Absent Justice - Preface
Please note: Absent Justice - Preface was lasted edited in March 2024
Corruption, misleading and deceptive conduct must not be practised in any shape or form. It is criminal exploitation that causes fraud and crookedness, which demoralizes society.
Read about the corruption within the government bureaucracy that plagued the COT arbitrations. Learn who committed these horrendous crimes and where they sit in Australia’s Establishment and the legal system that allowed these injustices to occur.
The arbitrations were a sham: the appointed arbitrator not only allowed Telstra to minimise the Casualties of Telstra (COT) members’ claims and losses, but the arbitrator also bowed down to Telstra and let the carrier run the arbitrations. Telstra committed serious crimes during the arbitrations, yet, up to this day, the Australian government and the Australian Federal Police have been unable to hold Telstra, or the other entities involved in this deceit, accountable. Why is Telstra above the law?
What is happening in Australia's public service where bribery and corruption are increasing, not decreasing? In the Absent Justice Preface, we show you where corruption in government, including non-government self-regulators, undermines that government's credibility. It erodes the trust of its citizens, who need guidance. Bribery and corruption are cancers that destroy economic growth.
In 1992, when the four COT cases were able to show the government something was radically wrong within Telstra’s ailing copper-wire network, Telstra management paid compensation to the four COT cases for not supplying them with a reliable phone system. Although the money provided to the COT cases helped them to continue trading, Telstra did not fix the phone problems. And so, the then Labor Party commissioned the government communications regulator, AUSTEL, to ensure a settlement arbitration process was set up, for the four cases and other small businesses with similar problems, in order to fix any ongoing problems before the assessor brought down a finding. Points 1.18 to 3.38 in the official AUSTEL COT Cases Report of 13 April 1994 notes:
"When the initial settlements were reached with the original COT Cases the standard of service then applicable was not objectively established and there is reason to believe that difficult network faults may have continued to affect their services."
"An agreed standard of service against which Telecom's performance may be effectively measured is being developed by Telecom in consultation with AUSTEL. Such a standard together with a service verification test which can be applied to any case subject to settlement are essential."
"As part of the general approach to settlement, Telecom sought AUSTEL's agreement to, and assistance in, the development of a defined status for a telephone service. The intention is to obtain an agreement on the operational performance of the service against which the parties might sign off once a financial settlement has been finalised." (See Prologue Evidence File No/13).
AUSTEL did not want a repeat of what happened in 1992, after the first four COT cases received compensation, i.e., to find the telephone problems were still affecting COT businesses.
Dr Gordon Hughes, the COT cases’ arbitrator, and Warwick Smith, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (the administrator of the arbitrations), both received a copy of the 257-page AUSTEL COT Cases Report. AUSTEL’s report stipulated Telstra had to prove to the assessor/arbitrator, beyond any doubt, that its arbitration-designed Service Verification Testing (SVT) process gave the COT cases’ services a clean bill of health, before Dr Hughes could bring down his findings. Why did Dr Hughes ignore this official government report?
As shown here in the following link Chapter 1 - The collusion continue, not only did Dr Hughes (arbitrator) ignore AUSTEL's official report, he also ignored his own arbitration technical consultants’ advice that they had still not diagnosed the fault causes of my ongoing telephone problems and therefore, they stated, there was a reasonable expectation these undiagnosed faults would remain “open”. Despite this very serious statement by his consultants, Dr Hughes still brought down his findings without allowing his consultants the extra weeks they requested to investigate these ongoing telephone problems.
Possibly the worst thing Warwick Smith and Dr Hughes allowed, during our various arbitrations, was to let Telstra, unsupervised, to perform the arbitration SVT processes at COT businesses. The arbitration technical consultants were not present, regardless of the COT cases being advised, prior to arbitration, that the arbitration technical resource unit would be on site to view and assess Telstra’s technical reporting. Warwick Smith was fully aware –even before the arbitration agreements were signed – that one Telstra senior executive (who was also a member of the TIO board) was under investigation for having misled and deceived a Senate estimates committee concerning the telephone testing process of two COT cases’ exchanges.
