Chapter 4 The New Owners Tell Their Story
Call for JusticeMy story started in 1987 when I decided my life at sea, where I had spent the previous 20 years, was over. I needed a new land-based occupation to see me through to my retirement years and beyond.
My business is hospitality, and I had always dreamed of running a school holiday camp. Imagine my delight when I saw the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Convention Centre advertised for sale in The Age newspaper. It was located in rural Victoria, near the small maritime port of Portland. Everything seemed perfect. I performed my “due diligence” to ensure that the business was sound; or at least, all of the due diligence I was aware I needed to perform. Who would have guessed that I had to check whether the phones worked? Within a week of taking over the business I knew I had a problem. Instead of getting phone calls we were receiving letters from customers and suppliers alike telling us they had tried to call and couldn’t get through.
Back when I started to operate my business in February 1988, when I commenced my arbitration in April 1994, and beyond to the late 1990s, doing business via the internet and email was not an option. The way of doing business was starting to come into its own. Had we COT Cases been operating our companies during the period where emails and online advice was so readily available, then the phone and faxing problems we suffered would not have affected our business losses as they did. The residents did not get an efficient mobile phone system into Cape Bridgewater until 2004.
And so, my saga begins. It has been a quest to get a working phone at the property. On the way I have received some compensation for business losses and many promises that the problem is now resolved. It has not been resolved to this day. I sold the business in 2002 and subsequent owners have suffered a similar fate to me.
Other independent business people similarly affected by poor telecommunications have joined me on my journey. We are known as the Casualties of Telecom, or the COT cases. All we ever wanted was for Telecom/Telstra to admit to our various problems, fix them all, then pay compensation for our losses. A working phone: is that too much to ask?
We initially asked for a full Senate investigation into Telecom in general and these issues in particular. We were offered, as an alternative, an arbitration process. It seemed like a good way to resolve the problem so we accepted this alternative. At this early stage, we honestly expected that the technical problems that prevented our phones from working would be resolved.
No such luck. Suspicions that something about the arbitration process was not quite right started almost immediately. We had been promised that the Telecom documents we needed to make our case would be made available to us if we entered into arbitration. Despite the promise, they have never been made available, and we still do not have those documents to this day. We were further troubled when we discovered that, during the arbitration process, our fax lines were being illegally tapped. Of course, with the weight of the government against us, no investigation into how many arbitration claim documents never reached the arbitrator has ever been undertaken.
Worse, we had been tricked into signing a confidentiality clause that has hampered all of our efforts since. I may be breaking the provisions of that clause by making this information public, but what choice do I have at 80 years of age?
The next part of our journey was to do everything in our power to obtain the promised but withheld documents through Freedom of Information (FOI). We know the evidence is there to make our case that the lines were not working and that they had not been properly tested according to agreed protocols. But for those documents to be any use to us, we have to obtain them. We still do not have those documents today.
In December 2001, after being unable to appeal my arbitration claim and in ther process force Telstra and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to demand Telstra tests and fix my ongoing telephne problems I sold the business to Darren and Jenny Lewis.
On the 6 January 2003, the Hon David Hawker MP wrote to me noting:
“Thank you for your correspondence received throughout December, 2002. Copies will be forwarded to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, along with the videotape, “Phone Wiring Details at Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp.”
Did the government bureaucrats who received this video from Mr Hawker MP pass it on to the Hon. Senator Richard Alston, the then Minister of Communications and Information Technology? I know no one bothered to demand answers from Telstra as to why they installed this wiring is such a shallow trench with connecting cables loose in the conjunction box and with moisture seeping in and damaging the whole wiring system – the very wiring system Telstra rewired at the business in November/December 2002, six years after my arbitration failed to investigate my ongoing complaints of all three service lines locking up on regular bases. No one gave a damn, from the TIO and arbitrator to the resource unit, regarding how my business would survive once my arbitration was declared over. The poor quality CAN and copper wire connected to my premises stayed in place until 2002 as a direct result of Telstra’s lies under oath during the COT arbitrations: lies that were covered up by bad bureaucrats (at least two of whom were then appointed as ministers by the Liberal government).
On 28 January 2003, a letter from TIO officer Gillian McKenzie to Telstra 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 involved in Telstra’s technician refusing to help Darren Lewis with the ongoing phone/fax problems that, nine years before, Telstra and the arbitrator assigned to my case failed to investigate transparently? Why was this Telstra technician still holding a grudge against me in 2002/3 because of something my 1994/95 arbitration should have addressed – i.e., the ongoing phone and facsimile problems that this same Telstra technician was now refusing to help Mr Lewis with, nine years later?
This is the same Tony Watson who is referred to in Telstra's B004 arbitration defence report (see It is also clear from Front Page Part One File No/1) who states my faxes did not reach the arbitrator's office on 23 May 1994, because the arbitrator's fax lines were busy when I tried to send my faxes. Therefore, there were no faults on the lines because. This statement by Tony Watson does not match Telstra's billing records for those six faxes where I was charged for all non-connected faxes (It is also clear from Front Page Part One File No/1).
How dare Tony Watson threaten Darren Lewis not to speak with me, who then lived next door to the holiday camp and remained there until 2019.
