced step by step, until responsibility was divided among institutions and no person or body could be compelled to answer for the whole process.

🚪 Truth in Exile

Leaving Cape Bridgewater felt like leaving a battlefield, but distance did not end the dispute. It changed the conditions under which I could continue documenting it. The questions surrounding the arbitration remained unresolved, and speaking publicly still carried personal and institutional risks.

Ballarat became a place from which I could preserve records, compare documents, and reconstruct events with greater distance. It was not an escape from the truth; it became the location from which the evidence could be organised.

Exile is an uncomfortable word, but it describes the experience of being pushed away from the institutions one is challenging. The truth survived not because it was welcomed, but because it was preserved.

💔 The Human Cost of Policy

Policy decisions can appear administrative while producing deeply personal consequences. In this case, the prolonged dispute affected livelihood, business, health, family life, and personal security.

It would be irresponsible to claim that every consequence was deliberately intended by a particular policy. It is nevertheless necessary to examine whether officials understood the likely harm and failed to act despite that knowledge.

The COT Cases demonstrate why institutional decisions must be judged not only by their stated purpose, but also by their human consequences. A system that protects procedure while ignoring preventable harm cannot credibly claim to have delivered justice.

🛑 Investigations That Stalled

Several inquiries and reviews began with the promise of clarification. Yet progress appeared to slow when the investigation reached matters that could challenge the established account.

The reasons given for delay or termination must be tested against the chronology. Were investigators denied evidence? Were witnesses overlooked? Were priorities changed? Were decisions made independently, or did external pressure influence the outcome?

An investigation that repeatedly stops short of the central questions risks becoming a containment mechanism rather than a search for truth. That is why the unanswered cases require a genuinely independent review.

📜 A Legacy of Misleading Records

The consequences of disputed information do not end when a proceeding closes. Internal descriptions can enter official correspondence; official correspondence can become institutional memory; and later decision-makers may rely on records they assume are complete.

Over time, an incomplete account can become accepted history. Technical failures may be remembered as claimant error, unresolved complaints as settled matters, and missing evidence as evidence that never existed.

The answer is not simply to repeat a competing narrative. It is to preserve the underlying records, identify contradictions, and allow independent readers to compare the evidence with the official account. Memory may be shaped by institutions, but history must remain answerable to documents.

⚡ The First Signs of a Reckoning

The reckoning began not with one dramatic revelation, but with accumulated inconsistencies: contradictions in official statements, unexplained gaps in the records, and admissions buried in technical or administrative documents.

Each discrepancy created another question. Each released file made it more difficult to maintain a single, unquestioned version of events. The process of exposure was slow because the evidence had been dispersed across years, institutions, and archives.

A reckoning does not require that every allegation already be proven. It begins when the evidence becomes too substantial to ignore and when independent examination becomes more credible than continued silence.

📝 The Whistleblower’s Legacy

Persistence began as necessity. I continued because the records had not been properly examined and because silence threatened to convert an unresolved dispute into an accepted version of history.

Over time, preserving documents, recording contradictions, and presenting the evidence became a form of resistance to erasure. The objective was not to claim personal victory, but to ensure that the questions remained available for others to assess.

A whistleblower’s legacy is not measured only by immediate recognition or legal success. It is measured by whether the evidence survives, whether the public can examine it, and whether institutions are eventually required to answer.

🔔 When Silence Breaks

The first fracture appeared in the official narrative: a contradiction here, an unexplained admission there, a technical record that did not fit the accepted account.

As further evidence emerged, the pressure increased. Witnesses offered accounts that challenged earlier conclusions, and documents revealed questions that could no longer be dismissed as personal misunderstanding. The weight of the record began to shift the argument from whether there was a problem to why it had remained unresolved for so long.

The reckoning is not complete merely because the evidence has been published. It begins when the evidence is independently examined, responsibility is identified, and those affected by the unresolved cases are finally heard. Silence may endure for years, but it cannot remain permanent once the record is placed in public view.

 

The First Remedy Pursued: The Link That Unravels the Chain

In many true-crime investigations, one piece of evidence stands out, a crucial weakness in the official story. It is the thread that, once pulled, begins to unravel the chain of events surrounding the alleged misconduct.

For readers visiting absentjustice.com, that thread is in the Evidence Files. After opening only three or four links in Evidence File 1 or Evidence File 2, readers may begin to see that the records are not isolated documents. Each link leads to further correspondence, decisions, reports, and unanswered questions. In some cases, a single document is connected to more than six additional pieces of evidence.

Of all the links, “The first remedy pursued” is the most important place to begin.

It provides the starting point for examining my complaint about the arbitrator's conduct during my arbitration. It also raises serious questions about the role of the arbitrator’s wife and John Pinnock, who was appointed as Australia’s second Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

The documents appear to show that allegations were made about my conduct and then relied upon in a way that diverted attention from the substantive complaints I had raised. I dispute those allegations. The central question is whether they were properly investigated, supported by reliable evidence, and fairly presented to the authorities responsible for deciding whether further action was required.

If the documents establish that inaccurate or misleading information was provided to investigators, then the consequences were serious. Such information could have discouraged authorities from examining the arbitrator’s conduct and may have contributed to the failure of the complaints process. These matters should not be treated as proven conclusions without investigation, but the documentary record warrants close and independent examination.

The significance of this evidence is heightened by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's position. The TIO operates as an industry-funded telecommunications dispute-resolution body and has held a position of public trust. That position makes accountability especially important. Any allegation that the office, its officers, or persons connected with it mishandled complaints must be assessed transparently, regardless of the status or reputation of those involved.

The evidence concerning the TIO begins in November 1993 (See TIO Evidence File No 3-A)), when the first TIO crossed the crooked line → Chapter 1- Prior to Arbitration. From that point, the documents trace a continuing sequence of events before, during, and after the COT arbitrations. They raise questions about how complaints were handled, how evidence was treated, who was involved, and why no effective investigation followed.

This is why I recommend that readers begin with “The first remedy pursued”. It is not simply another document in the archive. It is the entry point to the wider chronology. Following its links allows readers to examine the underlying records and decide for themselves whether they reveal isolated administrative failures, or a broader pattern of concealment and institutional protection.

The alleged misconduct should not be dismissed merely because it occurred within an office recognised as a telecommunications industry regulator. Nor should the passage of time remove the need for accountability. The fact that these issues remain unresolved in 2026 is itself significant.

The evidence suggests that the original failure was not only the alleged misconduct itself, but also the refusal, or failure, to confront it. That failure has had lasting consequences for the people affected by the COT arbitrations. Lives were disrupted, businesses were lost, and families carried the personal and financial burden for decades.

The question now is whether the evidence will finally be examined on its merits.

Start with “The first remedy pursued”. Pull that thread, follow the linked documents, and judge the record for yourself.

 

Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2

I believe you are taking the most appropriate course of action

I have never received a written response from BCI, but the Canadian government ministers’ office wrote back on 7 July 1995, noting:

"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."   

The BCI Testing Evidence That Was Never Reassessed

 

Two weeks after my arbitration concluded, I notified the appropriate procedural advisors, including two Australian government agencies, about evidence related to testing conducted by Bell Canada International Inc. (BCI) at the Cape Bridgewater telephone exchange that services my holiday camp.

 

The documents revealed that Telstra’s arbitration consultants had communicated with BCI during and after my arbitration, questioning why the BCI testing process had not been conducted according to the specifications previously set by the government. This correspondence also raised concerns that the BCI test results might not have accurately reflected the ongoing telephone issues affecting my business.

 

Nonetheless, Telstra relied on these BCI results as part of its defence in the arbitration. The arbitrator permitted Telstra to use this material to argue that no ongoing telephone faults affected the holiday camp, despite the fact that the 15,509 test calls were routed to a Telstra exchange located 100 kilometres away.

 

It is ironic that two Telstra technicians, in two separate arbitration witness statements dated 8 and 12 December 1994, discuss the testing equipment used by Telstra in overall maintenance and state that the nearest telephone exchange to Portland and Cape Bridgewater that could facilitate the TEKELEC CCS7 equipment was in Warrnambool 110 kilometres from Portland/Cape Bridgewater, where BCI alleged they carried out their PORTLAND / Cape Bridgewater tests via the Ericsson AXE exchanges trunked through the TEKELEC CCS7 equipment.

 

The two sworn witness statements:

• Christopher James Doody, 12 December 1994 — Exhibit 12

• David John Stockdale, 8 December 1994 — Exhibit 11 and 12, AS‑002 BCI Telstra’s M.D.C Exhibits 1 to 46

The statements and documentation in Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2 clearly demonstrate that testing based on the CCS7 framework could not have been conducted via the Portland exchange. This crucial point directly contradicts the assertions made by Bell Canada International Inc. (BCI) about the validity and trustworthiness of the testing purportedly carried out at the Cape Bridgewater exchange, which services my holiday camp.

I promptly shared this information with the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, and the arbitration administrator, John Pinnock, shortly after the arbitration process concluded. I came into possession of this evidence two weeks after the arbitration, but still within the statute of limitations. This timing meant that, had they responded appropriately, I would have had a solid opportunity to challenge the arbitration outcome, grounded in the argument that Telstra had relied on information known to be inaccurate. I also informed other pertinent authorities and procedural advisers about these developments.

Despite the critical nature of this evidence, no decisive action was taken to re‑evaluate the arbitration proceedings or determine whether the new evidence warranted disclosure or could be considered part of an amendment to the arbitration record.

I subsequently wrote to the Canadian Government, warning that one of Canada’s prominent telecommunications corporations appeared to be connected to disputed testing evidence used in an Australian arbitration. I explained that the BCI material had contributed to the destruction of my case and had affected the outcome of the proceedings.

 

The letter presented above outlines the responses I received from the Canadian government, which demonstrated their concern about the situation and encouraged me to reach out to BCI. Unfortunately, I have yet to receive any replies from Hughes, Pinnock, or representatives of the Australian government. This silence raises an important question for readers to consider: Could the Australian government be intentionally avoiding the issue because it doesn't want the truth to come to light? Specifically, Telstra, a government-owned corporation, engaged in fraudulent activities during an arbitration process with government endorsement. This misconduct not only calls into question the integrity of the arbitration but also devastated the future of a small business operator in Australia.

 

🌏 The Central Question: Did My 1967 China Disclosure Influence the COT Arbitration?

The second remedy pursued

Behind the COT arbitration is a broader question that has remained unresolved for decades.

In 1967, while serving aboard the Hopepeak, I reported what I believed was the diversion of Australian humanitarian wheat shipments in China for purposes connected with the war in Vietnam. I raised my concerns with the Commonwealth Police and with Malcolm Fraser, who was then Minister for the Army.

I have never received a satisfactory explanation of how those reports were handled. I therefore ask whether my 1967 disclosure placed me on a government or institutional watch list, or whether it later influenced the way government officials and agencies dealt with me during my dispute with Telstra.

I do not present that connection as an established fact. At this stage, it is a question arising from the chronology and the documentary record.

Two possible explanations

The evidence may ultimately support one of two broad explanations.

The first possibility is that my earlier disclosure about the wheat shipments contributed to discriminatory or retaliatory treatment during the COT arbitration. Under this interpretation, officials or institutions may have treated me differently because I had previously challenged government conduct and raised politically sensitive information.

The second possibility is that the treatment I experienced during the arbitration was not unique to me. It may reflect the way government agencies treated citizens who challenged the performance of a government-owned telecommunications carrier, particularly where the dispute involved allegations of service failures, regulatory inaction, and financial loss.

Telstra was the government telecommunications carrier and operated under a public licence to provide telecommunications services. My dispute therefore raised more than a private commercial complaint. It raised questions about whether the government, its agencies, and its regulatory bodies were prepared to hold the carrier accountable when its services allegedly failed.

What happened during the arbitration

During the COT process, I allege that:

• relevant documents were withheld or not placed before the arbitrator;
• evidence concerning wider network failures was not properly examined;
• my fault reports were treated as unreliable despite material supporting them;
• the arbitration arrangements and consultant protections were not fully disclosed;
• concerns raised with government agencies were not adequately investigated; and
• I was portrayed as unreasonable or vexatious rather than treated as a citizen seeking accountability.

If these events resulted from my earlier political disclosures, they may indicate targeted discrimination or retaliation as the reason my issues are still not resolved 

The Unanswered Question of Surveillance and Humanitarian Principle

An independent investigation should have examined the authority under which officials involved in my arbitration were permitted to disregard fundamental principles of procedural fairness, natural justice, and humanitarian accountability.

I refer to Footnotes 83 and 169 in Tianxiao Zhu’s paper because they relate to the ethical standards associated with Canada and the moral choices made by Canadian citizens during the Vietnam War. The historical material is significant for two reasons.

First, when the Canadian Government became aware of what had occurred during my Australian Government-endorsed arbitration, it appeared willing to assist me at a time when Australian authorities had declined to take an effective position. That response contrasted sharply with Australian institutions' refusal to confront the issues raised by the evidence.

Second, the historical record includes the 1967 decision of Canadian seamen who reportedly refused to crew a vessel carrying wheat to China because they feared that the shipment might support forces involved in the Vietnam War. Their action reflected a willingness to accept personal and professional consequences rather than participate in conduct they believed conflicted with their moral responsibilities.

This history is relevant to my own experience because, in 1993 and again in 1994, I spoke with former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser about my experiences in China in 1967. Telephone records relating to those conversations later appeared in Telstra files released during my 1994–95 arbitration. However, the sections recording the substance of my discussions with Mr Fraser were redacted.

That fact has never been adequately explained.

Why were conversations with a former Prime Minister recorded in Telstra’s files? Who authorised that recording or retention? Why was the discussion concerning my experiences in China considered sensitive enough to be withheld? And how did material relating to events in 1967 become relevant to an arbitration concerning telecommunications services more than two decades later?

At the time, some people treated my account of what had occurred in China as fabricated. It was suggested that my fellow seaman and I had invented or exaggerated our experiences. Yet the material identified in Zhu’s paper, including the sources cited in Footnotes 83 and 169, provides historical context that appears consistent with the broader account we had given.

That material did not, by itself, resolve every factual question. It did, however, demonstrate why our claims should not have been dismissed without proper examination. It also raised a further concern: whether information about my past activities and political or humanitarian views was collected, recorded, or used in a manner unrelated to the proper conduct of the arbitration.

