Chapter 7-Vietnam Vietcong
🕵️♂️ Surveillance, Redaction, and the Fraser Connection
The China wheat fiasco, in connection with my Casualties of Telstra story, reveals a disturbing pattern of government silence. During my 13-month arbitration, my phone conversations—including two with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser in April 1993 and 1994—were surveilled and redacted. No explanation was ever provided.
John Wynack, Director of Investigations for the Commonwealth Ombudsman, was unable to obtain the names of three Telstra employees who claimed I had spoken with Mr Fraser. These names were never disclosed—either during or after the arbitration, which concluded on May 11, 1995.
🕵️♂️ Intercepted, Intimidated, and Silenced
Exhibits and confirm that my faxes were still being intercepted en route to government ministers as late as 2 November 1998—three years after my arbitration had ended. Page 12 of the Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1 contains transcripts from my interview with the AFP on 26 September 1994. These files detail the Malcolm Fraser matter, demonstrating that the AFP considered these issues genuine and serious.
Yet, despite this, the government’s Attorney General’s Department and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) halted the AFP's investigations. This left me—and others like me—stranded in limbo, with nowhere to turn for justice regarding the ongoing interception of arbitration-related communications.
Was the government still interested in me because of what I exposed about the wheat deal in Communist China in 1967? If not, why was Telstra still intercepting my faxes and possibly my phone calls in November 1998?
Senator Ron Boswell certainly remembers the threats I received from Telstra during my arbitration. He and Ann Garms, a National Party stalwart, discussed how Telstra warned me not to assist the AFP with my fax and phone interception evidence—evidence that was part of my arbitration claim.
So concerned was Senator Boswell about the emergence of my telephone conversations with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser during the early stages of my arbitration (March to November 1994) that he raised the issue in the Senate on 29 November 1994. He asked:
“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?” Senate Evidence File No 31
⚖️Arbitration Aftermath: The Cost of Truth
The China wheat fiasco, in connection with my Casualties of Telstra narrative, represents a significant and disturbing aspect of the story. The absence of any government explanation regarding the illicit access to my arbitration documents and surveillance of my phone conversations is telling.
What the administrators of the COT arbitrations never considered was what happens after the government-endorsed process concludes. The emotional and financial toll on the whistleblowers was devastating. Most received compensation equivalent only to what it cost them to participate in arbitration—hardly justice. They were not reimbursed for hiring extra staff to keep their businesses afloat while they fought Telstra.
When I submitted evidence of lost faxes to the arbitrator, I didn’t know that his Melbourne office was also losing Telstra-related faxes—redirected to their Sydney office, which was simultaneously handling Telstra matters. Dr Gordon Hughes’ Sydney partnership was acting on behalf of Telstra employees—a conflict of interest that was never disclosed to the COT Cases when we accepted him as an arbitrator.
When these lost fax issues escalated, COT spokesperson Graham Schorer—who had previously been a client of Dr Hughes and had been defended by him in a Telstra Federal Court action between 1990 and 1993—advised me that one possible reason my faxes were disappearing was that they were being sent to Sydney and never returned. This is supported by a formal statement from Mr Schorer, which I have preserved.
I must take the reader forward fourteen years to the following letter, dated 30 July 2009. According to this letter dated 30 July 2009, from Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson) and ex-client of the arbitrator Dr Hughes (see Chapter 3 - Conflict of Interest) wrote to Paul Crowley, CEO Institute of Arbitrators Mediators Australia (IAMA), attaching a statutory declaration (see" Burying The Evidence File 13-H and a copy of a previous letter dated 4 August 1998 from Mr Schorer to me, detailing a phone conversation Mr Schorer had with the arbitrator (during the arbitrations in 1994) regarding lost Telstra COT related faxes. During that conversation, the arbitrator explained, in some detail, that:
"Hunt & Hunt (The company's) Australian Head Office was located in Sydney, and (the company) is a member of an international association of law firms. Due to overseas time zone differences, at close of business, Melbourne's incoming facsimiles are night switched to automatically divert to Hunt & Hunt Sydney office where someone is always on duty. There are occasions on the opening of the Melbourne office, the person responsible for cancelling the night switching of incoming faxes from the Melbourne office to the Sydney Office, has failed to cancel the automatic diversion of incoming facsimiles." Burying The Evidence File 13-H.
