Chapter 7- Post Traumatic Stress - PSD
AUTHORS COMMENT:
It is unbelievable for the Liberal-Country Coalition to have placed Australian troops in life-threatening circumstances as they did for their political point-scoring. To have done this while trading with the enemy, using so many young lives here in Australia, New Zealand and the USA as collateral damage, is a betrayal of the worst possible kind.
Possibly worse is Australia's bureaucrats continued to trade with China for so long after being aware that China was assisting North Vietnam (the enemy) while that enemy was killing our youths and the youths of our allies.
However, one thing must never be forgotten: The Hon. Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia, bridged a gap that the South Vietnamese have always praised Mr Fraser and the government for helping them lead a meaningful life.
CHAPTER — THE SHADOW THAT NEVER LEFT
Cinematic Opening
The past does not stay buried. It waits. It watches. And when the right document is placed in your hands — redacted, distorted, or deliberately incomplete — it rises again with the force of a tidal wave.
In 1993, as I fought Telstra over telephone faults that were crippling my business, another battle was unfolding inside me. A battle that began not in a boardroom or a Senate hearing, but on the deck of a British ship in 1967, in the ports of Communist China, and in the jungles of North Vietnam where young Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans were dying.
The two stories — Vietnam and the Telstra arbitration — are not separate. They are chapters of the same truth: when powerful men decide that trade, reputation, or political convenience matter more than human lives, ordinary people become collateral.
The Memorial, the Trauma, and the Question That Would Not Die
In 1993, as the Vietnam–Portland War Memorial neared completion — finally finished on 14 August — I was meeting regularly with my Federal Member of Parliament, The Hon. David Hawker MP. Hawker had taken over the seat of Wannon from Malcolm Fraser in 1992, and during those meetings I told him something deeply personal.
I had spoken with Malcolm Fraser in April 1993. Not as a politician. Not as a former Prime Minister. But as a man carrying a question that had haunted me for twenty‑six years.
I asked Fraser whether my letter to him dated 18 September 1967 — the letter exposing that Australian wheat shipped to China was being redirected to North Vietnam — had influenced his later decision, as Prime Minister, to allow more than 50,000 Vietnamese refugees into Australia.
Was it guilt? Was it conscience? Was it an attempt to atone for what the Holt–McEwen government had done — secretly feeding the North Vietnamese while publicly supporting the South?
Fraser did not dismiss me. He listened. And something in his expression told me that the question cut deeper than he expected.
The Trauma Returns
At the same time, I was being counselled by Dr Bernard in Melbourne and Ms Francolm in Portland. The memories of what I had seen in Communist China — the fear, the brutality, the knowledge that our cargo was feeding the enemy — had never truly left me. But in 1993, they came roaring back.
Why? Because Telstra, during my arbitration, handed me a document. A document with sections blacked out. A document that disturbed the Australian Federal Police. A document that disturbed me far more.
It is entirely possible that the redacted content related to my April 1993 discussion with Fraser — the China and Vietnam issues — because the AFP transcripts from my second interview in September 1994 show that Telstra had been documenting my business affairs as early as September 1992.
Someone, somewhere, was watching. And someone knew far more about my past than they ever admitted.
The Seamen Who Refused to Be Complicit
In July 1967, after unloading 13,600 tons of Australian wheat in Communist China, we discovered the unthinkable: part of that wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam.
To the very place where young men from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States were being slaughtered and maimed — possibly after eating a bowl of Australian home‑grown wheat.
Sixteen British seamen and one Australian refused to re‑man the Hopepeak for a second voyage. We refused to be part of a trade that fed the enemy while our own countrymen were dying.
For that act of conscience, we were punished. Our reputations were smeared. Our careers were derailed. And the truth was buried.
Sir John McEwen and the First Betrayal
Sir John McEwen — then Trade Minister, later Prime Minister — did not defend us. He did not investigate. He did not acknowledge the truth.
He misled the public. He misled Parliament. He protected Australia’s lucrative wheat trade with Communist China — even as the lives of young soldiers were being extinguished before they reached manhood.
This was the first betrayal. The first time I saw how far powerful men would go to protect trade, reputation, and political convenience.
A Year of Refugees and a Broken System
During this same period, working with the headmaster of a Victorian primary school, I opened my holiday camp to groups of twelve Vietnamese refugees every two weeks. They stayed free of charge — accommodation and food provided — at a time when I had no money to pay for labour.
