Privacy Policy
Chapter 6 Intimidation Threats
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 22 December 1995, Derek Ryan wrote to TIO John Pinnock, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, noting:
“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)
On 15 November 1995, John Rundell wrote a letter to John Pinnock, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), while he was a partner at KPMG-Auditors. In this letter, he misled and deceived the TIO regarding the validity of my claim against the conduct of the COT arbitrations. This misinformation occurred during the Institute of Arbitrators Australia's investigation into my claims. I wonder how much KPMG’s reputation influenced the TIO's decision not to investigate the matter thoroughly. At that time, KPMG had not yet damaged its reputation, which may have deterred the TIO from scrutinising John Rundell's actions.
TWENTY SIX YEARS LATER
"Beware The Pen Pusher Power - Bureaucrats need to take orders and not take charge”, which noted:“Now that the Prime Minister is considering a wider public service reshuffle in the wake of the foreign affairs department's head, Finances Adamson, becoming the next governor of South Australia, it's time to scrutinise the faceless bureaucrats who are often more powerful in practice than the elected politicians."
"Outside of the Canberra bubble, almost no one knows their names. But take it from me, these people matter."
"When ministers turn over with bewildering rapidity, or are not ‘take charge’ types, department secretaries, and the deputy secretaries below them, can easily become the de facto government of our country."
"Since the start of the 2013, across Labor and now Liberal governments, we’ve had five prime ministers, five treasurers, five attorneys-general, seven defence ministers, six education ministers, four health ministers and six trade Ministers.”
This article was quite alarming. It was disturbing because Peta Credlin, someone with deep knowledge of Parliament House in Canberra, has accurately addressed the issue at hand. I not only relate to the information she presents, but I can also connect it to the many bureaucrats and politicians I have encountered since exposing what I did about the China wheat deal back in 1967 (See Chapter 7-Vietnam Vietcong), and the corrupted arbitration processes of 1994 to 1998. These government stuff-ups and cover-ups have cost lives.
In my experience with the government review of the arbitration I underwent in 1994 and 1995, which was orchestrated by Senator Helen Coonan, the Minister for Communications, and the then National Government Senator Barnaby Joyce in March 2008, several government officials were appointed to assess my claims against Telstra. They commissioned David Quilty, a former advisor to the Honourable John Howard, who was Prime Minister of Australia in 2006. At that time, Quilty was a government liaison officer for Telstra and was tasked with valuing my claims, which confirmed that Telstra had used three fraudulently manufactured reports during my arbitration in 1994 and 1995.
The appointment of David Quilty is comparable to asking a thief, who has been caught stealing a car, whether he should be charged with that offence. The government’s findings related to these three fraudulently prepared arbitration reports concluded that Telstra had no case to answer. Remarkably, just weeks after receiving an email requesting assistance with my case, David Quilty was offered a Senior Executive position at Telstra.(Exhibit 550-A → GS-CAV 522 to 580
Before I signed the DCITA process, I wrote to Liz Froman at DCITA, as the following two letters show.