Dr Hughes’s failure to disclose the faxing issues to the Australian Federal Police during my arbitration is deeply concerning. The AFP was investigating the interception of my faxes to the arbitrator's office. Yet, this crucial matter was a significant aspect of my claim that Dr Hughes chose not to address in his award or mention in any of his findings. The loss of essential arbitration documents throughout the COT Cases is a serious indictment of the process.
Exhibit 10-C → File No/13 in the Scandrett & Associates report Pty Ltd fax interception report (refer to (Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), confirms my letter of 2 November 1998 to the Hon Peter Costello, Australia's then Federal Treasurer, was intercepted, scanned before being redirected to his office. These intercepted documents to government officials were not isolated events, as the official AFP transcripts show.
What information was removed from the Malcolm Fraser FOI-released document
The AFP believed Telstra was deleting evidence at my expense
During my first meetings with the AFP, I provided Superintendent Detective Sergeant Jeff Penrose with two Australian newspaper articles concerning two separate telephone conversations with The Hon. Malcolm Fraser, a former Prime Minister of Australia. Mr Fraser reported to the media only what he thought was necessary concerning our telephone conversation, as recorded below:
“FORMER prime minister Malcolm Fraser yesterday demanded Telecom explain why his name appears in a restricted internal memo.
“Mr Fraser’s request follows the release of a damning government report this week which criticised Telecom for recording conversations without customer permission.
“Mr Fraser said Mr Alan Smith, of the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp near Portland, phoned him early last year seeking advice on a long-running dispute with Telecom which Mr Fraser could not help.”
🌾 Humanitarian Lies and the Wheat That Killed
One of the questions raised with Malcolm Fraser was: How could Australia claim its wheat exports to the Republic of China were humanitarian when the government knew some of that wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam—a country actively killing and maiming Australian, New Zealand, and American troops during the Vietnam War?
How was this humanitarian when Australia was, knowingly or not, contributing to the deaths of its own soldiers and those of its allies?
Australia’s public servants have long lacked a deep understanding of Communist China’s sentiment toward the West during Mao Zedong’s reign. This ignorance led to anyone inquiring about China being viewed as a spy—including myself and at least one other crew member of the Hopepeak. Despite being a patriotic Australian, I faced adversity while trying to uncover which country was receiving Australian wheat through China’s back door.
I intended to reveal that North Vietnam was the recipient, hoping the Australian government would halt the trade once they knew our wheat was aiding our adversaries. But they didn’t act. It was disheartening to realise that our wheat was fueling those set on harming Australian, New Zealand, and American lives—and no one in government moved to stop it.
🚢 Hopepeak Crew: Silenced, Dismissed, Forgotten
It matters not that I could have been shot or imprisoned for spying. No government representative has ever asked me to explain what happened in China after I was arrested and falsely accused.
In my correspondence dated 18 September 1967, addressed to the Australian government, I expressed grave concerns about the mental distress endured by many crew members of the Hopepeak after we refused to return to Communist China. We had just delivered 13,600 tons of Australian wheat. The fear of being forced to sail again into a communist nation—knowing the wheat was destined for China and North Vietnam—hung over us, affecting our ability to find work on other vessels for years.
Regrettably, since 1967, no comprehensive government inquiry has ever investigated the consequences faced by the British crew after their dismissal and repatriation to the United Kingdom. They were unable to reintegrate with the company that discharged them. Their story, like mine, was buried.
This is Chapter 7-Vietnam Vietcong: The Viet Cong.
FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978
Pages 54 and 55 refer to footnotes 82 - 85 in a paper submitted by Tianxiao Zhu to - The Faculty of the University of Minnesota titled Secret Trails: Food and Trade In Late Maoist China, 1960-1978, etc → Requirements For The Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy - Christopher M Isett June 2021 wrote:
In September 1967, a group of British merchant seamen quit their ship, the Hope Peak, in Sydney and flew back to London. They told the press in London that they quit the job because of the humiliating experiences to which they were subjected while in Chinese ports. They also claimed that grain shipped from Australia to China was being sent straight on to North Vietnam. One of them said, “I have watched grain going off our ship on conveyor belts and straight into bags stamped North Vietnam. Our ship was being used to take grain from Australia to feed the North Vietnamese. It’s disgusting.” 83 (my emphasis). The Minister of Trade and Industry received an inquiry about the truth of the story in Parliament, to which the Minister pointed out that when they left Australia, the seamen only told the Australian press that they suffered such intolerable maltreatment in various Chinese ports that they were fearful about going back. But after they arrived in London, Vietnam was added to their story. Thus the Minister claimed that he did not know the facts and did not want to challenge this story, but it seemed to him that their claims about Vietnam seemed to be an “afterthought.”84
📮 A Letter That Was Never Answered
In my letter dated 18 September 1967, addressed to The Hon. Malcolm Fraser and hand-delivered to the Commonwealth Police (now the Australian Federal Police), I reported a story strikingly similar to that of Tianxiao Zhu.
I advised Mr Fraser—then Minister of the Army—that the wheat dispatched to China was sent under the guise of humanitarian aid. Yet it was deeply troubling to learn that some of this same wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam, a nation actively engaged in war against Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
How could Australia justify sending wheat to Communist China on humanitarian grounds while knowing it was being redirected to an enemy killing its own soldiers and those of its allies?
I never received a response to that letter. Not then. Not ever. And that silence remains one of the most disappointing chapters in my long fight for truth.
Vol. 87 No. 4462 (4 Sep 1965) - National Library of Australia https://nla.gov.au › nla.obj-702601569
"The Department of External Affairs has recently published an "Information Handbook entitled "Studies on Vietnam". It established the fact that the Vietcong are equipped with Chinese arms and ammunition"
If it is right to ask Australian youth to risk everything in Vietnam it is wrong to supply their enemies. The Communists in Asia will kill anyone who stands in their path, but at least they have a path."
Australian trade commssioners do not so readily see that our Chinese trade in war materials finances our own distruction. NDr do they see so clearly that the wheat trade does the same thing."
The sacrifice
Feeding the enemy
1 July 2021 — The editorial in The Australian Financial Review of August 28, 1967, argues why Australia's position on wheat sales to China was rational https://shorturl.at/90OoP.
While the Financial Review might argue in this 1 July 2021 editorial that supplying wheat to a starving China saved millions of Chinese lives, one must also ask how many Australian, New Zealand and USA lives were lost after Australia's wheat fed the bellies of the North Vietnamese Vietcong guerrilla's before they marched into the jungle's of North Vietnam to kill and maim as many Australian, New Zealand and USA soldiers as they could.
I reported to the government that Australian wheat shipped on humanitarian grounds to the People's Republic of China was being redirected to another communist country under the cloak of humanitarian aid. This raises serious questions about the legitimacy of shipping food to a country under the guise of humanitarian aid while that country is killing and maiming the soldiers of the country who are supplying this humanitarian aid.
In December 1967, Trade Minister Sir John McEwen became Australia's 18th Prime Minister. Other Australian Prime Ministers, namely John Howard, have more recently misled and deceived Australian citizens concerning the Iraq War. This misleading and deceiving of Australian citizens has hurt many Australians. The government's refusal to acknowledge what happened in China while delivering Australian wheat is a matter of public interest and should be addressed. I hope my website, absentjustice.com, will achieve this.
In early September 1967, members of the Hopeprak crew, including myself, took significant and urgent action after we observed the disturbing reshipping of Australian wheat destined for North Vietnam. Recognising the potential implications of this situation, we promptly notified the Seamen’s Union in Australia and the Labour government at the time. Our direct accounts of the events drew considerable attention from the Australian Senate, as once documented in the Senate Hansard on September 6, 1967 - https://shorturl.at/ovEW5, (but has since disappeared from Senate records)
This statement is significant to feature on the absentjustice.com website because it underscores Mr Aldermann, Primary Industry Minister ,'s assertion that the Australian Government appeared unconcerned about the ultimate destination of Australia’s wheat. Alarmingly, it was likely being sent to the North Vietnamese Vietcong, who were in direct conflict with Australian, New Zealand, and American forces during the Vietnam War. I feel compelled to share this statement to highlight the character and priorities of many of Australia's Liberal Coalition politicians. These politicians have consistently overlooked or dismissed the truth surrounding the COT (Contractor's Outrageous Treatment) issue, raising serious questions about their integrity and commitment to accountability.
