How can one present an accurate and compelling narrative about the events that unfolded during various Australian Government-endorsed arbitrations without including supporting exhibits to substantiate those claims? We find ourselves in this predicament due to the pervasive corruption that seems to seep through the very fabric of the government bureaucracy. How can the author convincingly demonstrate—without the looming threat of legal repercussions—that public servants were complicit in providing private and sensitive information to the then-government-owned telecommunications carrier (the defendants), all while deliberately concealing the same crucial documents from the claimants and their fellow Australian citizens?
What strategies can be employed to articulate a story so astonishing that even the author questions its credibility, only to feel validated upon reviewing their meticulous records before moving forward? How do you expose the deep-rooted collusion among an arbitrator, various appointed government watchdogs (umpires), and the defendants? How can it be brought to light that the defendants, in this arbitration process—the former government-owned telecommunications carrier—exploited equipment connected to their network to intercept and screen faxed materials sent from our office? They stored these documents without our knowledge or consent and then redirected them to their intended recipients.
The Telstra Corporation, serving as the defendant, likely utilized this intercepted material to fortify their defense in the arbitration, ultimately causing significant harm to the claimants.
How many other arbitration processes across Australia have fallen victim to such invasive hacking tactics? Is electronic eavesdropping—and this violation of confidentiality—still an ongoing reality during legitimate Australian arbitrations today? In January 1999, the claimants alerted the Australian Government to the alarming reality that confidential, arbitration-related documents were being secretly and illegally screened before they even reached Parliament House in Canberra. Will that critical report, which has the potential to illuminate these troubling practices, ever see the light of day and be made available to the Australian public?
Given the circumstances, venturing into the online sphere to share my story became my only viable option for exploring and exposing these critical issues between Chapters 1 and 12.
Chapter 1
Learn about government corruption and the dirty deeds used by the government to cover up these horrendous injustices committed against 16 Australian citizens
Chapter 2
Betrayal deceit disinformation duplicity falsehood fraud hypocrisy lying mendacity treachery and trickery. This sums up the COT government endorsed arbitrations.
Chapter 3
Ending bribery corruption means holding the powerful to account and closing down the systems that allows bribery, illicit financial flows, money laundering, and the enablers of corruption to thrive.
Chapter 4
Learn about government corruption and the dirty deeds used by the government to cover up these horrendous injustices committed against 16 Australian citizens. Government corruption within the public service affected most if not all of the COT arbitrations.
Chapter 5
Corruption is contagious and does not respect sectoral boundaries. Corruption involves duplicity and reduces levels of morality and trust.
Chapter 6
Anti-corruption policies need to be used in anti-corruption reforms and strategy. Corruption metrics and corruption risk assessment is good governance
Chapter 7
Bribery and Corruption happens in the shadows, often with the help of professional enablers such as bankers, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents, opaque financial systems and anonymous shell companies that allow corruption schemes to flourish and the corrupt to launder their wealth.
Chapter 8
Corrupt practices in government and the results of those corrupt practices become problematic enough – but when that corruption becomes systemic in more than one operation, it becomes cancer that endangers the welfare of the world's democracy.
Chapter 9
Corruption in government, including non-government self-regulators, undermines the credibility of that government. It erodes the trust of its citizens who are left without guidance are the feel of purpose. Bribery and Corruption is cancer that destroys economic growth and prosperity.
Chapter 10
The horrendous, unaddressed crimes perpetrated against the COT Cases during government-endorsed arbitrations administered by the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman have never been investigated.
Chapter 11
This type of skulduggery is treachery, a Judas kiss with dirty dealing and betrayal. This is dirty pool and crookedness and dishonest. This conduct fester’s corruption. It is as bad, if not worse than double-dealing and cheating those who trust you.&a
Chapter 12
Absentjustice.com - the website that triggered the deeper exploration into the world of political corruption, it stands shoulder to shoulder with any true crime story.
