Taking on the Establishment

The unlawful acts were to minimize the arbitration defence payout, i.e., Telstra's commercial liability to the COT Cases and to the many Australian customers who were paying for a telephone service that was not fit for purpose.

Dilapidated Copperwire Network

Arbitration

The arbitrator involved in the COT case arbitrations, whose actions appeared to favour government interests, asserted that there were no ongoing issues affecting the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp. In his May 11, 1995 award, he acknowledged only outdated, anecdotal faults related to Telstra, disregarding the pressing ongoing problems. Had he been informed of the significant 120,000 unresolved faults within Telstra, he might have prompted his technical consultants to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the validity of my ongoing telephone fault complaints.

This situation raises a critical inquiry: did the 120,000 COT-type customers across Australia, as referenced in Falsification Report File No/8, only experience some of the phone problems raised by the COT Cases? Could some of those 120,000 COT-type phone complaints have been refuted for billing claims and the phone faults that had caused the billing problems, making those cases two-fold complaints? These challenges may have been linked to problems associated with the Ericsson AXE telephone's known exchange faults as well as the corroded copper wire problems, which were currently under scrutiny by AUSTEL in 1994, see CAN and AXE (Falsification Report File No/8), which is still being reported on by The Hon. Anthony Albanese in 2025. In simple terms, the problems never went away even after the COT Cases spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money trying to have the government fix these problems.

Additionally, the two letters dated April 8 and 9, 1994, from Telstra's General Manager to AUSTEL's Robin Davey were mishandled, reflecting a troubling disregard for public welfare. The concealment of the number of individuals affected by these faults caused significant personal distress and led to widespread financial hardship. While households faced overcharging for phone calls, this was merely the surface issue; numerous businesses among the 120,000 COT-type customers experienced lost calls, ultimately contributing to bankruptcies, as evidenced by the twelve COT cases currently in arbitration. Acknowledging the seriousness of these issues and their profound effects on individuals and families is imperative.

The type of corroded copper wire that I, along with approximately 120,000 other COT-type Australian citizens, experienced reflects the serious shortcomings in the government's investigation of our claims. My concerns, including those related to the lack of action from the government regulator AUSTEL (now ACMA), were warranted, especially given that the arbitrator and Telstra did not rectify my ongoing billing claims during the arbitration process. This situation highlights the significant issues within Australia's copper network, as documented on absentjustice.com and in sources like Delimiter’s "Worst of the worst: Photos of Australia’s copper network | Delimiter.

Ongoing telephone problems

In the ongoing discourse surrounding political and media misinformation related to the NBN, one critical issue remains inadequately addressed: Did Australia’s copper network meet the original mandatory government regulatory requirements at the time of Telstra’s privatisation? During my case with the COT arbitrator, I received nine separate sworn statements from Telstra witnesses asserting that my service had met the network standards—indicating that there were no more ongoing telephone issues.

The key question is: Were these nine sworn statements made under oath truthful or false? An honest response to this question could have significant implications, potentially affecting billions of dollars in Commonwealth spending and suggesting that Telstra misled the arbitrator to minimise its liability towards me. As demonstrated by the evidence, my phone issues persisted for eleven years after the arbitrator ruled in favour of Telstra, stating that they had resolved the network problems.

23 June 2015: Had the arbitrator appointed to assess my arbitration claims correctly investigated ALL of my submitted evidence, it would have validated my claim as an ongoing problem, NOT a past problem, as his final award shows. It is clear from the following link dated > Unions raise doubts over Telstra's copper network; workers using ... that when reading in conjunction with Can We Fix The Can, which was released in March 1994, these copper-wire network faults have existed for more than 24 years.

9 November 2017: Sadly, many Australians in rural Australia can only access a second-rate NBN. This didn’t have to be the case: had the Australian government ensured the arbitration process it endorsed to investigate the COT cases’ claims of ongoing telephone problems been conducted transparently, it could have used our evidence to start fixing the problems we uncovered in 1993/94. This news article https://theconversation.com/the-accc-investigation-into-the-nbn-will-be-useful-but-its-too-little-too-late-87095, again, shows that the COT Cases claims of copperwire ailing network were more than valid.

28 April 2018: This ABC news article dated 28 April 2018 regarding the NBN see >NBN boss blames Government's reliance on copper for slow ... needs to be read in conjunction with my own story going back 20 1988 through to 2025, because had the arbitration lies told under oath by so many Telstra employees had not occurred then the government would have been in a better position to evaluate just how bad the copper-wire Customer Access Network (CAN) was just 7-years ago.

In January 2025, the latest pre-election 2025 announcement, Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, said only a Labour government would "finish the NBN" and "keep the NBN in public hands". Credit: The Nightly

Labor will inject $3bn in equity into the national broadband network, as Anthony Albanese warns against letting the critical Coalition control the necessary infrastructure.