Even though Paul Howell, from DMR Group Inc, was brought in from Canada to investigate my technical claim material, neither he, David Reid (of Lane Telecommunications (the appointed Australian arbitration consultant) nor Dr Hughes commented on my claims that Telstra had not performed the required mandatory arbitration SVT process (see Telstra's Falsified SVT Report).
Telstra’s technician advised Dr Hughes, under oath on 12 December 1994, that his Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp SVT tests had met all AUSTEL’s mandatory specifications, despite AUSTEL advising him the SVT was grossly deficient (see Telstra's Falsified SVT Report). This is the same technician Telstra whistleblower Lindsay White named, before a Senate estimates committee, as telling him I was one of five COT cases who had to be stopped, at all costs, from proving our arbitration claims. (See pages 36 and 38, Senate – Parliament of Australia)
Our story shows:
- When we COT Four presented our dispute to the government, we were manipulated, pressured and squeezed into an unfair and costly arbitration.
- Telstra and its legal defence team perverted the course of justice during the arbitration process with such dubious strategies as intercepting faxes (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13) and conversations (bugging), failing to deliver crucial FOI documents (or delivering them months and even years too late, often so highly censored that little intelligible information remained).
- The arbitrator ignored central points in my claim at arbitration and no amount of effort to have these points addressed bore any fruit. And, in the course of all these travesties, the regulatory bodies – AUSTEL (for the government) and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman/TIO (for the carriers) – failed to exercise any control over Telstra, to the point where they could reasonably be seen as acting in concert.
Together, these travesties spell a breakdown of justice, way out of proportion to the problem we began with – people asking that their phone services be guaranteed to work to a reasonable standard, so that they can reliably conduct their businesses.
Until the late 1990s, doing business via the internet and emails was in its infancy. Had we COT cases been operating our businesses now, the phone problems we suffered from would not have affected our business losses as much as they did then.
Australian Federal Police Investigations shows that in February 1994 Detective Superintendent Jeff Penrose and Constable Melanie Cochrane of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) visited my business to discuss my concerns regarding my telephone conversations being intercepted and my faxes were not being received at intended destinations. During this visit, Constable Cochrane and I discussed my concerns about privacy issues regarding my singles club records. I explained I provided club members with a written assurance that I would not share their private information with anyone without first seeking their permission. I was particularly concerned about submitting any of club members’ private information into my Fast Track Settlement Proposal (the settlement process that later became the arbitration process and this is discussed in Call For Justice Part One and throughout absentjustice.com). Constable Cochrane remarked that the TIO should contemplate suspending our settlement process until after the AFP finished their investigations into Telstra’s unauthorised interception of COT cases’ telephone conversations and in-confidence faxes.
Please read our Australian Federal Police Investigations page and decide if it was ethical, or moral, for Dr Hughes to expect me to disclose further personal and private information about the female members of my singles club, for all to see, while the AFP were investigating Telstra regarding its recording of names and phone numbers of female singles club members when that information was only ever sent by fax or discussed over the telephone.
If Dr Hughes was really impartial, he would not have allowed Telstra to use the arbitration process (or me as the claimant) to gain knowledge of what the AFP uncovered concerning my singles club privacy issues, which were part of my arbitration claim. He would also have respected my request to subject that material under strict confidentiality and kept from Telstra’s employees. Ultimately, Dr Hughes and Telstra refused to allow me to submit this considerable part of my claim into arbitration: NONE of my singles club’s lost revenue due to my ongoing and proven telephone faults were ever recorded by Dr Hughes or Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (the arbitration financial resource unit) in their final Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp findings. Dr Hughes and Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (FHCA), never assessed this claim material and it is not mentioned in Dr Hughes’ award or the FHCA Cape Bridgewater report .Chapter 2 - Inaccurate and Incomplete).