In my 10 March 2006 letter to Liz Forman (one of the government assessors appointed on behalf of the government to assess my privacy issues and my claims that Telstra had perverted the course of justice during my 1994/95 arbitration I stated that:
"Although you have stated in your letter that “...the assessment process will not extend to an examination of whether the law was broken by Telstra....” I have been advised that it is mandatory, under Commonwealth law, for DCITA and/or the Minister to notify the Attorney General of any unlawful activities they may uncover during official department investigations". (Refer to exhibit AS 614 File AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647
17 March 2006: On 17 March 2006, David Lever, Manager, Consumer Section, Telecommunications Division (a further government bureaucrat) wrote to me in response to my letter to Ms Forman, noting:
"Thank you for your letter of 10 March 2006 to Ms Forman concerning the independent assessment process. If the material you have provided to the Department as part of the independent assessment process indicates that Telstra or its employees have committed criminal offences in connection with your arbitration, we will refer the matter to the relevant authority". (Refer to exhibt AS 657 File AS-CAV Exhibits 648-a to 700
On 17 May 2007, after I alerted The Hon. Senator Helen Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, that David Lever from her office had not fulfilled his promise to alert the relevant authorities concerning the screening of my faxes to Federal government ministers and the submission of fraudulently submitted claims during my arbitration, Senator Coonan wrote back to me, noting:
"I have now made both formal and informal representations to Telstra on behalf of the CoTs. However, Telstra’s position remains that this is a matter that is most appropriately dealt with through a Court process. Telstra is not prepared to undertake an alternative means of pursuing this matter. I also appreciate the depth of feeling regarding the matter and suggest you consider whether any court proceedings may be your ultimate option". (Refer to exhibit AS 616-B File AS-CAV Exhibits 648-a to 700
Ziggy Switkowski
Open Letter File Nos/36, 37 and File No/38
The DCITA Assessment: A Process Built on Secrecy and Silence
From the outset, the 2006 DCITA assessment was cloaked in secrecy. There was no transparency, no accountability, and no explanation when the process was abruptly shut down in August 2006. What we did have, however, was evidence — hard, time‑stamped, electronic evidence.
My editor, Ronda Fienberg, had a device attached to the phone service that notified her whenever a document was opened. On three separate occasions, it signalled that my DCITA claim documents had been accessed. Yet 18 months after lodging those submissions for official commercial assessment, we received written confirmation that none of my documents had ever been opened or read. The assessment process — the one we were told would finally deliver justice — never even looked at the material.
This wasn’t just an administrative failure. It was the third time the same critical evidence had been ignored.
Two of the submissions, costing my technical consultant George Close $16,000 to prepare, demonstrated beyond doubt that in May 1999, Telstra’s CEO Dr Ziggy Switkowski, Chairman David Hoare, and Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Council Chairman Tony Staley all failed to act on the same evidence the arbitrator, Dr Gordon Hughes, had disregarded during my 1994 arbitration.
The evidence was clear. It showed Telstra had perverted the course of justice during my arbitration — not once, but three times. And each time, the people entrusted with oversight, integrity, and public accountability turned away.
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1994: The arbitration process ignored the evidence.
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1999: Telstra’s top leadership and the TIO Council ignored the same evidence again.
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2006: The DCITA assessment — a government‑initiated review — never even opened the documents.
All three submissions contained the same material now published on absentjustice.com. All three were dismissed without examination. And all three failures point to a system that protects institutions, not citizens.
This is why, in 2026, I am still fighting. Not because of a single injustice, but because of a pattern — a deliberate, documented pattern — that has harmed countless Australians. The evidence is there. The silence is deliberate. And the consequences have been devastating.
Here’s the proof:
MESSAGES RECEIVED 1st February 2008, on behalf of Alan Smith:
Your message
To: Coonan, Helen (Senator) Cc: Lever, David; Smith, Alan Subject: ATTENTION MR JEREMY FIELDS, ASSISTANT ADVISOR Sent: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:31:41 +1100
was deleted without being read on Fri, 1 Feb 2008 16:56:36 +1100
ATTACHMENT:
Final-Recipient: RFC822; Senator.Coonan@aph.gov.au
Disposition: automatic-action/MDN-sent-automatically; deletedX-MSExch-Correlation-Key: sdD1TSUHx0CoTD0Qm4wBVw==oOo
Original-Message-ID: 001601c6669f$95736a00$2ad0efdc@Office
Your message
To: Coonan, Helen (Senator) Cc: Smith, Alan Subject: Alan Smith, unresolved Telstra matters Sent: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:00:42 +1100
was deleted without being read on Fri, 1 Feb 2008 16:56:23 +1100ATTACHMENT:Final-Recipient: RFC822; Senator.Coonan@aph.gov.au Disposition: automatic-action/MDN-sent-automatically; deleted X-MSExch-Correlation-Key: bNlMYfUKcUGqvIXiYQZULA==
Original-Message-ID: 003a01c6af21$2b7ece30$2ad0efdc@Office
This is the world we walked into without knowing it. A world where arbitration and, later, a government DCITA arbitration review process is not a path to resolution — but a trapdoor.
