INTRODUCTION

We have lived with this for so long that it has settled into us the way weather settles into old timber. The lies, the corruption, the threats, the slow erosion of trust — they became the background hum of our lives, a constant vibration beneath everything we did. Thirty years. A generation. Long enough for children to grow into adults, for marriages to rise and fall, for bodies to weaken, for friends to die. Long enough for the world to change around us while we remained trapped in the same unresolved story.

We speak now as we, because the experience was never singular. It was never just one of us standing alone against a faceless institution. It was all of us, scattered across Australia, each living our own version of the same nightmare. We were small business owners, farmers, operators, workers, people who believed in the basic decency of the system. People who believed that when something went wrong, there were mechanisms to fix it. People who believed arbitration meant fairness, that government meant oversight, that truth meant something.

We were naïve. We can admit that now. But at the time, we walked into the process with the kind of trust that only ordinary citizens possess — the trust that comes from never having had reason to doubt the machinery of the state.

The first cracks appeared quietly. A fault here, a dropped call there, a complaint lodged, a technician dispatched, a promise made. We thought it would be simple. We thought it would be resolved. But the faults were only the doorway. What lay behind them was a labyrinth of concealment, denial, and institutional rot so deep that even now, after all these years, we struggle to articulate the scale of it without feeling the old anger rise in our throats.

When arbitration was offered, we believed it was the path to truth. We believed the arbitrator would be a neutral figure — a steady hand, a moral compass, a safeguard. We believed he would look at the evidence, see the inconsistencies, and demand answers. We believed he would protect the integrity of the process.

Instead, we found ourselves standing before a man who had the power to stop the harm and chose not to. A man who could have halted the lies, exposed the corruption, and insisted on transparency — but instead allowed the process to continue, knowing it was compromised. That choice changed the trajectory of our lives. It is one thing to be harmed by a corporation. It is another to be harmed by the very process designed to deliver justice.

That is a wound that never fully heals.

From the beginning, lies were not incidental to the process — they were the process. They seeped into everything. They appeared in documents, in sworn statements, in timelines that shifted like sand. They appeared in the excuses for missing evidence, in the explanations for why certain files “could not be located,” in the FOI responses that arrived with pages missing, redacted, or mysteriously “lost.” We lived with lies the way some people live with chronic illness — always there, always shaping the day, always demanding energy we did not have.

And the worst part was not the lies themselves. It was the knowledge that the arbitrator saw them too. He saw the contradictions. He saw the withheld documents. He saw the altered records. He saw the evidence that should have stopped the process in its tracks. He saw it all — and he let it stand.

There is a particular kind of betrayal that comes from watching someone with power choose convenience over truth. It rewires a person’s understanding of the world. It teaches you that justice is not guaranteed, that fairness is not inherent, that the system is not designed to protect the vulnerable but to protect itself.

Corruption, for us, was not an abstract concept. It was not a headline or a scandal unfolding in some distant political arena. It was intimate. It was personal. It was woven into the fabric of our days. Corruption was the letter that never arrived. Corruption was the document that was “accidentally” destroyed. Corruption was the FOI request returned with half the pages missing. Corruption was the government official who looked us in the eye and told us something we knew was false. Corruption was the silence — the long, calculated silence — when we asked questions that could not be answered without exposing the truth.

Corruption was the knowledge that someone, somewhere, had decided that our rights, our businesses, our health, our families, were expendable. And corruption was the knowledge that the arbitrator — the one person who could have stopped it — chose to look away.

Threats came in many forms. Some were spoken plainly, others wrapped in bureaucratic language, others implied through delays, obstructions, or the sudden appearance of obstacles that had no logical explanation. There were days when the phone would ring and we would feel our stomachs tighten. There were nights when we lay awake wondering what would be taken from us next. There were moments when we questioned whether we were safe, whether our families were safe, whether the fight was worth the cost.

But we kept going. Not because we were fearless — though some of us were. Not because we were stubborn — though all of us were. But because the truth mattered. Because justice mattered. Because what was done to us was wrong, and silence would have been a second betrayal.

The arbitrator remains the central figure in our collective memory, not because he was the architect of the harm, but because he was the one person who could have stopped it. He could have said, “This cannot proceed until all documents are produced.” He could have said, “This cannot proceed while evidence is being withheld.” He could have said, “This cannot proceed while the government is cleansing its archives.” He could have said, “This cannot proceed while the truth is being buried.”

He could have said all of that — and he said none of it.

Instead, he allowed the process to continue, knowing it was compromised. He allowed the lies to stand, knowing they were lies. He allowed the corruption to flourish, knowing it was corruption. He allowed the threats to persist, knowing we were vulnerable. He allowed the trauma to take root — and it has been growing in us ever since.

People think trauma is a moment. It isn’t. Trauma is a landscape — one you learn to navigate because you have no choice. For thirty years, we have lived with the exhaustion of fighting a system designed to outlast us. We have lived with the grief of watching fellow COT Cases die without seeing justice. We have lived with the guilt of surviving when others did not. We have lived with the frustration of knowing the truth and being unable to force institutions to acknowledge it. We have lived with the bitterness of watching officials retire with honours while we carried the scars. We have lived with the loneliness of being dismissed as troublemakers, complainers, relics of an old dispute. We have lived with the quiet, daily ache of knowing our families paid a price they never should have paid.

And we have lived with the knowledge that our story was not just mishandled — it was buried. The cleansing of government records was a second crime, one that cut deeper than the first. It is one thing to be wronged. It is another to have the evidence of that wrongdoing erased. We watched FOI documents arrive with pages missing. We watched timelines shift mysteriously. We watched records disappear. We watched officials claim that files “never existed” — files we had seen with our own eyes. We watched the truth being scrubbed clean, as though our suffering could be erased with it.

This was not incompetence. This was not accident. This was preservation — not of justice, but of reputations. And the arbitrator knew. He knew the documents were incomplete. He knew the evidence was compromised. He knew the process was tainted. And still he proceeded.

That is the part that keeps us awake at night.

We lost businesses. We lost marriages. We lost health. We lost years — decades — that should have been spent building, living, loving, resting. We lost trust in institutions. We lost trust in processes. We lost trust in the idea that justice is accessible to ordinary people. Some of us lost homes. Some of us lost partners. Some of us lost the will to keep fighting. Some of us lost our lives before the truth could be told. And all of us lost something that cannot be measured — the sense of safety that comes from believing the system works.

We are older now. Some of us are frail. Some of us are sick. Some of us are grieving the loss of those who fought beside us. But we are still here. We are still speaking. We are still writing. We are still documenting. We are still refusing to let the truth be buried.

Absentjustice.com is not a website. It is a memorial. It is a record. It is a refusal. A refusal to let the lies stand unchallenged. A refusal to let the corruption be forgotten. A refusal to let the threats silence us. A refusal to let the arbitrator’s inaction define the narrative.

We speak now because we must. Because time is running out. Because history has a way of erasing those who do not speak loudly enough. We speak for ourselves. We speak for those who are gone. We speak for those who will come after us, so they will know what was done in the shadows.

We know the arbitration process was compromised. We know documents were withheld. We know archives were cleansed. We know officials lied. We know the arbitrator failed us. We know the trauma was preventable. We know the suffering was unnecessary. We know the truth was buried. We know justice was denied.

And we know this: we will not go quietly. Not after thirty years. Not after everything we endured. Not while any of us still draw breath.

We are the COT Cases. We survived what was done to us. We survived the lies. We survived the corruption. We survived the threats. We survived the silence.

And now — finally — we speak.

Chapter 1 — No Fault Found