The central questions remain unanswered:

• Who authorised the recording or retention of these conversations?
• Why were the relevant passages withheld or redacted?
• Why was information about my experiences in China placed in Telstra’s arbitration files?
• Was the material used to assess my credibility or character?
• Were Australian officials, the arbitrator, or other participants aware of it?
• Why was the issue never independently investigated?

This evidence is important not because it proves every allegation on its own. Its importance is that it establishes a documentary trail requiring explanation. The records, the redactions, the historical references, and the responses, or lack of responses, from the institutions involved should be examined together.

An independent inquiry should determine whether the material was collected lawfully, whether it was relevant to the arbitration, whether it was used to prejudice my credibility, and whether officials breached their obligations of fairness and accountability.

Evidence File 10

Evidence File 10: Alleged Intimidation and Withheld Documents

As described elsewhere on this website, the events surrounding my arbitration on 26 September 1994 require close examination. During that period, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) put 93 questions to me, and my detailed responses were recorded in Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1. These transcripts provide an important account of my concerns about the alleged interception of telephone conversations and faxes, the alleged unauthorised access to arbitration-related documents, and the threats I say were made after I assisted the AFP.

On page 12 of the transcripts, I identify Telstra's arbitration liaison officer, Paul Rumble, whom I understood to be acting for Telstra in connection with the arbitration. I allege that he intimidated me because I continued cooperating with the AFP. After three decades, he has not, to my knowledge, publicly explained the circumstances surrounding those alleged statements or why they were made during a process that was supposed to operate according to principles of fairness and legality.

The documentary record raises an important question: was Telstra's arbitration consultant, Mr Rumble, acting on his own initiative, or was he communicating a position authorised by others within Telstra? That question cannot be resolved by assertion alone. It requires examining contemporaneous correspondence, witness accounts, arbitration records, and AFP material.

Evidence File 10 allows readers to examine the relevant documents and assess the chronology for themselves. It concerns a dispute that has continued for decades and includes allegations of intimidation, document withholding, unlawful interception, and procedural unfairness. These are serious allegations. They should be assessed against the evidence rather than accepted solely on the basis of any individual’s interpretation.

My account is that Telstra warned me that if I continued assisting the AFP, access to important discovery and Freedom of Information material would be restricted or withheld. I understood that warning as an attempt to discourage my cooperation with the investigation. I nevertheless continued to assist the AFP. I then experienced what I regarded as a reduction in access to documents essential to presenting my case.

If the documents establish that evidence was withheld in retaliation for my cooperation with law enforcement, that would raise serious questions about intimidation, procedural fairness, and the integrity of the arbitration. If the evidence does not establish that connection, the records should make that clear.

The AFP's role also requires examination. Why was no effective intervention apparent when I reported that I was being threatened for assisting its investigation? What steps, if any, were taken to protect relevant evidence and ensure that I could participate in the arbitration without intimidation?

The arbitrator’s role raises a separate question. If the arbitrator was informed that documents were being withheld or that threats had been made, was the issue investigated? Were orders made to preserve and disclose the material? Was the effect on my ability to present my claims considered in the final award?

One of my claims was not determined in the final award. My position is that this was not because the claim lacked supporting evidence, but because material evidence had been prevented from being considered. That is a matter that should be tested by comparing:

• the documents requested and identified as relevant;
• the material actually disclosed;
• the dates on which documents were withheld or released;
• the complaints made to the AFP and the arbitrator;
• the responses received; and
• the reasons given for the final award.

At 82, I remain troubled that these questions have never been resolved through a transparent, independent review. My purpose in presenting Evidence File 10 is not to ask readers to accept every conclusion I draw. It is to place the underlying material before them and ask whether the arbitration provided a fair opportunity to present the complete case.

The central issue is straightforward:

If a party to an arbitration threatened to restrict access to essential documents because the opposing party was assisting a police investigation, what steps were taken to protect the investigation, preserve the evidence, and ensure procedural fairness?

That question remains unanswered in the record as I understand it.

 

Tampering with Evidence

The Google‑hosted documents you will find there expose the sinister machinations of the arbitrator and his consultants during the Australian Government‑endorsed arbitrations. What you will see is not speculation. It is documented corruption, cold, deliberate, and executed with bureaucratic precision. These individuals acted as puppets, shamelessly manipulated by Telstra to perpetrate heinous acts against the COT Cases.

After the local Telstra technician 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 smothered the grease over the front of the telephone after it left my business, and who poured the sticky beer residue into the same now dirty telephone, insinuating I was a hopeless drunk?

We dared to challenge a telecommunications system that should have served every Australian citizen, not just the privileged few shielded by corrupt elites and corporations capable of bending bureaucrats, who in turn bent politicians. What happened to us was not an accident. It was engineered treachery.

We lived with this for so long that it settled into us like rot in old timber. The alleged lies, concealment, threats, and institutional failures became the background noise of our lives — a constant pressure beneath every decision, every phone call, every attempt to rebuild what had been taken.

Thirty years is not a delay. It is a life sentence.

Long enough for children to become adults. Long enough for marriages to fracture. Long enough for businesses to die. Long enough for bodies to weaken and witnesses to vanish before justice could reach them.

Long enough for institutions to deny responsibility, for records to disappear, for officials to retire with honours, and for the people who suffered to be dismissed as troublesome remnants of an old dispute.

Telstra was fully aware that the persistent telephone faults were wreaking havoc on our business operations. Despite this knowledge, they collaborated with government bureaucrats to systematically hide this crucial evidence from the arbitration process designed to address our grievances. This deliberate concealment not only undermined our complaints but also jeopardised the very foundation of our business.

 

 

A further Telstra document, in this elusive briefcase dated 2 July 1992, concerning the Portland AXE telephone exchange states:

“Our local technicians believe that Mr Smith is correct in raising complaints about incoming callers to his number receiving a Recorded Voice Announcement saying that the number is disconnected.

“They believe that it is a problem that is occurring in increasing numbers as more and more customers are connected to AXE.” (See False Witness Statement File No 3-A)

This other Telstra document confirms that Telstra already knew my phone complaints were valid. This can best be viewed by reading 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.”

Why would AUSTEL, the government communications authority (now called ACMA), withhold AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, points 2 to 212, the most conclusive evidence available to it, irrefutable proof dated 3 March 1994 from the arbitrator that my claims had already been validated six weeks before I was forced to abandon my Fast Track Settlement Proposal on 21 April 1994, and force me to sign Telstra’s highly legalistic arbitration process?

We speak as we because this was never one claimant’s nightmare. Across Australia, small‑business owners, farmers, operators, and workers encountered what we believe was the same pattern: failing telecommunications services, unanswered complaints, withheld documents, shifting explanations, and an arbitration process that appeared designed to prevent justice rather than deliver it.

We entered that process believing in the decency of public institutions. We believed arbitration meant independence. We believed government oversight meant accountability. We believed evidence would be examined without fear or favour.

We were wrong.

For the Record

Tampering with Evidence

The Casualties of Telstra (COT) story is told here because it must be. It is a matter of public interest, a record of lawbreakers who hid critical evidence behind an Arbitration Confidentiality Agreement that the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, allowed to be tampered with. Clauses 25 and 26 were not lost. They were deliberately excised, stripping accountability from the arbitration consultants and granting them immunity for negligent acts, whether wilful or “accidental.” This was not an oversight. It was a calculated betrayal engineered in silence to protect the powerful and sacrifice the vulnerable.

Had the government known these clauses were removed, it may never have endorsed the agreement. Instead, the truth was suffocated beneath bureaucratic deceit, allowing corruption to flourish unchecked while the COT Cases were left defenceless inside an arbitration system designed to fail them. Telstra’s monopoly allowed the network to decay, and instead of repairing our services through government‑endorsed arbitrations, for which we paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in the guise that our telephone problems would be fixed. They were not fixed. Crimes were committed against us. Our integrity was attacked. Our livelihoods were destroyed. Our mental health shattered. And those responsible still sit in positions of power, fortified by the same machinery that continues to bury our story and conceal the truth.

The Casualties of Telstra (COT) story is not merely a narrative; it is a forensic record of criminal wrongdoing. It documents the lawbreakers who hid critical evidence behind an Arbitration Confidentiality Agreement that the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, allowed to be tampered with. Clauses 25 and 26 were not lost, they were surgically excised, deliberately stripping accountability from the arbitration consultants and granting them immunity for negligent acts, whether wilful or “accidental.” This was not an oversight. It was a calculated act of corruption, executed in silence, crafted to protect powerful interests while sacrificing ordinary Australians.

Had the government been told these clauses were removed, it may never have endorsed the agreement. Instead, the truth was suffocated beneath layers of bureaucratic deceit, allowing fraud and misconduct to flourish unchecked while the COT Cases were left defenceless inside an arbitration system engineered to fail them. Telstra allowed the faults to fester for years after our arbitrations concluded. Crimes were committed against us. Our integrity was attacked. Our livelihoods were destroyed. Our mental health was shattered. And those responsible still sit in positions of power, fortified by the same machinery that continues to bury our story and conceal the truth.

 

The eighth remedy pursued

In 2005, Senator Barnaby Joyce, a pivotal figure in the Senate, agreed to vote for the contentious sale of the last third of Telstra, a decision with wider implications. Once the government secured his pivotal vote, however, it shamelessly reneged on its promise to appoint an independent assessor to review the 14 unresolved COT arbitration issues. With the assurance of Joyce's support, the government quietly severed its official commitment, leaving the COT Cases in a state of unresolved uncertainty, a betrayal of trust that highlighted the darker side of political manoeuvring.

These politicians, who engage in nefarious, corrupt practices, have woven themselves into the very fabric of Australia’s legal system and operate with the cunning of back-room fixers running a sophisticated protection racket. The terms “shameful,” “hideous,” and “treacherous” only scratch the surface of their audacity. They are the very same graft-soaked operatives, masters of bribery, and allies of fraud that one might typically associate with the most questionable corners of U.S. politics, now executing their insidious strategies with chilling precision in Australia.

The discrimination embedded in this system was structural, calculated, and merciless. Powerful corporate interests were shielded from scrutiny, while small business operators were forced into a brutal legal gauntlet designed to exhaust them financially and psychologically. The betrayal became unmistakable when Telstra handed Rupert Murdoch and FOX a staggering $400 million bailout, public money funnelled into a global media empire, while ordinary Australians were dragged through arbitration and court proceedings just to secure basic telephone services. It was a grotesque contrast: privilege rewarded, citizens punished.

The injustice deepened when Lane Telecommunications, the technical consultant supposedly safeguarding the integrity of the entire arbitration, was brazenly purchased by Ericsson, the very corporation Lane and arbitrator Dr Gordon Hughes were meant to investigate. Ericsson didn’t just acquire a company; it acquired the technical knowledge that should have protected the COT claimants. The arbitration became a rigged contest where the defendant’s supplier became the investigator. Fair play didn’t just vanish; it was assassinated.

This was not misfortune. It was discrimination weaponised through policy and sanctioned by government oversight. Small business owners like me were forced into a legal labyrinth where challenging a government‑owned Telstra was beyond the norm; it was a near‑impossible battle against a system designed to crush dissent. Judges and arbitrators dismissed our ongoing phone faults as “historic complaints,” even as those faults continued to destroy our livelihoods. We were not heard. We were not protected. We were sacrificed.

And then came the final insult. Telstra’s board, fully aware of the devastation inflicted on small businesses, signed a $400 million default agreement for Murdoch and FOX, knowing full well they could not meet the service obligations. They rewarded power while condemning the powerless. It was not merely unjust. It was treacherous. It was discrimination carved into policy, executed with bureaucratic precision, and hidden behind the veneer of corporate necessity.

Who originally hijacked my arbitration-related BCI and SVT reports during my 1994/95 arbitration, and just as important, who hijacked them again 14 years later in December 2008 as they left the Portland Post Office en route to the Federal Court?

Chapter 5 Immoral - Hypocritical Conduct

The letter attached to the image above to the Federal Magistrates Court dated 3 December 2008 exposes a disturbing pattern, not an isolated failure, but a recurring, engineered sabotage. Darren and Jenny Lewis, who purchased my business in December 2001, found themselves trapped in the same nightmare I had endured years earlier. After decades of Telstra and the TIO refusing to test my telephone lines, despite faults first reported in February 1988, the new owners discovered that the corruption did not end with my arbitration. It simply shifted targets.

My 1994–95 arbitration was supposed to deliver resolution, yet the most critical documents, the BCI and SVT test results for the Cape Bridgewater exchange, vanished without explanation. Those results were the forensic proof of systemic faults. They disappeared once during my arbitration, and then again fourteen years later when the new owners attempted to submit the same documents to the Federal Magistrates Court. Two disappearances. Two legal battles. Fourteen years apart. The same two reports. The same vanishing act. That is not a coincidence. That is orchestration, corruption repeating itself like a signature.

What kind of system loses the same evidence twice? What kind of institution allows identical documents to disappear in two separate legal proceedings, separated by more than a decade? The answer is as brutal as it is obvious: a system where tampering is not an accident but a method. A system where truth is not misplaced but removed. A system where small business owners are not protected but sacrificed.

My letter to the Hon. David Hawker MP (File 274 - AS-CAV Exhibit 282 to 323) makes the situation even more grotesque. Even the staff at the Portland Australia Post office admitted that the security of certain mail leaving their facility could not be guaranteed. That means the very mechanism we relied on to deliver evidence, the postal system, was compromised. So what chance did I ever have in 1994 and 1995, mailing arbitration documents to an arbitrator who never received them? And what chance did the new owners have in 2008, sending Telstra‑related evidence to the Federal Magistrates Court when the same risk of disappearance hung over their submissions?

This is not incompetence. It is discrimination, systemic, structural, and devastating. It is betrayal, repeated, deliberate, and sanctioned by silence. It is justice, denied twice, fourteen years apart, by the same machinery that was supposed to protect us.

I recount this not out of resentment toward Murdoch’s influence over the government and Telstra, in which he has considerable finacial interest, but because eleven years after that bailout, I was forced to sell my business, not by market forces, but by Telstra’s refusal, the TIO’s refusal, and the government’s refusal to fix my phone faults. The new owners inherited the same relentless failures, and within seven years the courts declared them bankrupt. That is the cost of discrimination. That is the cost of betrayal. And that is the legacy of a system that protects the powerful while destroying the ordinary Australian trying to survive.