Darren Lewis was so angry with this Telstra employee that he took several photos of the actual wiring that ran from Telstra’s pit to his residence and his office (the same office that was mine from 1988).
As part of his plans to renovate the house, Mr Lewis had begun to prepare for a heating system to be installed under the house but, in the process, as he sunk his shovel into a water-soaked area, he accidentally cut into a Telstra cable that was only buried half a shovel deep. Water from an overflow downpipe from the main accommodation block had been running off and collecting over the Telstra cabling that had obviously not been buried deep enough (see the following photos taken by Mr Lewis at the time).
According to the government regulator AUSTEL’s records (see AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, on page 5 under the date of May 1991 states: "new wiring installed inside and outside the office and main kitchen at Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp. Rented phone equipment replaced." It was this faulty installation that led to the cable itself becoming waterlogged.
Yet, on 6 April 1995, during my arbitration, when I begged Peter Gamble (Telstra's arbitration engineer) and the arbitration’s so-called independent technical consultant, David Read (Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd), to run a series of tests on all three of my service lines and inspect the Telstra pit outside the office to ensure that the Customer Access Network (CAN) was up to the proper network standard, my request was refused outright.
Mr Lewis took 22 photos that day, showing how poor Telstra’s workmanship was when the cable was installed. The open pipe was full of water, and water had run down the pipe to the U-bend. After Telstra installed new cabling, Darren advised the TIO that the number of incoming calls increased by more than 100 per cent; Telstra CCAS data, which I and the Hon David Hawker MP provided to the TIO, to Senator Richards as testament my phone problems were NOT investigated as they should have under the agreed to arbitration process.
This was the same Peter Gamble referred to on 24 June 1997 see:- pages 36 and 39 Senate - Parliament of Australia who was named by 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 under FOI, as having been told we COT Cases had to be stopped at all cost from proving our claims i.e., 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.".
From Mr White's statement, it is clear that he identified me as one of the five COT claimants that Telstra had singled out to be ‘stopped at all costs’ from proving their against Telstra’.From Mr White's statement, it is clear that he identified me as one of the five COT claimants that Telstra had singled out to be ‘stopped at all costs’ from proving their my against Telstra’. One of the named Peter's in this Senate Hansard who had advised Mr White that five COT Cases had to be stopped at all costs is the same Peter Gamble who swore under oath, in his witness statement to the arbitrator on 12 December 1994, that the arbitration Service Verification Testing (SVT) at my business premises had met all of AUSTEL’s (now ACMA) specifications when it is clear from Telstra's Falsified SVT Report that the arbitration Service Verification Testing (SVT testing) conducted by this Peter did not meet all of the governments mandatory specifications.
So what was my arbitration about? Shouldn’t the TIO and the technical consultants he appointed have investigated why I was still registering ongoing telephone problems? It certainly appears the real reason for the way the arbitration was run was to ensure that the Telstra Corporation could continue to conceal all of the issues created by their ailing copper wire network. Really, all the arbitrator had to do was grant us an award to compensate us and cover up the rest, precisely as it has been ever since, for the past 20-plus years.
On 1 September 2004, Darren Lewis’ (who purchased my holiday camp in December 2001) wrote to our local MP, David Hawker, stating:
“I must also reiterate my thanks for the pressure you put on Telstra in late 2002 – I believed it was this that finally forced them to re-wire the kiosk at the camp and disconnect the faulty telephone alarm bell which local Telstra employees believed could have been causing some of the problems with incoming calls. Although the incoming calls increased dramatically one the re-wiring had been done, the trauma of the first year we were here has not gone away.”AS-CAV Exhibits 648-a to 700.
Telstra waited until 10 months after I had sold the business before they transparently investigated the ongoing telephone and faxing problems I raised during my actual arbitration and for six years after it was declared over. If this isn’t discrimination of the worst possible kind, then what is? Did Telstra make a deal with the arbitrator to ensure that he would only investigate old, historic, anecdotal phone and faxing faults and totally ignore any ongoing problems in the rural network that, if they were proved to exist, would open the floodgates and allow other rural customers to sue Telstra?
When I showed the Hon David Hawker MP that the arbitrator only addressed old issues and none of the issues that continued to affect other Cape Bridgewater customers and me, he arranged a meeting in Parliament House in Canberra with Senator Alston, the then-Minister for Communications. The senator’s staff agreed to investigate a 60-plus page report (and attachments) that I provided to them. This report was eventually returned to me – without the attachments – but with a cover letter from Paul Fletcher, refusing to address the report at all. This bureaucrat is now the Hon. Senator Paul Fletcher, who, from 2014 to 2016, has been assisting the present Prime Minister of Australia with the problems associated with Telstra’s ailing copper wire network that has been the root cause of the slow rollout of the NBN.
On 26 May 2019, Paul Fletcher became Australia’s Minister for Communications and the Arts (see Main Evidence File No 3 shows.
I provided two photos Darren Lewis took to Senator Len Harris, showing him how deep the cabling was running: 50 meters along a trench less than half a shovel deep.