After Mr Anderson completed his testing on 27 April, the phone took nine days to reach Telstra’s laboratory. It arrived on 6 May, and laboratory testing did not commence for another four days. Ray Bell, the author of the TF 200 report, was adamant at point 1.3, under the heading Initial Inspection, that:
“The suspect TF200 telephone when received was found to be very dirty around the keypad with what appeared to be a sticky substance, possibly coffee.” (See Tampering With Evidence File No 3)
Clicking on the TF200 telephone below will show that a second photo I received under FOI was taken from the front of the same TF200 phone, confirming that the note I placed on it was pretty clean when it was received at Telstra. See Open Letter File No/37 exhibits 3, 4, 5, and 6. So, who 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?
This report raises several questions. When the phone left my office, it was quite clean. Why did it arrive at the laboratory in such a filthy state? How did the beer get inside the phone? Who would have a reason to pour beer into the phone and why? If the addition of beer was not deliberate, how did it get inside the phone? The main aim of Telstra’s submitted report, used as evidence, was to prove that Telstra’s service was not at fault.
As soon as I read this beer-in-the-phone report, I requested the arbitrator, asking for a copy of all the laboratory technicians' handwritten notes so he could see how Telstra had arrived at their conclusion. I had appointed my forensic document researcher to look over the documents when I received them, and he provided me with his CV credentials and signed a confidentiality agreement stating he would not disclose his findings to anyone outside of the arbitration procedure. Although I passed all this information on to the arbitrator, the only response I received from the arbitrator and Telstra was a duplicate copy of the report I had already received as part of Telstra’s defence.
On 28 November 1995, six months after my arbitration ended, I received Telstra’s TF200 EXICOM report. This report confirms Telstra carried out two separate investigations of my EXICOM TF200 telephone, two weeks apart and the second test report, dated between 24 and 26 May 1994, proved that the first one, the report provided to the arbitrator, was not an accurate account of the testing process at all, but a total fabrication. Photos and graphs by Telstra laboratory staff proved that wet beer introduced into the TF200 phone dried out entirely in 48 hours. As mentioned above, Telstra collected my phone from my business on 27 April 1994, but it was not tested until 10 May – a gap of 14 days. Various pages (see Tampering With Evidence File No/5) confirm that, even though Telstra knew its second investigation proved the first arbitration report, dated between 10 and 12 May 1994, was more than fundamentally flawed, it still submitted the first flawed report to the arbitrator as Telstra’s factual findings.
The marked Telstra FOI documents folio A64535 to A64562 (see Tampering With Evidence File No/5), are clear evidence that Telstra did do two separate TF200 tests on my collected phone two weeks apart. FOI folio A64535 confirms with this handwritten Telstra laboratory file note, dated 26 May 1994, that when wet beer was poured into a TF200 phone, the wet substance dried up within 48 hours. The air vents within the phone itself allowed for the beer to escape. In other words, how could my TF200, collected on 27 April 1994, have been wet inside the phone on 10 May 1994 when it was tested at Telstra’s laboratories?
Another disturbing side to this tapering with arbitration evidence by Telstra is that I volunteered for the Cape Bridgewater Country Fire Authority (CFA) for many years before this tampering occurred. The following chapters show that during my arbitration, Telstra twisted the reason I could not be present for the testing of my TF200 telephone at my premises on a scheduled meeting on the morning of 27 April 1994. Telstra only reported in their file notes (later submitted to the arbitrator) that I refused to allow Telstra to test the phones because I was tired. There was no mention in these file notes that I advised the fault response unit that I had been fighting an out-of-control fire for 14 hours or that my sore eyes made it impossible to observe such testing by Telstra. I fought the fire the previous evening from 6 pm to 9 am the following morning.
It is clear from our Tampering With Evidence page that not only did Telstra set out to discredit me by implying I was just too tired to have my TF200 phone tested, but after Telstra removed the phone, it was tampered with before it arrived at Telstra’s Melbourne laboratories: someone from Telstra poured beer into the phone. In its arbitration defence report, Telstra then alleged that sticky beer was the cause of the phone’s ongoing lock-up problems, not the Cape Bridgewater network. This wicked deed and the threats I received from Telstra during my arbitration are a testament that my claims should have been investigated years ago. So, even though I carried out my civic duties as an Australian citizen, over and beyond, by supplying vital evidence to the AFP and fighting out-of-control fires, I was still penalised on both occasions during my arbitration.