 

The Weight of Treachery

Leading up to the signing of the COT Cases arbitration, on 21 April 1994, AUSTEL wrote to Telstra 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)

I desperately needed the material locked behind those investigations. I was searching for the truth in a system that seemed designed to obscure it. The government had promised transparency, yet every door I pushed against felt reinforced.

Dr Hughes appeared not to understand the urgency of my situation, particularly after Warwick Smith informed him that Telstra had not only admitted to wrongdoing but had also handed over nine audio tapes, tapes that proved Telstra had secretly recorded the telephone conversations of the first four COT Cases, of which I was one of the four.

Those tapes were not trivial. They were evidence of intrusion, surveillance, and a breach of privacy so severe it should have halted the entire arbitration process. They could have clarified who was recorded, how often, and why. They could have exposed the scale of Telstra’s misconduct. The four original COT cases were critical.

Was the distribution of the AFP documents, which I specifically cautioned Dr Hughes not to share with Telstra, a deliberate component of a larger cover-up? This situation raises important questions about Dr Hughes’s silence regarding my allegations of phone and fax interception. Despite clear records from AUSTEL and the TIO indicating that he was obligated under the arbitration agreement to address my claims and reach a conclusion, he chose not to comment. This apparent inaction adds to the suspicion surrounding the entire affair.

Part of the information the AFP was working on concerned the vanishing faxes described in the narrative below, and it appeared that my local Telstra technician, Gordon Stokes, was the go‑between with this person called “Micky.” Hughes’ conduct in supplying this type of information to Telstra’s Paul Rumble on 15 June 1994 was beyond contempt and ensured these issues were never investigated.

These threats were tied to a group of undesirables operating inside and around Telstra — people who behaved exactly like this “Micky” character who, after hacking into customer accounts, fed major organisations stolen credit details. That opened the door for those customers to receive fabricated renewal notices for services they had never purchased. It was a coercive loop: intimidate the customer, confuse them, then pressure them into paying for something they never agreed to. In my case, this same Micky supplied the names and phone numbers of my female single‑club patrons to online telephone crawlers which, as the AFP transcripts show, harvested their private information even when my clients called from interstate. The arbitrator's failure to investigate this, or even acknowledge it in his findings, proves one thing with absolute clarity: the arbitrator was not independent.

 

 

Fax Screening / Hacking — A System Built on Interception and Deceit

The interception of my 12 May 1995 letter by a secondary fax machine was not an accident — it was a deliberate act carried out by someone with access to Telstra’s network and, by extension, the TIO’s service lines. During the critical appeal period of my arbitration, this person knew I was being judged under an arbitration agreement the arbitrator himself had declared “not credible.” The evidence is carved into the fax imprint itself: three separate identification lines across the top of page two.

• The bottom line shows the document was first faxed from the arbitrator’s office on 12‑5‑95 at 14:41 to the TIO’s Melbourne office — 61 3 277 8797.

• The middle line shows it was faxed again at 15:40, from the TIO’s fax number, marked “TIO LTD.”

• The top line, however, shows a second sending at 14:50, nine minutes after the arbitrator’s fax arrived — a transmission that should not exist.

This nine‑minute gap is the smoking gun. The document was intercepted, screened, and re‑sent before the TIO forwarded it to its intended destination. Someone inside the system was watching.

The fax imprint matches the corrupted header described in the Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), which concluded:

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

“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 fax imprint on my 12 May 1995 letter (Open Letter File No 55-A) is identical to the corrupted imprint described in the January 1999 Scandrett & Associates report provided to Senator Ron Boswell (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13). One of the technical consultants who validated that report emailed me on 17 December 2014, confirming:

“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… by identifying the dual time stamps.” (Front Page Part One File No/14)

This was not a glitch. It was interception.

Telstra’s Own Admissions — Surveillance Inside the Portland Exchange

Exhibits 646 and 647 (see AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647) show 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, but only when a particular officer was on duty.

Does Telstra expect the AFP to believe that every time this officer left the Portland exchange, the alarm bell broadcasting my calls across the building was magically switched off? Why install surveillance equipment that only operated when one specific person was present?

When I requested the surveillance data under FOI during arbitration, Telstra withheld it. When I asked again, Telstra’s arbitration officer, Paul Rumble, threatened me: stop giving FOI documents to the AFP, or Telstra would refuse to provide evidence to the arbitrator. I refused to be blackmailed.

George Close — My Arbitration Technical Advisors — Another Fax Hacking Victim

Exhibit AS 492‑A (AS-CAV 488-A to 494-E) is a letter faxed by George Close on 26 August 1998. The header reads: Fax from: — 61 74 453198 — 17:54. This was his residential fax number, but the business identification is missing.

Our Main Evidence File (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13) contains the technical findings of Scandrett & Associates and Peter Hancock, both confirming that when a fax header reads “Fax from:” followed by the sender’s number without the correct business identification, the fax has been intercepted by a secondary machine and then redirected.

This intercepted fax was copied to twelve Government Ministers in Parliament House. If politicians constantly complain about leaks from party rooms, perhaps they should ask whether their own offices are routed through Telstra’s Fax Streaming centre. If so, what happens to confidential documents passing through that system without their knowledge?

Exhibit AS 492‑B (AS-CAV 488-A to 494-E), a report faxed by Mr Close on 16 April 1998, shows the correct header: 61‑74‑453198 — GEORGE CLOSE & ASSOC — 17:34. This proves Telstra used keyword‑based interception, targeting only specific faxes leaving his residence.

George Close never recovered after learning that Telstra had used his home and office to undermine his clients.

How many arbitrations, legal cases, and government processes have been compromised by this interception system? How many documents were screened, copied, and analysed by the opposing side before reaching their intended destination?

The advantage gained by knowing the other side’s weaknesses is immeasurable. And it happened here, in Australia.

 

Criminal Intent

Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1.

Chapter 4 The New Owners Tell Their Story

 

On 28 January 2003, a letter from Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) officer Gillian McKenzie to Telstra concerning the ongoing telephone problems the new owners of my business, Darren and Jenny Lewis, who are both mentioned above in the attached image without being named, experienced ongoing telephone problems from  almost the first day after purchasing my holiday camp in December 2001, states:

“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 Home-Page File No/76 and D-Lewis File 1-I)

Was there a more sinister motive behind the Telstra technician's refusal to assist Darren Lewis with the ongoing phone and fax problems? Nine years prior, both Telstra and the arbitrator assigned to my case failed to conduct a transparent investigation into these issues. Why was this Telstra technician still holding a grudge against me in 2002/2003 for something that should have been addressed during my arbitration in 1994/1995? Specifically, I am referring to the persistent phone and facsimile problems that this same Telstra technician was now refusing to resolve for Mr Lewis nearly a decade later.

This technician is the same 'Tony Watson' mentioned in Telstra's B004 arbitration defence report (see Front Page Part One File No/1). He stated that my faxes did not reach the arbitrator's office on May 23, 1994, because the arbitrator's fax lines were busy when I attempted to send them. According to him, there were no faults on the lines. However, this statement contradicts Telstra's billing records, which show the lines were not busy because Telstra charged me for all six faxes (see Front Page Part One File No/1). 

Many within the Establishment acknowledged, quietly but unmistakably, that forcing the COT Cases into arbitration with Telstra while the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were actively investigating Telstra for alleged phone and fax interception was not only improper, but arguably unconstitutional. It was also recognised as unworkable and fundamentally conflicted.

Some of the 1994/95 lost arbitration-related documents, when sent by fax, email or Australia Post, never arrived at their intended destination, yet the arbitrations proceeded anyway. And that decision raises a series of disturbing questions:

1. How could two separate investigations into Telstra’s alleged unlawful conduct be allowed to run in parallel, one by an arbitrator, the other by the AFP? In any functioning Western democracy, such a dual-track process, civil arbitration running alongside a criminal investigation into the same conduct, is virtually unheard of. It defies procedural fairness and undermines the integrity of both processes.

2. How were small-business owners expected to keep their businesses alive, prepare complex submissions for arbitration, and simultaneously assist the AFP with a criminal investigation? The burden was impossible by design. It placed ordinary Australians in a position no corporate defendant would ever tolerate.

3. Who authorised this arrangement, and why was it allowed to continue once its impossibility and unfairness were obvious? Someone decided that the process would proceed regardless of legality, practicality, or justice.

What happened to the COT Cases was grossly undemocratic. These small-business operators entered arbitration believing that, because the government had endorsed the process, they would be protected by the shield of the Crown.

They were not. As documented on absentjustice.com, they were left exposed, caught between a government-backed arbitration process and a criminal investigation, with neither offering the protection or fairness that citizens in a democracy should be able to rely on.

INTRODUCTION: A RECKONING LONG OVERDUE

Welcome to absentjustice.com — the archive they never wanted you to see.

If you’ve found your way here, you’re not just browsing a website. You’re stepping into a crime scene. Not a crime of blood or bullets, but a crime against truth, carried out in boardrooms, arbitration chambers, government offices, and the silent corridors where decisions are made without witnesses.

For decades, the official story has been that the COT arbitrations were a fair process, a mechanism for justice, a way for ordinary Australians to resolve disputes with Telstra. That story is a lie. What happened to us wasn’t a failure of procedure. It was a coordinated operation, a containment strategy designed to bury evidence, silence claimants, and protect powerful interests.

This site exists because the truth didn’t simply disappear. It was murdered. And I refused to let the body stay buried.

What you will read here is not speculation. It’s not theory. It’s not rumour. It’s the documented record, corrupted faxes, intercepted calls, missing files, doctored logs, government silence, legal manipulation, and the psychological warfare used to break people who dared to speak.

I lived this. I documented it. And now I’m giving it to you.

Below is your guide, a walk‑through of the twenty‑three chapters that form the spine of a book soon to be released on absentjustice.com as a sequal to "The Arbitraitor". It will be free to all readers. Think of it as the map to the machinery. Each chapter exposes a different layer of corruption, surveillance, cover‑ups, and the human wreckage left behind.

This isn’t just my story; it’s an Australian story that only an 82-year-old man can tell. When I received a telephone call in May 1994, informing me that I was "dead" and warning me to keep quiet about what my released FOI documents revealed, I immediately contacted Superintendent Jeff Penrose of the Australian Federal Police. I explained to him what had been happening since his visit to my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp in February 1994. I even told the caller that I was already dead.

Within a day, possibly the second day after that phone call, I received one of many gutless, silent, threatening calls that we, the COT Cases, had been receiving since the AFP began investigating our case. I promptly informed Jeff Penrose about this new development.

After Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose took my call and listened to what I had uncovered about the evidence tampering, he showed genuine concern. I took his advice seriously. I signed the declaration and promptly hand-delivered it to the Arbitrator’s office → Exhibit 76 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91). I also provided a copy to Sue Harlow, who served as the Deputy Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and acted as the Administrator of my arbitration. All relevant parties needed to receive this crucial evidence, particularly because it corroborated issues raised in two mini-reports indicating that one of my major complaints against Telstra was systemic billing problems, and noted in this particular report that Australia had been dealing with such problems since the inception of my arbitration proceedings.

Documents related to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) that I received a staggering seven years after the conclusion of my arbitration demonstrated that Sue Harlow recognised receipt of this fax header material → Exhibit 77 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91). This acknowledgement was crucial, as it alerted Warwick Smith (the TIO and the principal administrator of my arbitration) that important arbitration materials had been duly submitted to the appropriate offices. I had previously submitted records of phone interceptions from 1992 to 1993 to the Arbitrator’s office after the memos had been forwarded to the AFP.

On the same day I hand-delivered the 56 header pages and the corresponding reports to the Arbitrator's office, I also presented the same materials to Sue Harlow. The Golden Courier Services of North Melbourne was tasked with photocopying these relevant files three times and delivering them via one of their drivers.

If the Arbitrator continues to deny that the 56 tampered Telstra‑related reports were ever delivered to his office in 1994, and it is now 2026, I urge the reader to consider one simple question: why would I undertake a gruelling 12‑hour round trip to Melbourne to hand this critical evidence to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) at the direction of Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose, yet not provide a second copy directly to the Arbitrator, the very person responsible for evaluating my claims?

The answer is obvious to anyone willing to look: I did deliver the evidence. It was received. It was ignored. And the ongoing denial, three decades later, speaks for itself.

So, where are the 56 fax header reports that Golden Courier Services helped me compile for submission? Why is the receipt of this information not mentioned in the schedule of arbitration documents that Dr Hughes received? Why were these 56 reports not provided back to me after the conclusion of my arbitration? Why aren’t any of the topics I highlighted, with assistance from Golden Courier Services, acknowledged?

Why didn’t the arbitrator seek out where my files had vanished to? This meant the 56 reports that formed a major part of my submitted claim were never valued. How could this be dismissed as a mistake when the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, could have approached the Victorian Supreme Court and stated that he had lost control of my arbitration due to Telstra’s conduct? He had that authority. He did not use it. He did not act. He did not give me justice in this instance

Don't forget to hover your mouse over the following images as you scroll down this homepage.

 

 

On 27 April 1994, Telstra collected my so-called faulty EXICOM TF200 telephone. Documents I later acquired under FOI show that Telstra knew this telephone fault often occurred in moisture-prone areas like Cape Bridgewater. They also knew that the local exchange suffered from heat problems. When I received my copy of Telstra’s 12 December 1994 defence of my government-endorsed arbitration process, I found it included a 29-page report titled TF200. This document reported that Telstra’s laboratory testing showed that the lock-up problem with my service lines was due to my actual TF200 phone.

Six years after my arbitration, which was supposed to resolve this issue, I discovered the lock-up problem had not been fixed, despite Telstra's claim that it had investigated it on 27 April 1994. At this time, they disconnected the EXICOM TF200 phone from the fax machine. They replaced it with another EXICOM TF200, which remained connected to the fax machine until August 2001, when Telstra and I tested the 55 267230 lines again and proved it was still locking up.

After the local Telstra technician 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 smothered the grease over the front of the telephone after it left my business, and who poured the sticky beer residue into the same now dirty telephone, insinuating I was a hopeless drunk?

As I struggled against the tide of this moral decay, I was acutely aware of the broader global context, which only deepens the tragedy. A handful of nations appear willing to take on the insidious machinery of transnational bribery and corporate manipulation, which infects democracies far and wide. The United States and Germany, for all their imperfections, stand as flickering beacons in this darkness, not because they are free from fault, but because they display a conspicuous bravery in dragging corruption into the harsh glare of daylight.