You may wonder why I began this section by naming the arbitrator, Dr Hughes; his wife, Mrs Hughes; John Pinnock, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman; and John Rundell, the Arbitration Project Manager—and why I link all of them to the eleventh remedy pursued?
The answer is simple. These individuals (except for the arbitrator’s wife, who appears not to have been informed that her good name was used against me) were influential legal experts and ombudsmen. Yet when the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia completed its twelve‑month investigation into the COT arbitrations in 2010, it issued no findings for or against my claims — and refused to return the evidence I had supplied at their request.
This failure of proper process extended beyond the individuals involved. It reached into the IAMA itself, revealing that the arbitration process was not conducted in the fair and proper manner I had been promised.
The Terra Towers arbitration, the losing parties launched a public campaign accusing the tribunal’s chair, Marc J. Goldstein, of corruption — allegations he was forced to rebut in a sworn, point‑by‑point defence simply to preserve his career. The dispute spanned multiple countries, multiple courts, and multiple attempts to resist enforcement. The accusations, the secrecy, the counter‑accusations — all of it revealed the same truth: arbitration is a battlefield where power, not justice, decides who survives.
These cases were not identical to ours — but they carried the same scent. The same rot. The same quiet understanding that when proceedings are sealed behind confidentiality clauses, corruption does not merely hide — it thrives.
And as I read through these American cases, a cold recognition crept over me. The treachery we endured in the COT arbitrations was not an isolated storm. It was part of a global weather system — a pattern of institutional behaviour that repeats wherever arbitration replaces open justice.
The United States had its victims. Britain had its victims. Australia had its victims.
Different continents. Different corporations. Same machinery of silence.
The deeper I dug, the more the tension rose — like walking down a corridor where every door leads to another version of the same crime. Arbitrators with hidden ties. Corporations shielding evidence. Governments stepping back, letting the process devour the innocent. And always, always, the same legal gag: confidentiality.
A word that sounds harmless. A clause that sounds routine. A mechanism that, in the wrong hands, becomes a weapon.
A weapon used to bury evidence. A weapon used to silence victims. A weapon used to protect the powerful.
And suddenly, our own experience — the rigged appointment of our arbitrator, the deliberate minimisation of our claims, the attacks on our integrity — no longer felt like a local betrayal. It felt like we had stumbled into a global conspiracy of convenience, where secrecy is currency and justice is optional.
This is the world we walked into without knowing it. A world where arbitration is not a path to resolution — but a trapdoor.
I have highlighted five international cases involving bribery and corruption in arbitration to demonstrate that such misconduct is not rare — it is a recurring feature of arbitration systems worldwide. As you read through absentjustice.com, you will see that this same conduct was present in our own COT arbitration process.
U.S. Arbitration Misconduct / Corruption Cases
1. OOGC America LLC v. Chesapeake Exploration LLC
Allegations of arbitrator “deceit” and “corruption” (later overturned). Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=OOGC+America+LLC+v.+Chesapeake+Exploration+arbitrator+corruption
2. Terra Towers Arbitration (Marc J. Goldstein)
Arbitrator publicly accused of corruption by losing parties resisting enforcement. Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=Terra+Towers+arbitration+Marc+J.+Goldstein+corruption
3. Commonwealth Coatings Corp. v. Continental Casualty Co. (U.S. Supreme Court)
Landmark case voiding an award due to undisclosed arbitrator conflicts. Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=Commonwealth+Coatings+v.+Continental+Casualty+arbitrator+conflict
4. HSN Capital LLC — Arbitrator Bribery Allegations
Claims an arbitrator solicited bribes; courts held bribery voids enforcement. Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=HSN+Capital+LLC+arbitrator+bribery+allegations
5. AAA / ICDR Arbitrator Bias Cases
Multiple U.S. awards vacated for “evident partiality” due to undisclosed conflicts. Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=AAA+ICDR+arbitrator+bias+evident+partiality+cases