The other twist to this part of my story is, how could I have spilt beer into my telephone, as Telstra's arbitration defence documents state, when I had been fighting an out-of-control fire? I certainly would not have been driving the CFA truck or assisting my fire buddies had I been drinking beer. Reading this part of my story will give the reader some idea of the dreadful conduct that we COT Cases had to put up with from Telstra as we battled for a reliable phone service.
When I provided the arbitrator and the arbitration Special Counsel with a statutory declaration prepared by Paul Westwood s forensic documents specialist, who advised he would test the collected TF200 and inspect Telstra's laboratory working notes to see how Telstra came up with their findings regarding my drinking habits had caused my phone faults and not the EXICOM TF200 both the arbitrator and arbitration special counsel refused my request to have Telstra's arbitration defence investigated on the grounds fraud had played a significant part in the preparation of the TF200 report.
Telstra-Corruption-Freehill-Hollingdale & Page
Corrupt practices persisted throughout the COT arbitrations, flourishing in secrecy and obscurity. These insidious actions have managed to evade necessary scrutiny. Notably, the phone issues persisted for years following the conclusion of my arbitration, established to rectify these faults.
Confronting Despair
The independent arbitration consultants demonstrated a concerning lack of impartiality. Instead of providing clear and objective insights, their guidance to the arbitrator was often marked by evasive language, misleading statements, and, at times, outright falsehoods.
Flash Backs – China-Vietnam
In 1967, Australia participated in the Vietnam War. I was on a ship transporting wheat to China, where I learned China was redeploying some of it to North Vietnam. Chapter 7, "Vietnam—Vietcong," discusses the link between China and my phone issues.
A Twenty-Year Marriage Lost
As bookings declined, my marriage came to an end. My ex-wife, seeking her fair share of our venture, left me with no choice but to take responsibility for leaving the Navy without adequately assessing the reliability of the phone service in my pursuit of starting a business.
Salvaging What I Could
Mobile coverage was nonexistent, and business transactions were not conducted online. Cape Bridgewater had only eight lines to service 66 families—132 adults. If four lines were used simultaneously, the remaining 128 adults would have only four lines to serve their needs.
Lies Deceit And Treachery
I was unaware of Telstra's unethical and corrupt business practices. It has now become clear that various unethical organisational activities were conducted secretly. Middle management was embezzling millions of dollars from Telstra.
An Unlocked Briefcase
On June 3, 1993, Telstra representatives visited my business and, in an oversight, left behind an unlocked briefcase. Upon opening it, I discovered evidence of corrupt practices concealed from the government, playing a significant role in the decline of Telstra's telecommunications network.
A Government-backed Arbitration
An arbitration process was established to hide the underlying issues rather than to resolve them. The arbitrator, the administrator, and the arbitration consultants conducted the process using a modified confidentiality agreement. In the end, the process resembled a kangaroo court.
Not Fit For Purpose
AUSTEL investigated the contents of the Telstra briefcases. Initially, there was disbelief regarding the findings, but this eventually led to a broader discussion that changed the telecommunications landscape. I received no acknowledgement from AUSTEL for not making my findings public.
&am
A Non-Graded Arbitrator
Who granted the financial and technical advisors linked to the arbitrator immunity from all liability regarding their roles in the arbitration process? This decision effectively shields the arbitration advisors from any potential lawsuits by the COT claimants concerning misconduct or negligence.<
The AFP Failed Their Objective
In September 1994, two officers from the AFP met with me to address Telstra's unauthorized interception of my telecommunications services. They revealed that government documents confirmed I had been subjected to these violations. Despite this evidence, the AFP did not make a finding.&am
The Promised Documents Never Arrived
In a February 1994 transcript of a pre-arbitration meeting, the arbitrator involved in my arbitration stated that he "would not determination on incomplete information.". The arbitrator did make a finding on incomplete information.