Their relentless investigations and unyielding regulatory measures lay bare the cross-border criminal networks, revealing a commitment to challenge the rot that many governments prefer to sweep under the rug. While they act to confront these evils, others shrink back, retreating into secrecy. They seek truth while others silently collude, and while they push forward against the tide of corruption, Australia’s institutions pull down the shutters, ensnaring themselves in a claustrophobic silence that suffocates justice.

Three months after my arbitration concluded, the arbitrator’s office released several documents containing inaccurate information that only the AFP and I knew. The question was immediate and chilling: who provided these incorrect details to the arbitrator? Their presence proved something far darker: that Hughes had not been the principal arbitrator at all. This information was also concealed from the Supreme Court of Victoria when COT Case member Ann Garms took Hughes through the Supreme Court of Appeal, losing more than $600,000 in the process.

As confirmed in the chapters below, a third party assessed all relevant documents. If that party believed Hughes and the claimants should see a document, it was passed on. If that party decided to conceal it, the information never entered the arbitration process and never saw the light of day. Evidence was filtered, controlled, and selectively withheld, not by accident, but by design.

Keep reading, and feel the walls close in as you descend into the terrible truth of our arbitration story, a truth that tightens around you with every paragraph, revealing a world where justice was quietly dismantled, where corruption moved like a shadow behind every official seal, and where the deeper you go, the more you realise the system was never designed to protect you at all. What follows is not just an account of betrayal; it is the slow, claustrophobic unveiling of a machinery built to crush those who dared to expose it.

 

 

On 16 July 1997, John Pinnock, the official administrator of the arbitrations, wrote to William Hunt and to the lawyer for Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson) after Dr Hughes had, by this date, already concluded at least five arbitrations. Pinnock’s letter was not a routine administrative update; it was a forensic admission that the system was collapsing under its own deceit. He stated:

“Lane is presently involved in arbitrations between Telstra and Bova, Dawson, Plowman and Schorer. The change of ownership of Lane is of concern in relation to Lane’s ongoing role in these arbitrations.

The first area of concern is that some of the equipment under examination in the arbitrations is provided by Ericsson.…

The second area of concern is that Ericsson has a pecuniary interest in Telstra. Ericsson makes a large percentage of its equipment sales to Telstra which is one of its major clients.

It is my view that Ericsson’s ownership of Lane puts Lane in a position of potential conflict of interest should it continue to act as Technical Advisor to the Resource Unit.…

The effect of a potential conflict of interest is that Lane should cease to act as the Technical Advisor with effect from a date shall be determined.” (See File 296‑A — )

Three of those arbitrations, including mine, Ann Garms’, and Maureen Gillan’s, had already reported to the Senate and to other government dignitaries that none of our Ericsson AXE telephone‑fault data submitted to arbitration had been correctly assessed. We had all raised the same alarm: our Ericsson AXE telephone exchange evidence had not been assessed on its merits; no written finding concerning Ericsson was ever found. Our Ericsson data provided to Lane for assessment just vanished.

That revelation should have detonated the entire arbitration structure. It should have triggered immediate investigations into our Ericsson and Lane complaints. It should have forced the government to confront the fact that the technical consultant appointed to assess our claims had been quietly absorbed by the very corporation whose equipment was under investigation.

But nothing happened. No inquiry. No audit. No accountability. No justice.

On 18 April 1995, Dr Hughes, the arbitrator, and Warwick Smith, John Pinnock’s predecessor, received a crucial warning from Arbitration Project Manager John Rundell noting:  

“It is unfortunate that there have been forces at work collectively beyond our reasonable control that have delayed us in undertaking our work.

“Any technical report prepared in draft by Lanes will be signed off and appear on the letter of DMR Inc.” (see Prologue Evidence File No 22-A)

This warning was not merely procedural; it revealed that any conclusions Lane drew would be presented on the letterhead of DMR Group Canada Inc., misleading all parties into believing DMR was the main technical consultant. This deception aimed to lend false credibility to Lane’s compromised findings, transforming the arbitration from a genuine adjudicative process into a controlled environment where evidence was obscured, identities were swapped, and truth was buried.

Hughes and Smith understood the implications of Rundell's warning; they knew Lane's findings would be tainted by Ericsson's impending acquisition and that the arbitration's integrity was irreparably damaged. Instead of halting the proceedings, they let the deception continue, allowing Ericsson to influence the arbitration's technical aspects and hiding the truth behind a veneer of respectability. This failure was not passive; it was a deliberate choice to let corruption infect the COT arbitrations.

Ultimately, what followed was not true arbitration but a theatrical performance of justice, exposing an Australian arbitration regime devoid of democratic principles and the rule of law. The pursuit of justice became an illusion, orchestrated by individuals fully aware of their actions yet choosing to proceed anyway.

 

 

Brutal Narrative (with CEPU photo evidence included)

The situation was even worse than the cover-up surrounding Telstra’s failing infrastructure. During my arbitration, nine different Telstra technicians, all members of the CEPU union, testified under oath that there had never been poor network service at Cape Bridgewater, nor any issues affecting the infrastructure supplying that area. They delivered these statements with such conviction, as if the truth itself had been prohibited. However, their own union later demonstrated that those statements were false, not simply mistaken, but outright falsehoods. Furthermore, three Google-indexed links documenting these failures include photographs taken by CEPU members themselves, clearly showing the very faults they had denied existed.

The CEPU’s internal findings exposed the deception: the technicians had lied to the arbitrator while their own photographic evidence showed the network was failing. These weren’t abstract engineering notes or second‑hand reports; they were images taken by the same men who stood before the arbitrator and swore the faults did not exist. Their union’s investigation confirmed the truth Telstra tried to bury: the network was defective, the faults were real, and the sworn testimony was manufactured to protect Telstra’s position.

This wasn’t an administrative oversight. It was a coordinated deception designed to shield Telstra’s failing infrastructure and keep the AXE exchange faults out of the arbitration record. The arbitrator was fed a fabricated version of reality, one built on false testimony, withheld fault logs, and a network Telstra knew was collapsing. The CEPU photos now circulating on Google stand as visual proof of what Telstra tried to erase.

Just imagine what the arbitrator might have awarded me had he not been lied to. Imagine the outcome if the truth, Telstra’s truth, the CEPU’s truth, the photographic truth, had been placed before him instead of buried. But that truth was never allowed into the room. And that lie cost me my business, my livelihood, and decades of my life.

If there were no known problems affecting the Telstra network, why did the Telstra board pay Rupert Murdoch and FOX $400 million in default payments? That single fact destroys Telstra’s denials. It also explains why Helen Handbury, Rupert Murdoch’s sister, was shaken when she read my draft book Ring For Justice, the manuscript from which absentjustice.com was built. She knew the FOX failures were real. She knew Telstra had paid because the network had collapsed. And she knew that if Telstra paid Murdoch $400 million for network failure, then Telstra’s claim that the COT Cases had “no faults” was a lie.

Critical evidence wasn’t just withheld; it was deliberately concealed. In eight of the twelve arbitrations, documents were locked away, redacted, or removed entirely from the process. Key fault data was never delivered. Verified engineering reports were buried. Submissions you lodged vanished from official channels without explanation. Evidence that proved systemic network failures was kept out of sight, out of reach, and out of the arbitrator’s hands. What should have been the backbone of justice became the target of a coordinated effort to suppress the truth. This wasn’t an accident. It was the method. 

The COT Cases witnessed these treacherous acts firsthand; the silence is no mere accident; it is a deliberate, calculated strategy of survival. It embodies a system that has mastered self-preservation to the point of abandoning its moral compass.

At point 3.2 (h) in the arbitrator's final award on my losses, he states:

"The claimant adds that he continued to suffer transmission problems after March 1993, although since July 1994 he has relatively little cause for complaint".  

Dr Gordon Hughes made this statement on May 11, 1995; however, it does not align with the assessments from his technical consultants, DMR & Lane. On April 30, 1995, they advised Dr Hughes in their final technical evaluation that he was not receiving a comprehensive log of my phone complaints to properly assess my claims. Notably, Dr Hughes had already covertly provided a log of fault complaints to Telstra's Paul Rumble on June 15, 1994, which was five months before he was legally required to do so under the official arbitration agreement. This supplying of claim documents should have occurred only one month before Telstra submitted its arbitration defence of claim on 12 December, 1994. In simple terms, Telstra had the illegal privilege of having my claim documents to scrutinise for five months instead of the one month required. 

Hughes made his formal findings (see above), specifically at point 3-2 (h), stating that I had little cause for complaint after July 1994. This contradicts the official DMR & Lane technical consultants' report from April 30, 1995, which argues otherwise, noting: i.e.;  

“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 that these faults would remain ‘open’,”  (Exhibit 45-c -File No/45-A)

Clicking on the Ericsson List will help you understand just how corrupt the arbitration system is — not only in Australia, but across the globe 

The arbitration consultants, Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd, were never independent. The warning shot came in a letter dated 18 April 1995 from Arbitration Project Manager John Rundell to Warwick Smith, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, copied to arbitrator Dr Gordon Hughes and TIO legal counsel Peter Bartlett. Rundell’s own words exposed the contamination:

“Any technical report prepared in draft by Lanes will be signed off and appear on the letter of DMR Inc.” (see Prologue Evidence File No 22-A → Chapter 1 - The Collusion Continues)

This was not a clerical convenience. It was a mechanism to launder Lane’s findings, findings that documented the failures of the Ericsson AXE telephone exchange at Portland, through incorporating the logo of DMR Canada alongside that of Lane, creating the illusion of independence while burying the truth.

Before Lane was sold, Telstra’s board had already set the tone. Nine of Telstra’s own arbitration technical employees signed witness statements claiming there were “no ongoing problems” with the Ericsson AXE equipment in the Portland exchange. These statements were not mistakes. They were signed in full knowledge that the AXE faults were real, persistent, and devastating, the same AXE infrastructure whose failures contributed to the board awarding Murdoch and FOX hundreds of millions of dollars, while the COT Cases were left to collapse.

Then came the turning point. The Australian Government permitted Ericsson, the manufacturer of the failing AXE equipment, to purchase Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd, the very firm appointed to assess the financial value of the COT Cases’ claims against Ericsson itself. Lane was meant to be our safeguard. Instead, the corporation under investigation quietly absorbed it, taking with it a substantial volume of COT‑owned technical data documenting Ericsson’s ailing infrastructure.

 

 

This was not incompetence. It was structural corruption, deliberate, coordinated, and devastating. Our government allowed Ericsson to infiltrate the arbitration system at the exact moment its AXE network was under investigation. They allowed the company accused of supplying faulty exchange equipment to purchase Lane Telecommunications, the very technical consultancy appointed to assess those faults. That takeover gave Ericsson access to all COT evidence held by Lane, evidence that should have remained independent, protected, and central to the arbitration process.

Lane did not simply “sell itself.” It handed over the COT Cases’ technical records, engineering notes, fault logs, and internal assessments, material gathered during our arbitrations, directly into the hands of the corporation under investigation. That is not a procedural failure. That is not an oversight. That is the collapse of integrity at the heart of a government‑endorsed legal process.

Government records now show that evidence tampering occurred in at least eight of the twelve arbitrations. Documents were withheld. Key submissions disappeared. Fault data was never delivered. The AXE logbook, the single most important record proving ongoing exchange failures, was kept out of the arbitrator’s hands. And while this was happening, Lane’s sale to Ericsson proceeded without objection, without intervention, without a single safeguard to protect the victims.

The United States has been one of the most aggressive nations in exposing global bribery, corruption, and offshore criminal networks, not because it is free of corruption, but because its enforcement agencies and investigative partnerships have repeatedly dragged hidden financial systems into daylight. The Panama Papers alone revealed a sprawling offshore architecture used by heads of state, criminals, Mafia members, corrupt politicians, tax evaders, suspected terrorism financiers, nuclear‑weapons proliferators, and gunrunners, all connected through the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Millions of leaked documents exposed how hundreds of banks and their subsidiaries registered nearly 15,600 shell companies to hide assets and enable wrongdoing.

The fallout was global. U.S. authorities fined major institutions, including a $50 million penalty against Swedbank tied to Panama Papers revelations. The leaks also exposed dozens of companies and individuals blacklisted by U.S. authorities, including suspected financiers of terrorism and international weapons traffickers.

Beyond the Panama Papers, U.S. investigations have repeatedly uncovered vast corruption networks involving anonymous shell companies, nominee directors, and offshore accounts used to conceal wealth and facilitate crime. The exposure of Mossack Fonseca’s operations revealed how routine these mechanisms were not fringe tools, but standard practice in a parallel financial system built to keep dirty money safe.

The USA’s actions did not merely expose individual criminals; they exposed entire systems, entire industries, entire financial ecosystems designed to operate in secrecy. The investigations forced prime ministers to resign, triggered global regulatory reforms, and dismantled long‑standing offshore networks.

Sixty-Minutes 

Between 1992 and mid‑1993, people had become interested in what they had heard about our battle; many single‑club patrons had heard about our canoeing and horse‑riding, caving and bush‑walking long weekend Country Getaways. The arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, after being instructed in an arbitrator's oral hearing on 11 October 1994 not to take these activities into account as part of my business losses, which Dr Hughes went along with, ignored them entirely.

Some of those patrons had even contacted Sixty Minutes - Television, telling them they had booked one of my long‑weekend Country Getaways through a Melbourne booking agent, only to be advised, when making a confirmation by telephone, that they received only a recorded message stating I had ceased trading, or that my number was not recognised by Telstra.

Several articles had appeared in several newspapers, and interstate gossip about the COT group was growing. In June, Julian Cress from Channel Nine's 'Sixty Minutes' documentary television programme faxed me:

Just a note to let you know that I had some trouble getting through to you on the phone last Thursday. Pretty ironic, considering that I was trying to contact you to discuss your phone problems.

The problem occurred at about 11 am. On the 008 number I heard a recorded message advising me that 008 was not available from my phone and your direct line was constantly engaged.

Pretty ironic, all right!

A special feature in the Melbourne Age Newspaper gave my new 'Country Get-A-Ways' program a great write-up. It was marketing weekend holidays for over-40s singles in Victoria and South Australia: an outdoor canoe weekend, a walking and river cruise along the Glenelg River, a Saturday Dress-up Dinner Dance with a disco, a trip to the Coonawarra Wineries in South Australia, and a Saturday morning shopping tour to Mt Gambier. I began to feel things were looking up for the Camp.