They worked from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Painting cabins. Mowing lawns. Repairing bunks. Replacing windows.
The rest of each day was theirs.
This continued for almost a year.
I did it because it felt like the only way to balance the scales — even slightly — after what I had witnessed in 1967.
And Then Came the Second Betrayal
Decades later, when the Australian government promised that Telstra would fix my telephone faults as part of the arbitration process, I believed them.
I believed them because I wanted to believe that the country I had served — the country whose secrets I had carried — would finally do right by me.
But they broke that promise. Just as McEwen had broken faith in 1967. Just as others would break faith again in the 1990s.
The Vietnam trauma and the Telstra arbitration are not separate stories. They are the same story. A story of truth buried, truth denied, and truth fought for — again and again.
The Shadow That Never Left
The past does not stay buried. It waits for the moment when the truth becomes too heavy to silence.
And when it rises, it demands to be heard.
This chapter is that moment.
The Fraser legacy - refugees, asylum seekers and ... - ParlInfo
Enter Post Traumatic Stress - PSD
So chronic and serious were my telephone faults in early 1993 that Telstra threatened me (the first of two series of threats) to register my ongoing telephone/faxing problems with their outside lawyers, Freehill Hollingdale & Page, or they would refuse to treat my phone complaints as genuine.
By July/August 1993, the communications regulator was becoming concerned at Telstra’s approach to our complaints, particularly their continual use of outside solicitors. In October 1993, while the regulator was negotiating with Telstra for a commercial settlement proposal for the COT members, the regulator’s chairman made it clear to Telstra’s commercial division that the regulator would not be happy if Telstra’s solicitors were used in future COT matters. This request was ignored, however, and Telstra continued to insist that I register my complaints through their solicitors until 28 January 1994.
Later, during my arbitration after signing my agreement on 21 April 1994, I learned that Telstra’s solicitors also acted as Telstra’s defence counsel. By this time, I could provide the arbitrator with clear proof that Telstra had provided incorrect written statements to the regulator and me about incidents that occurred between January and August of 1993. I registered this complaint in January 1994, during my Fast Track Settlement Proposal (FTSP), which was in place, having been signed by Telstra on 18 November 1993 and the COT Cases on 23 November 1993. I also resubmitted that part of my claim during my arbitration, but, like the FTSP, the arbitrator would not investigate it.
On 18 August 1993, The Hon David Hawker MP again wrote to me, 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.” (See Arbitrator File No/77 and Arbitrator File No/82)
Children's lives could be at risk
Comments made from 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)
On page 11 in the government's secret findings dated 4 March 1994 (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings), concerning the Children's Hospital saga, it is noted:
"... the camp experienced major problems with incoming and outgoing calls causing stress to parents children and the hospital. During one medical emergency had to contact Portland Base Hospital via Smith’s Facsimile line".
After I received the above letter from the children’s hospital, I attempted to telephone a Melbourne clinical psychologist, Dr Burnard, for support, only to have my conversation with his receptionist interrupted three times by my ongoing telephone faults. On each occasion, as was previously experienced by the youths from the Children's Hospital, the phone conversation dropped out within one or two minutes. Later, I received a letter from his office, saying:
“I am writing to you to confirm details of telephone conversation difficulties experienced between this office and our residence mid-morning this day, 5 May 1993. At approximately 11.30 am today Mr Alan Smith telephoned this office requesting to speak with Don Burnard. Mr Burnard was not available to take his call. During this time the telephone cut out three times. Each time Mr Smith telephoned back to continue the call “.
“All of these clients have been subjected to persistent environmental stress as a result of constant pressure in their business and erratic patterns of change in the functioning of their telephones which were essential to the success of their businesses."
I later discussed with Dr Burnard, using one of the two Telstra telephone boxes located outside the Portland Post Office (20 Kilometres away), that my China flashbacks had resurfaced. At Dr Burnard's suggestion, I contacted a local Portland psychologist to discuss how the stress of my ongoing telephone problems had regenerated my Red China flashbacks.
It was, therefore, important to mention here Dr Burnard and Ms Davis's assessment of the stress we COT Cases had suffered due to the constant pressure of trying to run a telephone-dependent business without a telephone. This stress brought back my Red Guard - The Peoples of the Republic of China flashbacks, and therefore, it was necessary to introduce my People's Republic of China issues on this website (see Chapter 2 - Viet Cong - Australian Wheat