Minimising Telstra's Liability
The final FHCA arbitration report only provides statistics from the school-camp bookings for valuing my losses. There is no reference, at all, to profits from the adult social club and singles-club bookings as well as packaged family groups, even though they made up 47 per cent of my business and were charged more than three times the school rate. I discovered, when FHCA eventually returned my claim documents, FHCA had a number of my singles club flyers, along with copies of various newspaper adverts regarding the adult weekends and copies of numerous testimonials from prospective adult patrons explaining their frustration at not being able to contact my venue by phone to make bookings. But, the more detailed calculation of the type of revenue earned from these single club weekends were not amongst that returned information or in their final assessment of my losses.
It is now clear that between Telstra (the defendants) Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (the financial resource unit) and Dr Hughes (arbitrator) by disregarding my social club revenue losses they minimised Telstra's liability by many thousands of dollars at my expense.
On page seven of its final, 3 May 1995, financial-evaluation report, which both Telstra and I received, FHCA state:
“An analysis of the clientele of CBHC [Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp] shows that only 53% were in fact schools.” (See Chapter 2 - Inaccurate and Incomplete.
There is an enormous difference between $30.82 for a two-night stay for school groups and $120.00 to $165.00 for a two-night stay for social-club patrons. Knowingly downgrading my losses by a large percentage is verging on fraudulent criminal conduct.
During the early days of my 1994 arbitration, Telstra’s Paul Rumble rang me about my complaints regarding the slow delivery of FOI documents I needed for preparing my arbitration claim. I had complained to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who was now leaning on Telstra. But Mr Rumble astounded me when he told me the slowness of delivery was due to Telstra needing to vet the requested documents for any ‘sensitive’ material – because I had passed material on to the AFP. This was preposterous on at least two counts. Firstly, the slow delivery had been ongoing since my first request for FOI documents in December 1993. Secondly, it was my civic, if not legal, duty to co-operate with any police investigation. It was certainly not a subject that the telecommunication corporation should have any jurisdiction over.
On 17 February 1994, during the COT cases’ pre-arbitration meeting, the withholding of document issues were discussed. Telstra’s official minutes of this meeting confirm Dr Hughes advised ALL parties present, “that as arbitrator, he would not make a determination on incomplete information”. This website absentjustice.com confirm, beyond any doubt whatsoever, Dr Hughes DID make findings “on incomplete information” in my number of arbitrations. In my own case, I informed Dr Hughes, over many months, that Telstra threatened to continue withholding my requested arbitration documents if I assisted the AFP’s investigations. Telstra carried out this threat.
The Threats Continue
Page 180 ERC&A, from the official Australian Senate Hansard, dated 29 November 1994, reports Senator Ron Boswell asking Telstra’s legal directorate:
“Why did Telecom advise the Commonwealth Ombudsman that Telecom withheld FOI documents from Alan Smith because Alan Smith provided Telecom FOI documents to the Australian Federal Police during their investigation?”
After receiving a hollow response from Telstra, which the senator, the AFP and I all knew was utterly false, the senator states:
“…Why would Telecom withhold vital documents from the AFP? Also, why would Telecom penalise COT members for providing documents to the AFP which substantiate that Telecom had conducted unauthorised interceptions of COT members’ communications and subsequently dealt in the intercepted information by providing that information to Telecom’s external legal advisers and others?” (See Senate Evidence File No 31)
What is so appalling about this withholding of relevant documents is that no one in the TIO office or government has ever investigated the disastrous impact this had on my overall submission to the arbitrator.
It is blatantly obvious The Establishment, which controlled my arbitration process, also denied my rights as an ordinary citizen – an equal before the law – and ultimately deprived me the right of having justice run its due course. The arbitrator and the government (who, remember, at the time fully owned Telstra) should have initiated an investigation into why an Australian citizen who assisted the AFP in their investigations into unlawful interception of telephone conversations was disadvantaged during a civil arbitration process.