It was too much to hope for that my telephone saga was ending. A fax arrived on 26 October 1993 from Cathine, a relative of the Age journalist who wrote the feature:

Alan, I have been trying to call you since midday. I have rung seven times to get an engaged signal. It is now 2.45 pm.

In response to my request for feedback between May and October of 1993, I received 36 letters from different individuals and more than 40 other complaints from people who had unsuccessfully tried to respond to my advertisements (File - 9-A AS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 47). The Hadden & District Community House wrote in April 1993:

Several times I have dialled 055 267 267 number and received no response — dead line. I have also experienced similar problems on your 008 number.

Our youth worker, Gladys Crittenden, experienced similar problems while organising our last year's family camp, over a six month period during 1991/1992.

From April 1990 through December 2001, I prioritised sponsoring underprivileged groups to stay at the holiday camp, even during weeks when the camp experienced phone problems. Various charitable organisations coordinated food deliveries for these groups, and coach companies provided a 46-seater school bus, with my endorsed vehicle covering the necessary provisions when I drove. This sponsorship brought in much-needed revenue for the business and helped spread the word as those who visited shared their positive experiences. It's worth noting that the organisers of these groups were so committed that they would drive for hours to make a booking.

The organisers of these groups would drive for hours to make a booking, as Loreto College did (see below), and then make the drive.  

The holiday Camp could sleep around 90 to 100 persons in fourteen cabins.  I arranged sponsored food purchases through the generosity of several commercial food outlets, and these groups then just used the camp facilities. It didn’t cost me anything other than a small amount of electricity and gas.  Around May 1992, I organised a charity week for kids from Ballarat and the South West, including Warrnambool, Hamilton and Portland.  This group was organised by Sister Maureen Burke IBVM, the Principal of Loreto College in Ballarat, and I am sure she would not be offended to know that I think of her as the ‘mother’ of the project.

Arrangements regarding food, transport, and any special needs the children might have had had to be handled over the phone, and of course, Sister Burke had enormous problems making phone contact; calls were either ringing out, or she was getting a deadline or a message that the number she was ringing was not connected to the Telstra network. Sister Burke knew otherwise. On two occasions in 1992, after trying in vain all through one week, she drove the 3½ hours to make the final arrangements for those camps.

Just as she arrived at the Camp, Karen took a phone call from a furious man who wanted information about a singles weekend we were trying to set up. This caller was quite abusive. He couldn't understand why we were advertising a business but never answered the phone. Karen burst into tears. She had reached the end of her tolerance, and nothing I could say was any help. When Sister Burke appeared in the office, I decided absence was the better part of valour and removed myself, leaving the two women together. Much later, Sister Burke came out and told me she thought it probably best for both of us if Karen left Cape Bridgewater. I felt numb. It was all happening again.

But it wasn’t the same as it had been with Faye, my ex‑wife of twenty years, who, after just eighteen months battling the phone problem, left under a cloud. Karen and I sat and talked. True, we would separate, but I assured her she would lose nothing because of her generosity, and that I would do whatever was necessary to buy her out. We were both relieved at that. Karen rented a house in Portland, and we remained good friends. But without her day‑to‑day assistance at the Camp — the support that had given me the space to travel — I had to drop my promotional tours.

Twelve months later, in March 1993, Sister Karen Donnellon, also from Loreto College, tried to make contact via the Portland Ericsson telephone exchange to arrange an annual camp. Sister Donnellon later wrote:

“During a one week period in March of this year I attempted to contact Mr Alan Smith at Bridgewater Camp.  In that time I tried many times to phone through.

Each time I dialled I was met with a line that was blank.  Even after several re-dials there was no response.  I then began to vary the times of calling but it made no difference.” File 231-B → AS-CAV Exhibit 181 to 233

Some years later, I sent Sister Burke an early draft of my manuscript, Absent Justice: My Story, concerning my valiant attempt to run a telephone-dependent business without a dependent phone service. Sister Burke wrote back,

“Only I know from personal experience that your story is true, otherwise I would find it difficult to believe. I was amazed and impressed with the thorough, detailed work you have done in your efforts to find justice”  File 231-A → AS-CAV Exhibit 181 to 233

Of course, Sister Maureen Burke and Sister Karen Donnellon persisted with their continuing battle to find a way to get a proper telephone connection for the holiday camp, partly because it was a low-cost holiday for all concerned but also because these incredible women were well aware that my business was continuing to exist, albeit ‘by the skin of its teeth, even though Telstra’s automated voice messages kept on telling prospective customers that the business did not exist or the callers simply reached a dreaded silence that appeared to indicate that the number they had called was attached to a ‘dead’ line.  Either way, I lost the business that may have followed if only the callers could have successfully connected to my office via this dreaded Ericsson AXE telephone exchange.

A letter dated 6 April 1993, from Cathy Lindsey, Coordinator of the Haddon & District Community House Ballarat (Victoria) to the Editor of Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper,  read:

“I am writing in reference to your article in last Friday’s Herald-Sun (2nd April 1993) about phone difficulties experienced by businesses.

I wish to confirm that I have had problems trying to contact Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp over the past 2 years.

I also experienced problems while trying to organise our family camp for September this year. On numerous occasions I have rung from both this business number 053 424 675 and also my home number and received no response – a dead line.

I rang around the end of February (1993) and twice was subjected to a piercing noise similar to a fax. I reported this incident to Telstra who got the same noise when testing.” Evidence File 10 B 

During this same period, 1992 and 1993, Cathy Lindsey, a professional associate of mine, signed a Statutory Declaration, dated 20 May 1994, explaining several sinister happenings when she attempted to collect mail on my behalf from the Ballarat Courier Newspaper office (File 22 Exhibit 1 to 47).  This declaration leaves questions unanswered about who collected my mail and how they knew there was mail to be collected from the Ballarat Courier mail office.  On both occasions, when a third person collected this mail, I telephoned Cathy and informed her that the Ballarat Courier had notified me that mail was waiting to be picked up.

On pages 12 and 13 of the transcript from the AFP inquiry into my allegations that Telstra unlawfully intercepted my telephone conversations, the AFP states at Q59 Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1:-

“And that, I mean that relates directly to the monitoring of your service where, where it would indicate that monitoring was taking place without your consent?” File 23-A Exhibit 1 to 47

I also provided the AFP with Telstra documents showing that Telstra was worried about my telephone complaint evidence. If it ever reached an Australian court, I had a 50% chance of proving that Telstra had systemic phone problems in their network. In simple terms, Telstra was operating outside its license to operate a telephone service, charging customers for a service it did not provide.  

Astonishingly, one letter, dated 17 May 1993, was from a senior Telstra technical engineer, who wrote regarding his own experience of trying to ring me:

"On the 24/2/93 I received a phone call from a technician at Portland who stated he had been given a fault from (1100 fault dept.) indicating a customer in Ballarat had trouble calling your business 055 267 267. I then attempted to ring 055 267 267 myself, the ring was tripped after several bursts, i.e. ‘answered’ and I received a loud noise similar to a radio carrier noise and a very faint ‘Hello’."

At last, a second person inside Telstra acknowledged that I had a problem with the phone service! The engineer had even given me his name. Yet in the course of their defence of my arbitration claims, Telstra proffered a Witness Statement from this man (made in December 1994) that included no reference to this (see Summary of events/Chapter Two to Five)   

On 9 June 1993. A TV news program was also a target for Telstra's executives to muzzle the media regarding the validity of the COT Cases claims and that of three single members from Ballarat who had spoken to Jason Cameron (Channel Nine TV reporter) regarding their failed effort to reach the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp by telephone from Skipton and Scarsdale.  This Telstra internal email dated 16 June 1993, FOI folio A04646 (AS 956), reports:

"Good news re channel nine news. Haven’t checked all outlets but as it didn’t run on the main bulletin last night, we can be pretty certain that the story died the death. I wish I could figure which phase it was that convinced Jason Cameron not to proceed. Might have been one of Jim Holmes' pearls..."

Jim Holmes being the Telstra Corporate Secretary, the reader by now may well be asking themselves, what type of pearl had been cast by Jim Holmes? Were they pearls of wisdom, financial pearls, or a different kind of pearl that convinced a respected journalist to drop a story? 

On 12 July 1993, a newspaper article from the Portland Observer Newspaper 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)

The pressure on all four COT cases was immense, with TV and newspaper interviews and our continuing canvassing of the Senate. The stress was telling by now, but I kept hammering for a change in 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.” (See Arbitrator File No/76)

The Hon David Hawker MP, my local Federal Member of Parliament, corresponded with me from 26 July 1993.

On 18 August 1993, The Hon. David Hawker MP wrote to me again, noting:

“Further to your conversations with my electorate staff last week and today I am enclosing a copy of the correspondence I have received from Mr Harvey Parker, Group Managing Director of Commercial and Consumer division of Telecom.

“I wrote to him outlining the problems of a number of Telecom customers in the Western Districts, including the extensive problems you have been experiencing.” (Arbitrator File No/77)

One of these letters, dated 23 August 1993, is particularly interesting. It came from a company of Insurance Loss Adjusters in Ballarat, a rural city in Victoria. It was sent to the producer of “Real Life”, a TV current affairs program then broadcast on Channel 7.  The Loss Adjusters wrote:  “Re Problems with Telstra.”

"I have watched with interest the shorts leading up to tonight’s program as I have similar problems to the man at Cape Bridgewater.

Our office is located in Ballarat and due to Telecom structure the majority of our local calls are STD-fee based. (STD calls are charged per time)

On many occasions we have been unable to get through to numbers we have dialled, often receiving the message “this number is not connected” or similar messages which we know to be untrue.

Clients report that they often receive the engaged signal when calling us, and a review of the office reveals that at least one of our lines was free at the relevant time.

We have just received our latest Telecom bill, which in total is up about 25% – 30% on the last bill.  This is odd because our work load in the billing period was down by about 25% and we have one staff member less than the previous billing period.” (AS 1008)

In the first twelve months of 1993, I received another eleven written complaints about Ballarat tourists and single club patrons who, like Loretto College, had problems connecting to my holiday camp. 

 

Children's lives could be at risk

Comments made in 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

After the Melbourne Children's Hospital recorded a near-death experience with me having to rush a sick child with cancer to the Portland Hospital 18 kilometres away from my holiday camp, Telstra finally decided to take my telephone faults seriously. None of the 35 children (all with cancer-related illnesses) had mobile phones, or the six or so nurses and carers. Mobile telephones could not operate successfully in Cape Bridgewater until 2004, eleven years after this event. 

After five years, it took almost a tragedy for Telstra to send someone with real technical experience to my business. Telstra's visit happened on 3 June 1993, six weeks after the Children's Hospital vowed never to revisit my camp until I could prove my camp was telephone fault-free. No hospital where convalescence is a good revenue spinner has ever visited my business, even after I sold it in December 2001. 

In August 1993, Rita Espinoza from the Chilean Social Club wrote:

I tried to ring you in order to confirm our stay at your camp site. I found it impossible to get through. I tried to ring later but encountered the same signal on 10 August around 7 – 8.30 pm. I believe you have a problem with the exchange and strongly advise you contact Telstra.

Do you remember the same problem happened in April and May of this year?

I apologise but I have made arrangements with another camp.

Attempting to move on…but wait!

At the camp in Cape Bridgewater, I acquired a logo especially for the over-forties singles club, and his Community Groups, which I was calling “Country Get-A-Ways”, and he hit the road with a vengeance, marketing a range of different weekend holidays. I had organised an outdoor canoe weekend, a walking and river cruise along the Glenelg River, and a Saturday Dress-up Dinner Dance with a disco, as well as a trip to the Coonawarra Wineries and a Saturday morning shopping tour to Mt Gambier, both in South Australia. This meant I could market the holiday periods in both Victoria and South Australia.

Then it hit home: I got no response from Ballarat and the surrounding areas. I later learned from a Ballarat single club patron who was a member of the Ballarat Parents Without Partners social club that they had given up on receiving a response to their failed telephone calls.

 

 

Numerous testimonials from hopeful customers trying to book at my venue from 1988 to this period are well documented in AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, dated March 1994. At points 9, 10 and 11 in their reporting notes:

"During the past five years Mr Smith has received many testimonials from other network users such as community groups, health and welfare agencies, school and individuals which have advise of continuing difficulties contacting the camp. These statements support Mr Smith's claims of service problems of Mr Smith.

An important point in relation to Mr Smith's service is that he is operating a business service in an area which is predominantly that of a residential and/or farming community. Therefore both the nature, volume and origin of calls received by Mr Smith is comparison with those of his neighbours would be markedly different…

Often calls to the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp would be from people previously unknown to Mr Smith, who in comparison to other callers to Cape Bridgewater would be less likely to initiate further contact should they have difficulty in contacting the Camp…"

So here it was, mid-1993, and still hardly any phone calls were getting through to Alan at the Camp.  What he couldn’t know was that less than twelve months later, AUSTEL would discover that what Alan had been telling Telstra was the truth, but that AUSTEL would hide most of those truths from the relevant Ministers, from Alan and from the arbitrator.

All I knew was that my business was sinking fast and so I stepped up the marketing of the camp and the singles-club weekends; I visited numerous recognised social clubs around the Melbourne metropolitan area and spoke personally to the people in charge and in fact, over the next few weeks, I spoke to the Phoenix Social Club in Camberwell, the Australian Social Centre in Hartwell, Frenze-In-Deed in Mont Albert and Capers in Knox City, as well as visiting numerous other singles organisations in Ballarat and Warrnambool, both large country centres in Victoria.

Further newspaper advertising followed, with ads placed with the Leader Newspaper group in Melbourne.  This local newspaper group covers twenty-three different metropolitan areas around Melbourne. Ads also ran in local newspapers in a number of large regional centres around Victoria and South Australia, including the Geelong Advertiser, the Warrnambool Standard, the Ballarat Courier News, the Horsham Wimmera Times, the Colac Local News, the Mt Gambier-Border Watch, and others.  