In his latest pre-election announcement, the Prime Minister on Monday said only a Labor government would "finish the NBN" and "keep the NBN in public hands".

The equity injection will fund the upgrade of Australia's remaining national fibre to the node network, which the Government claims will deliver higher internet speeds for more than 600,000 premises by 2030.

Mr Albanese claimed the alternative was for the coalition to sell the NBN off "to the highest bidder".

Take yourself back to the last time the coalition sought government; they said that they would stop the rollout of fibre because it was all about (according to Tony Abbott, Australia's previous prime minister) downloading videos and movies. They didn't understand that the NBN is about productivity, driving the economy, creating jobs," the PM said.

It's about how we live our lives. It is about telehealth and education services. It is absolutely critical to the way that a modern economy and a modern society function. refer to https://shorturl.at/68hD6.

Regrettably, many Australians, including myself, in 1993 and 1994, found ourselves entangled in settlement, arbitration, and mediation agreements. Driven by desperation, we each invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in professional fees to address our grievances. My arbitration alone cost me over $300,000 to prepare, an amount I could scarcely afford. The process was frustrating and drawn-out; the arbitrator or mediator (the assessor) would not rule in our favour until Telstra could conclusively demonstrate that they had resolved the ongoing issues with our telephone and fax services. In my specific situation, despite a written report from the arbitrator's technical resource unit DMR & Lane dated April 30, 1995, stating that they still had not identified the root causes of my ongoing telephone problems, Dr. Gordon Hughes, the arbitrator—who is now the Principal Partner at Daves Collinson Cave—issued his final decision on May 11, 1995. In this ruling, he asserted that my telephone and faxing problems and faults had been rectified by July 1994, disregarding what DMR & Lane had advised him at point 2.23 of their findings, as shown below:

If only the arbitrator had been shown these photos before he handed down his findings

Protecting the dilapidated copper wire network.

The following links Corruption in Arbitration, and Tampering With Evidence show that corruption within the seat of arbitration in Australia was rampant during the 1990s.

When Senator Len Harris (One Nation) met with me and several other COT claimants eight years after our arbitrations had failed to resolve our phone problems, I provided Senator Len Harris with documented information regarding the issues I experienced before my arbitration in 1994, during my arbitration, and beyond my arbitration.

It was clear from the information I provided Senator Len Harris that others in my region and around Australia was still having to contend with, including the business still being connected to the Telstra network via a single pair of wires. Senator Harris is extremely shocked at this information and prepares a press release for the following day, on behalf of the COTs. It was significantly censored before its release, revealing just how much power Telstra could wield as part of its strategy to downplay the COT claimant’s valid claims.

Please note that the Senator Harris that Senator Alston was referring to in his media release was Senator Richard Alston (Minister for Communications). The latter, along with the government, concealed from the public and Telstra shareholders the poor state of the infrastructure before selling it off.

On 14 November 2002, Senator Len Harris sent out his media release entitled Alston Praying For Continued Drought.

“In other words, sell the whole shooting bag before it rains and let someone else worry about fixing it. …”

“In light of evidence presented by the Communications Electrical Plumbing Union to a senate inquiry then to the Estens inquiry, other court submissions and a large dose of anecdotal evidence from Telstra employees, there seems no doubt the copper and lead network could implode with the onset of rain.”

“Numerous reports from regional areas that have recently received rainfall, reveal the subscriber fault rate has doubled and tripled due to lack of proper maintenance, faulty materials and understaffing. …

Faulty materials such as Hi Gel 3M 442, that has corroded copper joints

Contractors cutting corners with cable installation

Management giving capital works an economic priority order for replacing faulty cables and equipment i.e. those exchange areas that produce the most profit given priority for repair or replacement. This process could preclude most country areas. …”

“In city and country telephone exchange areas, low gas alarms, sometimes 200 or more a day, are sending technicians in a scurry from exchanges to manholes across the city or country roads and back. …”

“According to the union the CAN or Customer Access Network (customer land lines) accounts for 50 to 60 per cent of Telstra’s fixed costs, ie maintenance bill, but generates the lowest rate of return. …”

“Some industry analysts have placed the capital expenditure to replace the aging lead and faulty copper network in the hundreds of millions to perhaps the billion-dollar range. …”

“Estens, in recommendations 2.7 and 4.2, has clearly identified problems with the pair gain system, that allows multiple calls on a single pair of wires. It provides a good financial return for Telstra but is unfair on customers and repairmen.” (GS-CAV Exhibit 410-a to 447 - See GS-CAV 415-A)

This media release, by a Senator, was prepared to tell the truth about the whole story, page after page, and not the story the administrators of the COT arbitrations would have preferred to see released because the truth would show they allowed Telstra to:-

delete relevant information from documents legally requested under FOI by the COT claimants;
hide their defective network faults in flawed defence documents, such as the BCI test results and
use the manufactured TF200 EXICOM report to support their defence.