Furthermore, when Telstra carried out those threats, Dr Hughes covered up the withholding of these discovery documents by writing to Laurie James, president of the then Institute of Arbitrators Australia, on 16 February 1996, and stating my not-received 24,000 FOI documents were received and read by either him or the arbitration resource unit. TIO official arbitration records, dated 30 March 1995, show those documents never reached the arbitration process..
Eighteen months after Dr Hughes misled Mr James about these 24,000 late-received documents, a Senate estimates committee investigation was set up to investigate five COT cases’ complaints concerning their documents also being withheld from them. Had Dr Gordon Hughes come forward and admitted to the Senate committee that he deceived the Institute of Arbitrator Australia concerning my withheld FOI documents, I would have been brought into that investigation.
Four months after Dr Hughes prematurely brought down his findings on my matters, and fully aware I was denied all necessary documents to mount my case against Telecom/Telstra, an emotional Senator Ron Boswell discussed the injustices we four COT claimants (i.e., Ann Garms, Maureen Gillan, Graham Schorer and me) experienced prior and during our arbitrations. He stated:
“Eleven years after their first complaints to Telstra, where are they now? They are acknowledged as the motivators of Telecom’s customer complaint reforms. … But, as individuals, they have been beaten both emotionally and financially through an 11-year battle with Telstra. …
“Then followed the Federal Police investigation into Telecom’s monitoring of COT case services. The Federal Police also found there was a prima facie case to institute proceedings against Telecom but the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions], in a terse advice, recommended against proceeding. …
“Once again, the only relief COT members received was to become the catalyst for Telecom to introduce a revised privacy and protection policy. Despite the strong evidence against Telecom, they still received no justice at all. …
“These COT members have been forced to go to the Commonwealth Ombudsman to force Telecom to comply with the law. Not only were they being denied all necessary documents to mount their case against Telecom, causing much delay, but they were denied access to documents that could have influenced them when negotiating the arbitration rules, and even in whether to enter arbitration at all. …
“Telecom has treated the Parliament with contempt. No government monopoly should be allowed to trample over the rights of individual Australians, such as has happened here.” (See Senate Hansard Evidence File No-1)
Thus, the government was officially informed of the above concerning an arbitration process it endorsed and should have immediately appointed a review of the whole sordid affair. It never did.
Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman
On 26 September 1997, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman John Pinnock formally addressed a Senate estimates committee Home page. He noted:
“In the process leading up to the development of the arbitration procedures – the claimants were told clearly that documents were to be made available to them under the FOI Act.
“Firstly, and perhaps most significantly, the arbitrator had no control over that process, because it was a process conducted entirely outside the ambit of the arbitration procedures.”
Why weren’t the arbitrations put on hold until the claimants received their promised documents? Why were the arbitrations not conducted under the agreed ambit of the arbitration procedures? How can an arbitration be a just process when the arbitrator has no control over how it is conducted? When did Dr Hughes lose control over the arbitrations? Was it the first week, or two months or even nine months into the process? And, just as importantly, who authorised him to conduct the process entirely outside of the ambit of the arbitration procedures?
There is no amendment, attached to any agreement signed by the four COT members, allowing the arbitrator to conduct those particular arbitrations entirely outside the ambit of the arbitration procedure – and neither was it stated that the arbitrator would have no control over the process once we signed those individual agreements. How can the arbitrator and TIO continue to hide under the confidentiality clause contained in our arbitration agreement, when that agreement did not mention the arbitrator would have no control because the arbitration would be conducted entirely outside of the agreed ambit of the procedures?
Had we COT cases been told Dr Hughes would not have any control over our arbitrations, because they would be conducted entirely outside the ambit of agreed arbitration procedures, NONE of us would have signed the agreement.
On 27 January 1999, more than four years after Telstra committed these offences, I received a letter from Senator Kim Carr advising:
“I continue to maintain a strong interest in your case along with those of your fellow ‘Casualties of Telstra’. The appalling manner in which you have been treated by Telstra is in itself reason to pursue the issues, but also confirms my strongly held belief in the need for Telstra to remain firmly in public ownership and subject to public and parliamentary scrutiny and accountability.