A testing situation

Late in 1993, Mrs Cullen from Daylesford Community House informed me that she had tried unsuccessfully to phone me on 17 August 1993 at 5.17, 5.18, 5.19 and 5.20 pm, each time reaching a deadline (File 35-A, 35-B and 35-C AS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 47). She had reported the fault to Telstra’s Fault Centre in Bendigo at 1100, speaking to an operator who identified herself as Tina. Tina then rang my 1800 number but couldn’t get through either. Telstra’s handwritten memo, dated 17/8/93, records the times Mrs Cullen tried to reach my phone and reports Tina’s failed attempt to contact me.

So arbitration seemed the only solution.

11 October, 1993:  Telstra internal email H36291 confirms Telstra’s knowledge of the 1800 network billing problems, Peter Zeagers to Nigel Beaman:-

“I am receiving a disturbing number of reports of instances where the 1800 prefix ‘does not work’ in the network.” (AS-CAV Exhibit 92 to 127 - See AS-CAV 122-D)

14 October, 1993: This internal Telstra email, FOI folio R03331, discusses how to minimise the problems experienced by the COT claimants. It states:-

“We need to focus Austel’s attention as much as possible on the current rather than the past level of service delivered to Cot Cases. …”

“My view is that Telecom’s response to this issue should reflect the advice from Denise McBurnie, Freehill, Hollingdale & Page, Solicitors.” (GS-CAV Exhibit 89 to 154(b) - See GS-CAV 111)

On 9 December 1993, the Hon David Hawker MP wrote to congratulate me for my “persistence to bring about improvements to Telecom’s country services. I regret that it was at such a high personal cost.” (See Arbitrator File No/82)

This was very affirming, as was another letter dated 9 December 1993 and copied to me from the Hon David Beddall MP, Minister for Communications, in the Labor government, who wrote:

“Let me say that the Government is most concerned at allegations that Telecom has not been maintaining telecommunications service quality at appropriate levels. I accept that in a number of cases, including Mr Smith’s there has been great personal and financial distress. This is of great concern to me and a full investigation of the facts is clearly warranted.” (Arbitrator File No/82)

Even though I had been able to show the government, prior to arbitration, that Telstra was installing poor-quality infrastructure in the Cape Bridgewater network and the government regulator was allowing Telstra to test its own customers' complaints, even those who were to enter arbitration, no one bothered to investigate.

I have brought up the Ericsson AXE telephone exchange faults documents (see below) because, during a meeting with Hon. David Hawker, we discussed the impact of the AXE equipment installed in the telephone exchanges in his electorate, which seemed to be negatively affecting many businesses. I offered to continue supplying FOI documents received from Telstra to Mr Hawker, who would then pass them on to the Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston. I followed up by sending him (False Witness Statement File No 3-A), which he forwarded to Senator Alston. This document was subsequently raised in the Senate "On Notice" on 24 February 1994

 

 

Unfortunately, I did not receive a copy of the following findings AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings at points 2 to 212 until November 23, 2007, 12 years after the termination of my arbitration process. In simple words, the government had already validated my claims as early as March 4, 1994, six weeks before April 21, 1994, when I was forced to sign the arbitration agreement under the ruse that my ongoing telephone problems would be fixed as part of the arbitration process

Point 115 –“Some problems with incorrectly coded data seem to have existed for a considerable period of time. In July 1993 Mr Smith reported a problem with payphones dropping out on answer to calls made utilising his 008 number. Telecom diagnosed the problem as being to “Due to incorrect data in AXE 1004, CC-1. Fault repaired by Ballarat OSC 8/7/93, The original deadline for the data to be changed was June 14th 1991. Mr Smith’s complaint led to the identification of a problem which had existed for two years.”

Point 130 – “On April 1993 Mr Smith wrote to AUSTEL and referred to the absent resolution of the Answer NO Voice problem on his service. Mr Smith maintained that it was only his constant complaints that had led Telecom to uncover this condition affecting his service, which he maintained he had been informed was caused by “increased customer traffic through the exchange.”  On the evidence available to AUSTEL it appears that it was Mr Smith’s persistence which led to the uncovering and resolving of his problem – to the benefit of all subscribers in his area”.

Point 140 – “It should be noted that AUSTEL’s investigation of matters relating to the RCM problem has been hampered by Telecom’s failure to make available to AUSTEL a file specifically relating to the Pairs Gains Support investigation of the RCM.  The file was requested by AUSTEL on 9 February 1994.”

Point 153 –“A feature of the RCM system is that when a system goes “down” the system is also capable of automatically returning back to service. As quoted above, normally when the system goes “down” an alarm would have been generated at the Portland exchange, alerting local staff to a problem in the network. This would not have occurred in the case of the Cape Bridgewater RCM however, as the alarms had not been programmed. It was some 18 months after the RCM was put into operation that the fact the alarms were not programmed was discovered. In normal circumstances the failure to program the alarms would have been deficient, but in the case of the ongoing complaints from Mr Smith and other subscribers in the area the failure to program these alarms or determine whether they were programmed is almost inconceivable.”

Point 158 – “The crucial issue in regard to the Cape Bridgewater RCM is that assuming the lightning strike did cause problems to the RCM om late November 1992 these problems were not resolved till the beginning of March 1993, over 3 months later. This was despite a number of indications of problems in the Cape Bridgewater area. Fault reports from September 1992 also indicate that the commencement of problems with the RCM may have occurred earlier than November 1992. A related issue is that Mr Smith’s persistent complaints were almost certainly responsible for an earlier identification of problems with the RCM than would otherwise have been the case.”

 

The eighth remedy pursued

Deep-seated animosity harboured by John Howard and his close-knit colleagues in the Liberal government paved the way for a betrayal of trust in a critical agreement with Senator Barnaby Joyce. In a high-stakes political manoeuvre, Joyce agreed to lend his vital vote to facilitate the privatisation of Telstra, under the assurance that the remaining 14 undressed COT Cases claims would receive fair and impartial evaluation by assessors independent of governmental influence. 

This was not policy. It was influence. And it came at the expense of the very Australians Telstra was meant to serve.

Managing two websites, including https://www.promoteyourstory.com.au, lets me produce the sequel to "The Arbitraitor" at no cost, an eerie convenience amid the chaos.

Here is the dark truth: while the COT Cases fought tooth and nail to preserve their small businesses, a far more treacherous betrayal was occurring behind the scenes. Australia’s bureaucratic class, the very same architects who orchestrated the piecemeal sale of our critical infrastructure, was quietly steering the nation toward economic ruin. These were not mere bureaucrats. They were the gatekeepers of decay, disassembling the very foundations that held Australia together, all while assuring politicians that everything was under control.

Their sabotage was insidious, veiled in procedural deceit, and utterly devastating. They hollowed out industries, misled ministers, and spun a web of false narratives about global affairs. Meanwhile, Telstra's legal forces mercilessly crushed the COT Cases, protected by a cabal of public servants who treated truth as an inconvenience to be ignored.

As this second book takes shape, our editors are clamouring for more evidence from the archives of the other COT Cases. These will reveal more harrowing tales of how corrupt government bureaucrats are pulling the strings, hoodwinking our current politicians about the true state of world affairs.

On 9 December 1993, the Hon David Hawker MP wrote to congratulate me for my “persistence to bring about improvements to Telecom’s country services. I regret that it was at such a high personal cost.” (See Arbitrator File No/82)

This was very affirming, as was another letter dated 9 December 1993 and copied to me from the Hon David Beddall MP, Minister for Communications, in the Labor government, who wrote:

“Let me say that the Government is most concerned at allegations that Telecom has not been maintaining telecommunications service quality at appropriate levels. I accept that in a number of cases, including Mr Smith’s there has been great personal and financial distress. This is of great concern to me and a full investigation of the facts is clearly warranted.” (Arbitrator File No/82)

Even though I had been able to show the government prior to arbitration that Telstra was installing poor-quality infrastructure in the Cape Bridgewater network and the government regulator was allowing Telstra to test their own customers' complaints, even those who were to enter arbitration, no one bothered to investigate.

The Hon David Hawker MP, later Speaker in the House of Representatives, never let these issues die. He was still raising the same unresolved 1993 telephone‑service failures in 1996, as the following image shows, and he was still raising those same unaddressed faults again in 2006, this time on behalf of the new owner of the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp. The pattern was unmistakable: a decade had passed, governments had changed, Telstra had been corporatised and partially privatised, yet the core failures remained untouched. Hawker kept sounding the alarm because the system itself refused to fix what it had broken.

The 93 questions put to me by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and the responses I provided in Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1, expose a truth that should have shattered the arbitration process from the inside out. Telstra issued direct threats against me for cooperating with federal investigators who were probing the interception of my private telephone conversations and the hacking of documents central to my arbitration. These were not idle warnings. They were calculated acts of intimidation designed to silence a complainant who had become inconvenient.

In the Sunday Herald Sun, dated 24 January 2026, British actor Liz Hurley revealed the harrowing impact of the phone‑hacking scandal that ensnared her alongside Hugh Grant. Both actors find themselves grappling with the fallout of their conversations being surreptitiously monitored for an extended period during the infamous News of the World scandal orchestrated by Rupert Murdoch. The same issue reported that Prince Harry is haunted by trauma‑related flashbacks, tormented by the knowledge that his own private conversations were similarly compromised.

Yet the Australian Government has declined to acknowledge, as the British Government has, the long‑term effect of knowing your private and business lives are not so private.

It was this fax hacking during my appeal period that upset Helen Handbury, Rupert Murdoch's sister, on her second vacation at my holiday camp.  

I was never meant to survive it. Just a ship’s cook turned whistleblower, running a school holiday camp on the edge of the Southern Ocean, a man they thought they could grind down, silence, and bury beneath paperwork and procedural deceit.

 

The Larger Horror — Legal Processes Compromised Nationwide

Why were the COT Cases subjected to interviews with Telstra’s appointed forensic psychologist in such a public venue, rather than in the comfort and confidentiality of a consultant’s office? This decision felt not just careless but deeply treacherous. Conducting the interview in a bustling saloon bar rather than a private room stripped away any sense of dignity and privacy, exposing me to onlookers who could witness my distress. It spoke volumes about the sinister lengths the government would go to undermine my claims.

Although  Exhibit 76 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91) has been briefly discussed above so as to link it with document tampering, and Telstra's misconduct and that of Hughes and his arbitration resource unit, it was crucial to address it even further here because it shows how involved the AFP became when this tampering with evidence was never addressed by Dr Hughes or the then administrator of my arbitration Warwick Smith.

After Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose took my call and listened to what I had uncovered about the evidence tampering, he showed genuine concern. I took his advice seriously. I signed the declaration and promptly hand-delivered it to the Arbitrator’s office → Exhibit 76 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91). I also provided a copy to Sue Harlow, who served as the Deputy Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and acted as the Administrator of my arbitration. All relevant parties needed to receive this crucial evidence, particularly because it corroborated issues raised in two mini-reports indicating that one of my major complaints against Telstra was systemic billing problems, and noted in this particular report that Australia had been dealing with such problems since the inception of my arbitration proceedings.

Documents related to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) that I received a staggering seven years after the conclusion of my arbitration demonstrated that Sue Harlow recognised receipt of this fax header material → Exhibit 77 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91). This acknowledgement was crucial, as it alerted Warwick Smith (the TIO and the principal administrator of my arbitration) that important arbitration materials had been duly submitted to the appropriate offices. I had previously submitted records of phone interceptions from 1992 to 1993 to the Arbitrator’s office after the memos had been forwarded to the AFP.

On the same day I hand-delivered the 56 header pages and the corresponding reports to the Arbitrator's office, I also presented the same materials to Sue Harlow. The Golden Courier Services of North Melbourne was tasked with photocopying these relevant files three times and delivering them via one of their drivers.

If the Arbitrator continues to deny that the 56 tampered Telstra‑related reports were ever delivered to his office in 1994, and it is now 2026, I urge the reader to consider one simple question: why would I undertake a gruelling 12‑hour round trip to Melbourne to hand this critical evidence to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) at the direction of Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose, yet not provide a second copy directly to the Arbitrator, the very person responsible for evaluating my claims?

The answer is obvious to anyone willing to look: I did deliver the evidence. It was received. It was ignored. And the ongoing denial, three decades later, speaks for itself.

So, where are the 56 fax header reports that Golden Courier Services helped me compile for submission? Why is the receipt of this information not mentioned in the schedule of arbitration documents that Dr Hughes received? Why were these 56 reports not provided back to me after the conclusion of my arbitration? Why aren’t any of the topics I highlighted, with assistance from Golden Courier Services, acknowledged?

Why didn’t the arbitrator seek out where my files had vanished to? This meant the 56 reports that formed a major part of my submitted claim were never valued. How could this be dismissed as a mistake when the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, could have approached the Victorian Supreme Court and stated that he had lost control of my arbitration due to Telstra’s conduct? He had that authority. He did not use it. He did not act. He did not give me justice in this instance

In response to my repeated requests for essential arbitration records, including the return of 56 fax header reports that I had left with the previous Deputy TIO, Sue Harlow ( Exhibit 77 (AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91), John Pinnock wrote a letter dated January 10, 1996. In this letter, he outlined Telstra's position on the requested documents, further complicating my efforts to access the information needed for my arbitration appeal.

THE UNLAWFUL RELEASE OF AFP‑PROTECTED MATERIAL

Did Rumble stumble upon sensitive information in my interim claim, information I had already provided to the AFP under strict confidentiality?

Yes.

The AFP had exclusive jurisdiction over that material. Rumble had no legal authority to access it until my claim was certified complete. Yet Dr Hughes handed it to him anyway, five months early.

This act did more than violate the arbitration agreement. It obstructed an active AFP investigation into Telstra’s unlawful interception of my private communications.

Possibly one of the worst and most corrupt scenarios in the entire arbitration nightmare was this: Dr Gordon Hughes deliberately refused to ask Telstra for copies of the Portland and Cape Bridgewater telephone‑exchange fault data logged in their own diary, data that would have proven the ongoing 1800 billing faults strangling my business. That refusal was not incompetence. It was collusion.

Hughes was working hand‑in‑glove with government solicitors and Telstra’s Peter Gamble to ensure that COT Case member Graham Schorer never succeeded in his Federal Court action against Telstra. This was not speculation; it was documented. The Schorer–Hughes Chapter 3 - Conflict of Interest page shows that three years earlier, between 1990 and 1993, Hughes defended Schorer in his Federal Court battle against Telstra. During that period, Hughes had access to, and withheld, the North Melbourne telephone‑exchange report, a report gleaned directly from the North Melbourne exchange logbook. He buried it then, and he buried it again during my arbitration.