These actions have now brought me to where I am today. The arbitration did not fix my ongoing telephone problems, as the following caption shows.

In November 2002, Telstra and the new owners located shallow-installed wiring. When Telstra tested the first telephone service, it was done on 29 September 1994, but the testing process had to be abandoned without any results. Even the arbitration consultant, David Reid (Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd), and Telstra's Peter Gamble refused to test the service on 6 April 1995, despite the arbitrator officially requesting them to conduct the testing as part of the on-site arbitration visit.

Shallow wiring across Australia

TELSTRA - FILE - NOTES

Telstra’s file notes dated 16 October 2002: FOI folio 100264, concerns the new owner of my business, Mr Lewis’ who was having ongoing phone problems and had contacted his local Member of Parliament

“Customer has contacted MP again re service as he is not receiving calls on message bank or *10#. Customer is aware previous owner of business also had problems with service . Customer said he was told by Telstra that there was a problem in his exchange.” ( AS-CAV Exhibit 282 to 323 - See AS-CAV 289)

18th October 2002: Telstra FOI folio 100266 re the Lewis phone problems says:-

“The TIO have now raised a Level 1 complaint on behalf of Mr & Mrs Lewis. The TIO have specifically mentioned in their correspondence that the TIO have previously investigated a number of complaints raised by Alan Smith the previous account holder for this service.” ( AS-CAV Exhibit 282 to 323 - See AS-CAV 290)

8th November 2002: This Portland Observer newspaper article is headed: “Holiday camp still plagued by phone and fax problems”, and says:-

“The telecommunications problems which plagued former Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp operator Alan Smith continued to beset current owner Darren Lewis.” (GS-CAV Exhibit 410-a to 447 - See GS-CAV 414)

Although my phone problems began in 1988, it is now believed that many of the phone and fax problems that occurred, at least from 1991 onward, were caused by moisture and exacerbated by heavy rainfall in the area. Cape Bridgewater, located on the southern coast, faces the Southern Ocean and has long struggled with a moisture problem. This was not taken into account or discussed in any of the technical findings of the arbitrator or his Technical Resource Unit, despite my inclusion of this information in his submissions.

The above statements made by Senator Len Harris and Telstra's file notes share a commonality in that they discuss phone problems that have been ongoing for years.

It will be apparent to the reader that if they click on the caption of Senator Len Harris, they will learn Senator Harris was indeed a man who was concerned about Telstra's ailing network and the fact that the government was selling Telstra when the product they were selling was not Fit For Purpose.

illegally blanked out

On 25 July 2002, Senator Len Harris travelled from Cairns in Queensland (a trip that took more than seven hours) to meet four other COTs and me in Melbourne in an attempt to ensure our claims of discrimination against the Commonwealth were fully investigated. He was appalled that 16 Australian citizens were so badly discriminated against by the then-coalition government, despite a Senate estimates committee working party being established to investigate all 21 COT-type claims against Telstra.

Senator Harris read Senator Alan Eggleston’s 9 August 2001 letter warning me that, if I disclosed the in-camera Hansard records (supporting my claims that 16 Australian citizens were discriminated against in the most deplorable manner), then I would be held in contempt of the Senate and risk jail. Senator Harris was very upset, to say the least.

At a press conference the next day, Senator Harris aimed questions at the chief of staff to the Hon. Senator Richard Alston, Minister for Communications. He asked:

“Through the following questions, the media event will address serious issues related to Telstra’s unlawful withholding of documents from claimants, during litigation."

"Why didn’t the present government correctly address Telstra’s serious and unlawful conduct of withholding discovery and/or Freedom of Information (FOI) documents before the T2 float?"

"Why has the Federal government allowed five Australians (from a list of twenty-one) to be granted access to some of the Telstra discovery documents they needed to support their claims against Telstra, but denied the same rights to the other sixteen?"

"Why has the Federal Government ignored clear evidence that Telstra withheld many documents from a claimant during litigation?"

"Why has the Federal Government ignored evidence that, among those documents Telstra did supply, many were altered or delivered with sections illegally blanked out?”.

Bad bureaucrats and the establishment

The fact that the previous Arbitration Project Manager is currently in 2022 running two arbitration centres around the globe, one in Melbourne and the other in Hong Kong, shows that corruption and wrongdoings can be profitable if the bad bureaucrat is protected by an acomplice.

Chapter 4 The New Owners Tell Their Story

Chapter 4 explores the perspective of new owners of my business bravely confronting the establishment, offering unique insights into systemic challenges