This Hansard https://shorturl.at/ovEW5 shows Dr Patterson (minister in opposition) asking Mr Aldermann, Primary Industry Minister.
"What guarantees has the Australian Government that Australian wheat being sent to mainland China is not forwarding China to North Vietnam
Mr Adermann, on behalf of the Liberal and Country Party government that had authorised this three-year wheat deal to China - answered Dr Patterson as follows:
"The Australian Government does not exercise control over the ultimate destination of goods purchased by foreign buyers"
I can only assume that Mr Alderman did not have a sibling fighting in North Vietnam when he made that statement on behalf of the Australian government.
When I commenced writing My Story – Warts and All and this website, I told the whole story – I didn’t leave bits out to avoid embarrassing myself. To say all of my COT stories, I had to go back in time to show how the phone faults affected my well-being and needed to cover some details regarding an incident involving China.
FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978
In January 2024, for the second or third time since 2021, I read through the paper FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978, prepared by Tianxiao Zhu. Between Footnote 82 to 85 - T Zhu names not only the Hopepeak ship which I was on between 28 June and 18 September 1967 (refer to British Seaman’s Record R744269 - Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smiths Seaman), he tells the story the way it happened (I was there) not the way the government of the day told it to the people of Australia in 1967 through to the present. The Australian Minister of Trade and Industry, Sir John McEwen, referred to by Tianxiao Zhu as having stated the British seafarers of the Hopepeak ship were fearful of going back to China, was only an afterthought after being flown from Sydney back to England. When John McEwen knew full well, this was not an afterthought.
Those British seaman had witnessed me on two occasions being frog marched off the Hopepeak under armed guard never to be seen again. I was only seen again because my life was not worth 13,600 tons of wheat still in Australia ready to be loaded on to the Hopepeak for her return voyage back to the Peoples Republic of China. The voyage these British seaman was affraid of (for good reason) if they retuned with the Hopepeak.
Interestingly to note, after the crew was flown back to England (I remained in Sydney), a new crew was flown out at the expense of the ship's owners. Had the ship's crew not proven they had good reason to be fearful of returning to Communist China, the ship owner would not have met the cost of flying the two crews.
If the skipper had not reported my experience and that of another crew member of the Hopepeak at the hands of the Chinese Red Guards, on the Hopepeak's return trip to Sydney, the Commonwealth Police (now called the Australian Federal Police) would not have been waiting on the dockside to interview me and this other crew member on 18 September 1967 when we arrived back.
Both the police and media wanted to know why so many crew members feared returning to Red China. For a ship's crew to all refuse to take the ship to sea because it was to travel to a certain destination is unheard of. This refusal to sail was NO afterthought. I reiterate, If what happened was not true, why did the Commonwealth Police and media meet the ship? The captain and ship owner must have notified them that not all was well even before the ship had berthed.
What is not mentioned in the footnotes by Tianxiao Zhu, is that the Australian Trade Minister misled many people about the seriousness of what had taken place so that the Australian government could continue to sell wheat to Red China.
Likewise, the Commonwealth Police asked me to describe to them the context of what I was forced to write under threat of being shot. They would not have done this had there not been some official acknowledgement from the ship's captain that this was what had happened. Why was I escorted off the Hopepeak under armed guard by the Red Guards and taken to the hospital in the manner I was? I was told I had syphilis, which I knew was highly unlikely, and when I refused to be injected with an unsterilized needle, I caused a scene at the hospital.
Refusing any demand by the Red Guards in the People's Republic of China in 1967 was not something one did for no good reason.
I was placed under armed guard for several days, being regularly threatened as was another crew member who had not taken to lightly to being stopped and forced to recite verses from Mao's Red Bible; the ship's officers helped me compile two different letters addressed to Mao and the People's Republic of China. In those two letters, I apologized for causing a problem at the hospital and for my treatment of the Red Guards, whose treatment of me later was threefold.