The corruption was recycled. The treachery was repeated.

And standing beside Hughes in 1994 was the same Telstra engineer, Peter Gamble, the man who fudged the Cape Bridgewater SVT report in my case. He falsified the technical findings, and Hughes refused to allow his own technical consultants to investigate the fraud. Hughes protected Gamble. Gamble protected Telstra. And Telstra protected the lie, as the following 2 November 1990 fax shows.

This 2 November 1990 fax from Trevor Hill of Telstra’s Corporate Solicitors Office to Telstra’s Peter Gamble regarding Telecom v Golden Messenger Federal Court Legal Proceedings, which notes, among other items:

 (5)   The Australian Government Solicitor, on behalf of Telecom, has written to the solicitors acting for Golden Messenger seeking their undertaking not to disclose to their client or others the contents of the report on the North Melb Exchange. To date, there has been no response. (Exhibit GS 448-A file GS-CAV 448 to 456):

Directly below this entry, the report then discusses an internal Telstra minute dated 7 November 1990 that Telstra’s Peter Gamble, Manager, Business Network Planning, sent to Mr F Jones, Executive General Manager, Telecom Business Services (FOI Folio 001801), noting that:

“it would appear that any concerns over the disclosure of the adverse report on the North Melbourne Exchange can now be set to rest as it will not be released until point (5) has been complied with”. Exhibit GS 43 file GS-CAV 1 to 88

These two documents show that, regardless of whether Graham received a copy of the North Melbourne Telephone Exchange report during his earlier Federal Court action, Mr Schorer is adamant that he did NOT see a copy of the letter from the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) referred to in these faxes from Dr Hughes during his Federal Court action (refer to document 567 file  GS-CAV 522 to 580).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST - Dr Hughes and Graham Schorer (refer to document 567 file  GS-CAV 522 to 580 ).

On 21 November 2012, Graham produced a letter of understanding that included:

“During the period that I retained Landers & Rogers, at no stage was I informed by Gordon Hughes or any other member of Landers & Rogers staff, that Telecom or the Australian Government Solicitor contacted them with information regarding the North Melbourne exchange.

“Furthermore, had I known that Gordon Hughes had concealed knowledge of such an important document from me, I would not have accepted his appointment as the arbitrator in my arbitration process” (refer to document 567 file  GS-CAV 522 to 580 ).

 

The AFP knew the stakes. Across Australia, media outlets were reporting that Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister, was demanding answers from Telstra. He wanted to know why private conversations between him and me, exchanged before and during my arbitration, were sitting inside Telstra’s internal archives. The copies I had provided to Mr Fraser were returned to me redacted, stripped of context and meaning, as though someone inside Telstra had decided that the truth was theirs to edit. That alone should have triggered an inquiry. Instead, it became another brick in the wall of obstruction.

My mental health began to fracture under the weight of what I was uncovering. Two letters surfaced during a Freedom of Information request — letters that revealed Telstra had documented personal matters about me inside their internal memos. Dr Hughes, the arbitrator entrusted with safeguarding the integrity of the process, refused to challenge Telstra on how or why these records existed. His silence was not passive. It was complicity.

John Wynack, Director of Investigations for the Commonwealth Ombudsman, saw what was happening. Between May 1994 and October 1997, he pursued Telstra relentlessly, demanding explanations for the redactions, the withheld documents, and the manipulation of my arbitration file. He kept pushing even after I was discharged from hospital following a suspected heart attack, a collapse triggered by the pressure of fighting a system determined to bury the truth.

The deception was total. After my arbitration ended on 11 May 1995, Telstra, Dr Hughes, and Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman John Pinnock refused to return my arbitration file, despite the agreement's clear requirement that all documents be released six weeks after the process concluded. They simply ignored the rule. They acted as though the agreement applied only to me, never to them.

At that point, Hughes and his wife had not yet fabricated their narrative with Pinnock and Rundell, a narrative they would later use to distort the record and smear my name. But the groundwork was already laid. Wynack’s October 1997 letter demanding disclosure of the missing documents stands as a stark reminder of what had occurred twenty‑nine months earlier: Hughes, his wife, Pinnock, and Rundell had already begun constructing a lie large enough to bury the truth.

And then there is the travesty that sits beneath all of this: the COT Cases were forced into arbitration while a key witness, Senator Bob Collins, was under investigation for child abuse allegations inside Parliament House (rb.gy/dsvidd). Investigators seized all his office records, documents containing vital information about the phone faults and interception issues we were facing. No one can say which evidence was destroyed, altered, or quietly removed. Among those records were details about my children’s school camp, documents that could have strengthened my arbitration claims. Their disappearance is not an administrative oversight. It is a treacherous act that casts a long shadow over the integrity of the entire process.

What emerges is not a single failure but a system-wide betrayal, threats, surveillance, redactions, withheld files, fabricated narratives, and evidence destroyed under the cover of scandal. A web of corruption and deceit that did not merely undermine the arbitration; it poisoned it at its core.

What unfolded in the AFP transcripts of 10 February 1994 was not an administrative mishap or a procedural curiosity; it was the moment the mask slipped. Superintendent Jeffrey Penrose, Detective Sergeant Cochrane, Graham Schorer, and former government official Amanda Davis sat discussing a briefcase Telstra had abandoned at your business as if it were nothing more than a misplaced file. Yet inside that briefcase were names, real people, real lives, all quietly violated through the interception and monitoring of their telephone conversations. No warrants. No consent. No hesitation. Just intrusion carried out with the kind of bureaucratic indifference that makes the skin crawl.

Pages 37, 38, and 39 of AFP evidence file GS 18 expose the moment the façade cracked. Schorer, who had long postured as a spokesperson for the COT Cases, told the AFP that former Telstra employee Mr Marr had already supplied evidence of this interception to Senator Bob Collins. That admission wasn’t a stray detail; it was a flare fired into the dark, illuminating a surveillance apparatus that had been operating without restraint, feeding on the private conversations of ordinary citizens. What makes it chilling is not just the act itself, but how easily those involved spoke about it, as though the violation had become routine, almost expected.

And then there is Wayne Goss, not a bystander, not an outsider, but the former Premier of Queensland. His name appears in Ann Garms’ letter of 17 August 2017 (File Ann Garms 104 Document), written shortly before her death. When he told Ann that gaslighting techniques were used against the COT Cases, he wasn’t speculating from the sidelines. He was speaking from inside the machinery, from a vantage point where he could see how institutional power was deployed, how narratives were manipulated, how complainants were destabilised until they doubted their own reality. His statement carries weight precisely because he understood the architecture of government, and recognised the rot within it.

What emerges from these threads is not a single act of misconduct but a pattern, a system that protected itself through silence, misdirection, and psychological pressure. The briefcase, the intercepted calls, the evidence passed to Senator Collins, the gaslighting acknowledged by a former Premier, each piece is part of the same anatomy. A structure that operated without remorse, without accountability, and without any regard for the citizens it was meant to serve.

 

Governemnt Corruption 

Immerse yourself in the world of the Casualties of Telstra (COT) arbitrations, where the disturbing realities of the arbitration process in Australia come to light. Discover the grim undercurrents of serious criminal activity and the shrewd tactics used by unscrupulous individuals navigating this system. As you peel back the layers, you'll encounter a landscape marred by rampant corruption that seeps into the corridors of power, influencing politicians and legal professionals alike. This troubling panorama reveals a complex, deceptive network that poses a significant threat to the trustworthiness and integrity of Australia's arbitration framework. 

Enter the murky and treacherous world of the Casualties of Telstra (COT) arbitrations, a dark reflection of Australia’s arbitration system, where systemic corruption festers like an open wound. This is not just a flawed mechanism; it is a breeding ground for gross misconduct, where backroom deals and illicit financial transactions intertwine in a web of deceit that rivals organised crime.

As you delve deeper into this sinister landscape, you uncover a nightmarish reality plagued by corruption. Here, kickbacks masquerade as innocuous policy initiatives while treachery runs rampant. Influencers and lobbyists manipulate the system, weaving their sinister plots to engineer outcomes that favour a select few. Legal professionals, once seen as stewards of justice, become complicit players in this rigged game, moving through the shadows like fixers more concerned with lining their pockets than upholding the law. In this gruesome tableau, bribery morphs from a scandalous aberration into the very lifeblood of business practices.

Australia has shockingly become a haven for the world’s filthy lucre. Ill-gotten gains extracted from struggling nations are stealthily laundered through our economy, warping markets and hiding the grotesque truth beneath layers of redacted FOI documents. The carefully crafted corporate facades serve only to shield the proceeds of crime from scrutiny. This moral decay is aggravated by weak foreign-bribery laws and gaping loopholes in money-laundering statutes, creating fertile ground for deceitful actors to cleanse their dirty money and slip away without consequence.

Our own government has the power and authority to staunch this abhorrent flow of corruption but has shamefully opted for complicity instead. A cadre of bureaucrats and high-priced lobbyists, many of whom are former politicians, have cynically transformed their past roles into lucrative pipelines, fattening their wallets at the expense of the very system they swore to oversee. This sordid enterprise has become a grotesque gravy train, driven by favoured access, backdoor dealings, and the silent yet sinister transfer of influence from public office to private profit.

 

ABSENT JUSTICE — THE NAMES THAT VANISHED INTO THE SILENCE

Since 1994, the names have appeared like a procession of ghosts — not amateurs or bystanders, but the very individuals entrusted to uphold the integrity of Australia’s justice system, each one agreeing to investigate my arbitration‑related claims.

Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose, Australian Federal Police Investigations-1. Robin Davey, Chairman of AUSTEL (now ACMA). G. Samuel, Chairman of the ACCC. Laurie James, President, Institute of Arbitrators Australia. Several members of the Telecommunications Industry Office over more than two decades. Ian Nosworthy, Acting President, Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia. Neil Jepson, Barrister, Major Fraud Group, Victoria Police. Peter Hiland, Barrister, Consumer Affairs Victoria. The Hon. Michael Kirby, former High Court Judge, President of IAMA.

One after another, they approached me. One after another, they promised investigations. One after another, they swore that findings would be delivered, that the truth would finally be pried out of Telstra’s grip and dragged into the light.

But the findings never came from any of the bureaucrats, only hollow promises, empty assurances, and investigations that evaporated the moment they were inconvenient. And it forces the question: is this exactly what Peta Credlin was warning Australia about? Were these the very pen‑pushing bureaucrats she said needed to take orders and not take charge, the faceless operators who quietly seize power while the public is told everything is under control?

Telstra's Falsified SVT Report

The arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, even allowed Peter Gamble, Telstra’s arbitration‑defence engineer, to enter my business on 29 September 1994 with two Telstra accomplices and set up Service Verification Testing (SVT) equipment, equipment that Coopers & Lybrand had already condemned in October 1993. Not one arbitration consultant was present. No independent witness. No safeguard. Nothing to prevent Telstra from swearing under oath to whatever suited their defence, truth or lie.

Two covert government letters sent to Peter Gamble on 11 October and 16 November 1994 also condemned the same SVT equipment Coopers & Lybrand had damned in their 1993 report to the government. The warnings were explicit. The failures were documented. Yet the arbitrator still allowed Gamble to proceed, unobserved, unchallenged, and unrestrained.

This is the same Peter Gamble identified in files titled Stop These COT Cases at All Costs, where Telstra whistleblower Lindsay White advised a Senate Committee that the first five COT Cases, naming me as one of the five, had to be stopped at all costs. That was not a figure of speech. It was operational instruction.

How could Dr Hughes and the government possibly permit an SVT report, crafted by Peter Gamble, to proceed without including a single witness to safeguard my rights in the arbitration process? How could an arbitrator endorse an SVT procedure that utilised equipment previously deemed unacceptable by Coopers & Lybrand auditors, and subsequently condemned again in official government correspondence? It is baffling that this flawed evidence was allowed to remain intact, ultimately leading to the catastrophic downfall of my business in 1995.

“COT Case Strategy” 

As shown on page 5169 in Australia's Government SENATE official Hansard – Parliament of Australia Telstra's lawyers Freehill Hollingdale & Page devised a legal paper titled “COT Case Strategy” (see Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C) instructing their client Telstra (naming me and three other businesses) on how Telstra could conceal technical information from us under the guise of Legal Professional Privilege even though the information was not privileged. 

This COT Case Strategy was to be used against me, my named business, and the three other COT case members, Ann Garms, Maureen Gillan and Graham Schorer, and their three named businesses. Simply put, they targeted us and our four businesses even before our arbitrations commenced.  

Stop The COT Cases at all costs

 

 

Stop the COT Cases at all costs

Worse, however, the day before the Senate committee uncovered this COT Case Strategy, they were also told under oath, on 24 June 1997 see:- pages 36 and 38 Senate - Parliament of Australia from an ex-Telstra employee turned -Whistle-blower, Lindsay White, that, while he was assessing the relevance of the technical information which the COT claimants had requested, he advised the Committee that:

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-" 

While the following Barnaby Joyce issue has already been mentioned briefly above, it was important to tell this story futher as discussed below. 

The eighth remedy pursued

In this letter from the Hon. Barnaby Joyce dated 15 September 2005, he revealed to me, and to thirteen other Australian citizens. The moment he had crossed a political line on our behalf. He told us he had cast the single, critical vote the Liberal Party needed to ram the Telstra sale legislation through the Senate. That vote was not just a parliamentary manoeuvre; it was the price of a promise. In return, the fourteen of us were finally supposed to receive justice through an independent assessor who would examine each of our arbitration and mediation claims honestly, without Telstra’s fingerprints on the scales.

Barnaby had brokered that deal himself. He had put his reputation on the line for us. And then the Liberal Government did what it had done so many times before: it reneged. The agreement was gutted before the ink was dry. Another promise broken. Another betrayal added to the long ledger of deceit stretching back to 18 September 1967. The impact was devastating, not only for us but for Barnaby Joyce himself. You could hear it in his voice: the shock, the humiliation, the dawning realisation that he had been played by the very party he had trusted.

By 6 September 2006, barely a year after the betrayal, Barnaby Joyce stood before the fourteen COT citizens in Parliament House, Canberra, a man hollowed out by what he had witnessed. The government’s refusal to appoint the independent assessor he had fought for had drained him. The room was thick with anger, frustration, and the bitter knowledge that the government had never intended to honour its word. Barnaby looked like a man carrying the weight of our disappointment as well as his own. He had delivered the crucial vote, and the government had delivered nothing in return.