After seeing these photos, I employed a professional video production company to produce a video showing how the actual wall sockets looked when the casing was removed. I still have copies of that video, but in April 2016, when we tried to transfer it to a CD, we discovered that the quality was not good enough for use on the internet.
Back in December 2002, when the video was produced by Noel Waugh (Video Production of Portland), we sent a copy to the office of the then-Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston. Like most bureaucrats working in government departments, those who worked in Senator Alston’s office did not understand the relevance of the video in relation to my claims of ongoing problems and nor did they understand it showed how incompetent some Telstra employees were, particularly in rural Australia. It was, after all, Telstra’s incompetence, coupled with the fact that no one in Telstra really cared about the suffering of telephone customers, especially those with telephone-dependent businesses, that ruined the lives of so many small business operators.
If the arbitrator had conducted my arbitration according to the ambit of the Commercial Arbitration Act 1984 and investigated ALL of my ongoing telephone and faxing claim documents, then Darren and Jenny Lewis (as new owners of my business) would not have suffered. I was forced to sell my business because the TIO and Telstra did not transparently investigate my claims. Both the TIO and Telstra failed to divulge their investigation conducted on 14 January 1998, after my arbitration, showing it was apparent the phone problems would indeed continue.
If the TIO did carry out an in-house investigation into my claims, some COT faxes were being illegally intercepted but came to the conclusion that those faxes did not arrive because they were lost as a direct result of faults in the network – the very network under investigation by the arbitrator – it was deplorable for the TIO to not respond to my interception claims. Deplorable because, either way, regardless of whether missing documents were intercepted and not forwarded on or were lost because of faults in the network, ultimately, certain claim documents of relevance to the COT claims were NOT assessed by the arbitration process as the Federal Labor Government when they endorsed our arbitrations.
On 4 September 2006, Darren Lewis provided the Hon Senator Helen Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, with a two-page statutory declaration noting:
“Letters from us to our local Federal Member of Parliament, the Hon David Hawker, Speaker in the House of Representatives, led to Telstra visiting our business to investigate these continuing problems.
“After Telstra rewired the business including disconnecting a Telstra installed faulty phone alarm bell, we were informed Telstra had found other problems and believed who ever had installed the wiring had done an unprofessional job.
“Internal Telstra documentation provided to me by Allan Smith confirmed Telstra themselves had done the wiring.
“Jenny and I noticed that although our incoming-call rate had more than doubled once this wiring had taken place Telstra was still unable to provide a satisfactory reason as to why we were still having problems. …
“The technicians then in a hookup consultation with outside office guru’s [sic] did a fault graph reading on our 55 267267 line with the outcome that their office technical staff stated words to the affect [sic] the reading was impossible (couldn’t be correct). It was then that the local technician became quite annoyed when the technical guru insinuated that the equipment the local tech was using must be faulty. The local tech then informed the technical guru that there was nothing wrong with the equipment at all.” (See Main Evidence File No 13)
Most, if not all, of the COT cases, suffered from sleep disorders and stress for years as a result of their battles with Telstra’s senior management, who continued to deny there was ever a phone problem affecting their businesses. These types of denials by Telstra employees like Tony Watson after the COT Cases that had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in arbitration fees after the government had promised they would be fixed as part of the government-endorsed processes caused so much damage.
I provided Ms Howard (Dareen Lewis' psychologist) when she visited my business next door to the holiday camp as evidence I was not the only one who believed the holiday camp had been sabotaged by a wrong assessment by the arbitration consultants as the following two letters from my forensic arbitration accountant as follows.
Corruption in Arbitration
On 6 December 1995, Derek Ryan, my arbitration accountant, wrote to the Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston, stating:
“Over the last 2 years I have acted as an independent accountant for Alan Smith and I prepared the independent assessment of his losses and damages which formed part of his submission to the arbitrator, Dr G Hughes.
“In response to accounting documents and evidence submitted to the arbitrator, he appointed Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (Vic) Pty Ltd.(‘FHCA’) to support him in assessing the losses and damages.
“The FHCA report was inaccurate and incomplete. I have since been advised by a staff member of FHCA that a large amount of information was excluded from their final report at the request of the arbitrator. This has left the report in an incomplete state and it is impossible for anyone to re-calculate or understand how the FHCA loss figures were determined. This effectively meant that it was impossible to challenge the assumptions, calculations and the time periods used in the FHCA report.” (See Open letter File No/45-E)
On the 22 December 1995, Derek Ryan wrote to TIO John Pinnock, noting:
Next Page ⟶“The Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (Vic) Pty Ltd (‘FHCA’) report was dated 3 May 1995 and I received a copy of the report on 5 May. After discussions with Alan Smith it was decided that I should reply to the report as soon as possible.
“I worked all day Saturday and Sunday with Alan Smith trying to interpret the FHCA report. After this work I considered that the report was incomplete as the calculations of the FHCA loss figures were not included in their report. …
“In 17 May I telephoned John Rundell and he stated that he was unable to discuss anything with me until the appeal period had expired. … He then stated that he understood my problems and that FHCA had excluded a large amount of information from their final report at the request of the arbitrator.” (See Open letter File No/45-E)