What the two ship's officers had written differed from what the Red Guards wanted to say in those letters. A third letter was written under pressure from the Red Guards, stating, "I am a US aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party." When I told the skipper that writing this statement meant I was signing my death warrant, as Chiang Kai-shek was against Mao Tse Tung, the 'Second Steward' in charge of the ship's correspondence said I was dead if I did not.
At the suggestion of the 'Second Steward,' he stated it would be more powerful if I wrote ", I disliked America and its invasion of North Vietnam" It was agreed for me to hand deliver this letter to the armed guards as a show of respect (I did what I was advised) fearful of loosing my life over an unsterilized needle).
Before leaving the ship with this letter, the '(Third Officer) on the Hopepeak, who was from Mauritius, pulled me aside and informed me the cargo being unloaded had already been paid for by the People's Republic of China. A further load of similar wheat still in Australia had also been paid for with that money held in transit until the Hopepeak returned with the next shipment.
The 'Third Officer' made it noticeably clear to the Chinese Commander that if I were shot, there would be no further wheat sent to Red China, and the fight over what had already been supplied would be arbitrated on with the ship owners winning on appeal because they had completed their first part of the deal. This threat worked, and I returned from delivering this letter in a daze.
After arriving in Sydney on 17 September 1967, I provided the above and below information to the Commonwealth Police and a newspaper journalist they had been contacted by the ships agent.
While the ship was in China, for twenty-four hours a day, (night and day), we could hear a loud voice coming from speakers attached to flood light poles on the quayside, which allowed the wharf labourers to work through the night. In English (not in Chinese), the voice was making propaganda statements about British imperialism. The constant drone of the propaganda recordings day and night was unnerving. A sentry box had been placed at the bottom of the ship's gangway, where a Red Guard, sometimes two Guards, stood (not sat) to check the credentials of everyone boarding or leaving the ship. The ship's crew, from officers down, were told we could have shore leave but only to visit the Seaman's Mission and a Shop that sold trinkets and large bottles of Chinese-made beer.
No fishing lines were allowed to go over the side of the ship. Some ship's crews were treated differently from others. For reasons not known, our crew was being treated harshly. Rumours had it that two young Chinese girls had been seen on a sister ship to ours and had been shot as prostitutes. Their bodies no longer belonged to The People's Republic of China. Those two bodies left with the sister ship to the Hopepeak. While these were only rumours that may have be why our ship had been singled out.
When I found out who was Australia's Minister of the Army, I wrote to the Minister Malcolm Fraser asking him to ensure Australia refrained from sending more grain back to Red China on the Hopepeak with a new crew. The ship still left for Communist China carrying 13,600 tons of wheat regardless of my pleas. Australia will, of course, never find out how much of that wheat went into the bellies of the North Vietnam soldier's/guerillas before they marched off into the jungles of Vietnam in search of Australian, New Zealand and USA blood.
John McEwen could not afford an Australian public to see behind the stand of the crew of a British ship saying we are not going to be a party to the slaughter of those conscripts that the Australian government forced to forfeit their lives for a few bowls of grain. That's what the crew of the Hopepeak did: put their seaman discharge books on the line, knowing some of them might not be allowed to sail again until an investigation proved them to be of sound judgment for having to been forced to take the cargo they refused to take to Red China aware it was being redeployed to North Vietnam. For a seaman to have their discharge book stamped Voyage Not Completed meant some shipping companies would refuse to employ them. Sir John McEwen (Australia's Trade Minister) turned these British Seaman's bravery into something sordid.File number 114 ⇒ AS-CAV Exhibit 92 to 127 is a letter dated 11 November 1994 from John Wynack, Director of Investigations at the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office, to Frank Blount, Telstra’s CEO. The letter indicates how desperate I was becoming. I believe in this letter that Mr Wynack made it quite clear to Mr Blount that he would be more than a little concerned if my allegations were proved correct regarding Telstra deliberately blanking out information on documents previously supplied under FOI and the withholding of relevant documents which discussed my conversation with the former prime minister of Australia. What had Telstra deleted from this discussion?