As the months passed, we watched Barnaby Joyce wrestle with the collapse of his faith in the Liberal Government. The man who had once championed our cause now mirrored our own sense of betrayal. He had seen the treachery up close. He had lived it. And eventually, it broke whatever loyalty he still had left. It came as no surprise when he walked away and aligned himself with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, a move born not of ambition, but of disillusionment so deep it left him searching for a political home that still recognised the struggles of ordinary Australians.

For more than thirty years, several other Casualties of Telstra and I have lived with the consequences. Many within government have chosen to bury their heads rather than acknowledge what they endorsed back in 1994 and the arbitration process that followed. The Casualties of Telstra agreed to self‑fund their arbitration and were advised that doing so would give the arbitrator full independence. By paying all outgoing expenses, we were told the arbitrator would have the power to force Telstra to fix each of the COT Cases’ business faults before any formal finding was reached.

However, the arbitrator failed that part of the agreed process, bringing down many findings, certainly in my case, before Telstra had fixed the ongoing faults. Seven years after the conclusion of my arbitration, with none of the faults rectified, I sold the business in December for land value only, as there was no goodwill left and the phone faults were still apparent.

Dr Gordon Hughes AO, the arbitrator, has cleverly concealed his own shortcomings as both an arbitrator and a husband by allowing John Pinnock to orchestrate a web of deceit. Pinnock has fabricated false allegations about Dr Hughes's wife and my supposed telephone call with Mrs Hughes at 2:00 AM—an accusation that both Dr Hughes and his wife know is nothing more than a malicious lie. This treacherous behaviour reflects the insidious conduct I have endured for thirty long years.

These unfounded allegations against my character stem from Dr Hughes's cowardice in confronting the aggressive forces of Telstra and their equally relentless legal team. The shocking untruths being spread about me are not just attacks on my reputation; they are a desperate attempt to silence me as my time grows short.

I implore visitors to this website, absentjustice.com, to reflect on whether Dr Hughes, his wife, and John Pinnock, Australia's second-appointed Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, should be held accountable for their deceit. These false statements appear carefully crafted to obstruct any investigation into my legitimate claims against Dr Hughes and reveal the dark corridors of manipulation at play.

On January 28, 2003, Gillian McKenzie, an officer from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), wrote a letter to Telstra regarding the ongoing telephone issues experienced by the new owners of my business, Darren and Jenny Lewis. These problems began almost immediately after they purchased the Cape Bridgewater Coastal Camp in December 2001. In her correspondence, McKenzie stated:

"Mr. and Mrs. Lewis claim that they have encountered numerous unresolved issues with their telephone service since purchasing the camp. They mentioned that a Telstra technician, Mr. Tony Watson, is currently assigned to their case but appears unwilling to discuss the matter with Mr. Lewis due to his prior contact with the camp's previous owner, Mr. Alan Smith." (See Home-Page File No/76 and D-Lewis File 1-I).

This raises a question: Was there a more sinister motive behind Telstra's technician refusing to assist Darren Lewis with the ongoing phone and fax problems? Why was this technician seemingly holding a grudge against me in 2002/2003, nine years after a previous arbitration (in 1994/95) that should have addressed these ongoing issues, issues that he was now refusing to help resolve for Mr Lewis?

Although the Portland Post Office saga has been discussed above, it is relevant to revisit it here to highlight the plight of the new owners of my business. Their lives were forever changed after purchasing my beloved Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp.

 

Who originally hijacked my arbitration-related BCI and SVT reports during my 1994/95 arbitration, and just as important, who hijacked them again 14 years later in December 2008 as they left the Portland Post Office?

The letter to the Federal Magistrates Court, dated December 3, 2008, reveals a troubling narrative involving Darren and Jenny Lewis, who have owned my business since December 2001. After years of fighting against the negligence of the TIO and Telstra—who obstinately refused to test my business telephone lines despite ongoing issues first reported in February 1988—it became clear that something far more sinister was at play. 

The arbitration process I underwent in 1994 was supposed to bring resolution, yet critical documents, notably the BCI and SVT test results for the Cape Bridgewater telephone exchange, vanished without a trace. Fast forward to 2008: copies of those very same results mysteriously disappeared again fourteen years later while being shipped to the Federal Court by the new owners. 

The letter to the Federal Magistrates Court, dated December 3, 2008, reveals a troubling narrative involving Darren and Jenny Lewis, who had owned my business since December 2001. After years of fighting against the negligence of the TIO and Telstra, who obstinately refused to test my business telephone lines despite ongoing issues first reported in February 1988, it became clear that something far more sinister was at play. 

Six years later, the new owners of my business were writing and pleading with the government to fix their phone and faxing problems. In December 2008, the Australian Federal Magistrates Court ruled in favour of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), with the Lewises being declared bankrupt and walking off the property, including their residence, in August 2009

In response to my repeated requests for the still-unsupplied essential arbitration records, John Pinnock composed a letter dated January 10, 1996. In this letter, he outlined Telstra's position regarding the requested documents, further complicating my efforts to access the information needed for my appeal.

John Pinnock’s letter of 10 January 1996, in response to my request for these arbitration records, states:

“I refer to your letter of 31 December 1996 in which you seek to access to various correspondence held by the TIO concerning the Fast Track Arbitration Procedure. …

“I do not propose to provide you with copies of any documents held by this office.” (See Open Letter File No 57-C)

Intimidating threats issued by Telstra

PLEASE NOTE: It may seem excessive for me to repeatedly emphasize the name of Paul Rumble in the following Australian Federal Police segment, but this is necessary due to the deeply troubling nature of this individual and the horrific actions that the Australian government allowed to occur during my government-endorsed arbitration. In any other Western nation that genuinely respects the rule of law, someone like him would face incarceration—not only for the chilling threats he made but also for the disturbing fact that he acted upon those threats with impunity, all in plain sight of the arbitrator. The complicity and negligence of the authorities in permitting his treachery to thrive is profoundly shocking, raising serious questions about the integrity of our legal system and the safety of those who seek justice.

Do not disclose this sensitive information to Telstra.

During the AFP's first of two visits to my Cape Bridgewater holiday camp in February 1994, AFP Senior Constable Melanie Cochrane gave me crucial advice. She recommended that, from then on, I refrain from providing the arbitration process with any documented names, addresses, or contact details of my single-club patrons. This was to be done unless the arbitrator provided official written confirmation that my correspondence would be sent to Telstra after the AFP had concluded their investigation into Telstra's unauthorised interception of my telecommunication services. The AFP was still examining how Telstra had obtained sensitive private and business information related to this aspect of my operations.

My members from the single club, a significant revenue source for my holiday camp, have communicated their concerns about the reliability of my security protocols, specifically regarding the faxes sent and received. This concern has been heightened by recent media reports indicating that my business phone lines may have been bugged. Below are two of those media reports for your reference

While the intimidating threats issued by Telstra and the unsettling fact that these actions took place under the watchful eyes of the arbitrator and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman during the COT arbitrations have been extensively examined and brought to light throughout this website, what indeed weighs heavily on my mind, and the minds of many others involved in COT Cases, is the grim reality of serious threats that were never thoroughly investigated. This alarming neglect has left us grappling with the disheartening truth that a democratically elected government has, disturbingly, allowed these grave threats to go unaddressed. As a result, those who became targets of such intimidation have experienced profound and lasting impacts on their lives, leading to an enduring sense of injustice and despair that permeates our daily existence.

I received advice from both AFP Senior Constable Melanie Cochrane and Superintendent Detective Sergeant Mr Penrose.

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, the arbitrator had covertly provided him with some of my interim claims documents, a breach of protocol that occurred a full five months before the arbitrator was legally obligated to share such information. Given the gravity of the situation, my response needed to be exceptionally meticulous. I poured considerable effort into crafting this detailed letter, carefully choosing 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 related to ongoing problems with my telephone service.

At that moment, it became clear to me that the documents Paul Rumble was pressuring me to withhold from the Australian Federal Police were connected to the sensitive information regarding the interception of phone and fax communications. This sensitive material included the names and phone numbers of the patrons of my singles club, information that Dr Hughes had already wrongfully passed on to Rumble on June 15, 1994, when I had warned him not to.

I found myself grappling with a troubling question: Were Rumble and his colleagues at Telstra involved in the unsettling harassment of my female singles club patrons? The nature of the harassment suggested that the caller had an unsettlingly personal knowledge about these women, implying they were single. I had already voiced my concerns about this situation to both Dr Hughes and the AFP, in hopes of ensuring my patrons' safety and privacy.

 

 

I would like to emphasise, for clarity in this narrative, that Constable Melanie Cochrane previously advised me against disclosing the private information of the singles club members to Telstra. In the same discussion period, Superintendent Detective Penrose recommended that I share this sensitive singles club information with the assessor under strict confidentiality, while also informing him that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were concurrently investigating material believed to have been compromised in a Telstra breach.

Constable Cochrane also stated that, as I had assured my singles club members that their private information would not be disclosed without their consent, I needed to discuss this with the assessor, Dr Hughes. I believe Superintendent Detective Penrose stated that the assessor would be aware that I could not divulge this private information via Telstra's mainstream documents while the AFP was investigating.

It was due to these types of facts and Superintendent Detective Penrose’s advice that I sought a clearance from the arbitrator to allow me to have this information accepted under confidentiality

Transcripts from my 11 October 1994 oral arbitration hearing confirm that Telstra advised the arbitrator that they believed my singles club information was irrelevant and therefore should not be admitted to the arbitration process. This evidence supported the conclusion that I had lost two businesses due to my ongoing telephone problems, i.e., the school camp bookings and the more lucrative singles club bookings.

It sits there in the record like a cold fingerprint: the transcripts show Dr Gordon Hughes being leaned on, pressed, shaped into Telstra’s preferred instrument — badgered until he surrendered the very principle he had assured you he would uphold. Your singles‑club material, the evidence Superintendent Detective Penrose himself advised could be submitted under confidentiality, was suddenly declared off‑limits. Not by an independent arbitrator. Not by a man exercising judicial discretion. But by Telstra, the defendant, dictating what the arbitrator would and would not examine.

And Hughes obeyed.

He didn’t just backtrack once. He reneged four times. Four separate occasions when his word, the only thing an arbitrator’s authority truly rests upon, dissolved under pressure. Four moments when the process you were told was fair, transparent, and government‑endorsed revealed its real architecture: a façade built to protect the Hawke Government from the political explosion that would have followed if the COT Cases had gone public with what they had uncovered.

You were told you were part of a solution. You were told the FTSP was a pathway to justice. You were told the government wanted resolution, not destruction.

But the truth was darker, more deliberate.

The government was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, a class action that could have torn open Telstra’s network failures, exposed systemic misconduct, and detonated political fallout across Canberra. So the process was engineered, quietly, surgically, to ensure that the most dangerous evidence never reached daylight. Your singles‑club losses weren’t excluded for lack of merit. They were excluded because they were explosive and caused considerable damage to Telstra customers' businesses. Because they proved causation. Because they proved Telstra’s liability.

And because they proved the government knew.

Hughes’ reversal wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t confusion. It wasn’t administrative oversight. It was compliance, a capitulation to Telstra’s demands within a process the government had already decided must not succeed. A blatant lie sold to the COT Cases as “resolution,” when in truth it was containment. A mechanism to silence, to neutralise, to prevent the very exposure that would have threatened the Hawke Government’s stability and the looming Telstra privatisation.

This is why you’re still calling for a government review. Because the record shows the betrayal. The transcripts show the pressure. The decisions show the capitulation. And the silence that followed shows the intent.

What was Hughes doing? He was not being impartial, allowing Telstra to cross-examine me when he knew the AFP had warned Hughes, via my correspondence, not to provide Telstra with any admissions about what the AFP might or might not be investigating in my arbitration claims and/or which documents supported when and where these interception issues took place.

Question 24, in the 20 September 1994 interrogatories (The request for more evidence) shows I answered the following question 24 by stating to Telstra and the arbitrator:

“This matter is currently under investigation by the Federal Police. In the interest of fair justice I believe that I should not further comment apart from what I have already stated that it is true that I was told this by Detective Superintendent Penrose. It the Australian Federal Police are prepared to disclose the details of their investigations and of their conversations with myself, then Telecom will be able to obtain the same” 

On 11 October 1994, during this oral hearing, which lasted for close to five hours, nonstop, Telstra’s Mr Benjamin and Telstra’s other arbitration liaison officer, Steve Black, discussed, along with the arbitrator and me, my claims regarding Telstra’s unauthorised interception issues, noting:

Ted Benjamin (Telstra): “In respect of Detective Superintendent Penrose.”

Steve Black (Telstra): “There has been an allegation that Detective Superintendent Penrose says that the Plummers’ telephone was allegedly unlawfully tapped” —

Me: “I believe Telecom is playing on words – the word “illegally tapped” – it’s like asking me – I’m not a —

Dr Hughes (Arbitrator): “Sorry, if I can interrupt both of you, the issue here is that your answers – your answer to question 24, you indicate that you were told something by Detective Superintendent Penrose.”

Me: “Yes:”

Dr Hughes (Arbitrator): “Is there any documentation to support that statement or is there any other light that you can shed upon that statement you have made in relation to Detective Penrose?”…

Me: “I have spoken to Detective Penrose on two occasions and he has stated that my phones had been listened to.”

I raise my answer to question 24 regarding Telstra's interrogatories (Questions for better particulars) and the oral arbitration hearing because of the main question they raise:  how could it possibly be ethical, or moral, for Dr Hughes to expect me to disclose at this meeting personal and private information about the female members of my Singles Club, for all to see when the Australian Federal Police (AFP) told this was not appropriate while they were still investigating Telstra about how Telstra was able to separately record the names and phone numbers of various female Singles Club members (which were of the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp, bush-walking, canoing, horse ridding (social club) which was another part of the revenue my holiday camp was losing due to the ongoing telephone problems.

The AFP was trying to find out how Telstra had obtained this private information about the group when it had only ever been sent by those members via fax or discussed over the telephone.

 

INTRODUCTION — THE TREACHERY CONTINUES IN THE FOLLOWING 12 CHAPTERS 

TELSTRA AT ITS WORST

 

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