“Your manuscript demonstrates quite clearly how Telstra has been prepared to infringe upon the civil liberties of Australian citizens in a manner that is most disturbing and unacceptable.” (See Arbitrator Evidence File No 66)
The manuscript Senator Kim Carr refers to, confirms Telstra’s arbitration defence unit relied on not only a conjured arbitration technical report (see Tampering With Evidence but also Telstra's Falsified SVT Report and Telstra's Falsified BCI Report.
Senator Kim Carr criticised the handling of the COT arbitrations on 11 March 1999, as the following Hansard link shows. Addressing the government’s lack of power, he said:
“What I do make a comment on is the question of civil liberties and the rights of citizens to approach this parliament and seek redress for their grievances when corporate power, particularly in a publicly owned corporation, has been abused. And there can be no question that that is what is at the heart of this issue.”
And when addressing Telstra’s conduct, he stated:
“But we also know, in the way in which telephone lines were tapped, in the way in which there have been various abuses of this parliament by Telstra—and misleading and deceptive conduct to this parliament itself, similar to the way they have treated citizens—that there has of course been quite a deliberate campaign within Telstra management to undermine attempts to resolve this question in a reasonable way. We have now seen $24 million of moneys being used to crush these people. It has gone on long enough, and simply we cannot allow it to continue. The attempt made last year, in terms of the annual report, when Telstra erroneously suggested that these matters—the CoT cases—had been settled demonstrates that this process of deceptive conduct has continued for far too long.” (See parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/displaychamberhansards1999-03-11)
Senator Schacht was even more vocal:
“I rise to speak to this statement tabled today from the working party of the Senate Environment Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee—a committee I served on in the last parliament—that dealt with the bulk of this issue of the CoT cases. In my time in this parliament, I have never seen a more sorry episode involving a public instrumentality and the way it treated citizens in Australia. I agree with all the strong points made by my colleagues on both sides who have spoken before me on this debate. What was interesting about the Senate committee investigating this matter over the last couple of years was that it was absolutely tripartisan—whether you were Labor, Liberal or National Party, we all agreed that something was rotten inside Telstra in the way it handled the so-called CoT cases for so long.
The outcome here today is sad. There is no victory for citizens who have been harshly dealt with by Telstra.”
On 23 March 1999, the Australian Financial Review reported on the conclusion of the Senate estimates committee hearing into why Telstra withheld so many documents from the COT cases:
“A Senate working party delivered a damning report into the COT dispute. The report focussed on the difficulties encountered by COT members as they sought to obtain documents from Telstra. The report found Telstra had deliberately withheld important network documents and/or provided them too late and forced members to proceed with arbitration without the necessary information,” Senator Eggleston said. “They [Telstra] have defied the Senate working party. Their conduct is to act as a law unto themselves.”
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 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.
He was stunned at how I had collated this evidence into a bound submission. 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?” (See Senate Evidence File No 56)
Also during this same press conference Senator Len Harris asked many other questions including why should an owner of a business such as the holiday camp at Cape Bridgewater literally be forced to sell that business because Telstra had still been unable to fix the ongoing telephone problems that Senator Richard Alston himself had investigated in 1992, ten years previous and concluded were affecting Mr Smith's holiday camp. The same telephone problems which Mr Smith raised in his 1993/94 arbitration and was still raising with Telstra in 2001, seven years after the arbitration process had failed to rectify those problems.
On 28 January 2003, a letter from TIO officer Gillian McKenzie to Telstra discusses the ongoing telephone problems being experienced by the new owners of my business noting:
“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 Burying The Evidence File 10-A)
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?
Contact naturaljusticeinternational@gmail.com for further information regarding our claims. Thank you.
The matters discussed on absentjustice.com are said in the public interest and therefore are made in accordance with Victorian Defamation Act 2005, Division 1: Defamation and the General Law (see www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domino/Web-Note).
STOP PRESS.
© 2017 Absent Justice
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