This website is a work in progress; it was last edited in May 2024.

Welcome to Absent Justice! If you're interested in reading Absent Justice Book 2, you can get it for free with a simple click. However, if you appreciate the time and effort spent writing the book, please donate to Transparency International Australia. 

Absent Justice | Exposing bribery and corruption. Bureaucratic nemesis

Don't miss a single detail of this 30-year journey! As you scroll down the page, confidently hover your cursor/mouse over the images to learn more. Each image holds a vital piece of the puzzle, so make sure you don't skip a beat. Your understanding of this journey depends on it!

View my comments in my 'open letter' to the current 2024 prime minister of Australia, The Hon Anthony Albanese, concerning AUSTEL (now ACMA) their acknowledgement that my claims against Telstra were valid (refer to Points 2 to 212 in AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, dated March 1994.

Open letter to Prime Minister

On July 3, 2023, I composed an Open Letter to The Hon. Anthony Albanese, the current 2024 Australian prime minister. The letter presents irrefutable proof of unethical conduct exhibited by some of Australia's previous AUSTEL (now ACMA) public servants during various Casualties of Telstra arbitrations. The evidence is accessible on the website, and I am extremely confident that upon reviewing it, you (the reader) and The Hon. Anthony Albanese will acknowledge the validity of my claims raised in absentjustice.com's Open letter to Prime Minister (Recovered).

The unqualified, non-graded arbitrator, who exhibited arrogance and lacked proper control over the arbitrations he conducted, has been rightfully condemned by John Pinnock, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (the second-appointed official responsible for administering the process). His statement to the Australian Senate on 26 September 1997, after the conclusion of most of the arbitrations, including mine, noted. "Firstly, and perhaps most significantly, the arbitrator had no control over that process because it was a process conducted entirely outside of the ambit of the arbitration procedures”.   Prologue Evidence File No 22-D) 

By simply clicking on Chapter 5 - The Eighth Damning Letter, you will have enough evidence to form your own opinion about whether or not you should read the previous four chapters, from Chapter 1 - The collusion continues to Chapter 4 - The Seventh Damning Letter. Even if you only skim through those four chapters and read a few selected paragraphs here and there, it will become evident that going through an arbitration process to settle a dispute in Australia is not a wise decision.

Discover the shocking truth behind the corruption within government-owned organizations with two compelling stories - 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office' and 'The Casualties of Telstra'. In 1993, Telstra was entirely owned by the Australian government when the scandal broke, and even today, the Post Office remains under British government ownership. You won't want to miss the Channel 7 trailer for 'Mr Bates vs the Post Office', which aired in February 2024 and can be viewed by clicking on the Click here provided. For the latest update on this ongoing story, visit the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/MyhjuR5g1Mc.

Also, please take a look at the harrowing statements made by Ann Garms, a COT case not long before she sadly passed away. Ann's YouTube page is accessible on Mr Bates vs The Post Office-Absent Justice. Don't wait any longer to uncover the truth.

This never-ending saga 

How do you publish an accurate account of what has happened during various Australian Government-endorsed Arbitrations without attaching the exhibits to support those facts, as we have been literally forced to do here because the corruption within the government bureaucracy is so rife?  → Evidence Files Corruption in Arbitration.

How does the author prove that government public servants fed privileged information to the then Australian Government-owned telecommunications carrier (the defendants) but also concealed the same documentation from the claimants, i.e. their fellow Australian citizens?

How do you tell a story that is so unbelievable that even the author doubts the authenticity of what they are writing until they check their records before continuing with the story being written? How do you expose collusion between an arbitrator, various appointed government watchdogs (umpire) and the defendants? → Chapter 5 Fraudulent conductChapter 

How do you expose that the defendants in an arbitration process (the once Government telecommunications carrier) used equipment connected to their network, screened faxed material leaving your office, and stored it without your knowledge or consent before redirecting it onto its intended destination? → See AFP Evidence File No 9 - File No/9-C - with the interception evidence revealed in Open Letter File No/12 and document |764]Open Letter File No/12 

How many other Australian arbitration processes have been subjected to this type of hacking? Is this electronic eavesdropping, this hacking into in-confidence documentation, still happening today during legitimate Australian arbitrations? On 7 January 1999, the arbitration claimants provided the Australian Government with a reportOpen Letter File No/12  and File No/13)  confirming that confidential, arbitration-related documents were secretly and illegally screened before they arrived at their intended location, including those en route to Parliament House Canberra: will that report ever be released to the Australian public?

Children's lives could be at risk

Comments made from the Herald Sun newspaper dated 30 August 1993 confirm just how damaging some of the many newspaper articles were to my already ailing business with statements like:

“The Royal Children’s Hospital has told a holiday camp operators in Portland that it cannot send chronically ill children there because of Telecom’s poor phone service. The hospital has banned trips after fears that the children’s lives could be at risk in a medical emergency if the telephone service to the Portland camp continued to malfunction”.

The centre’s stand follows letters from schools, community groups, companies and individuals who have complained about the phone service at Portland’s Cape Bridgewater Holiday camp.”

Youths from the Royal Children’s Centre for Adolescent Health, who were suffering from “chronic illnesses”, visited the camp earlier this year.   

Group leader Ms Louise Rolls said in a letter to the camp the faulty phones had endangered lives and the hospital would not return to the camp unless the phone service could be guaranteed” Arbitrator File No/90

After the Melbourne Children's Hospital recorded a near-death experience with me having to rush a sick child with cancer to the Portland Hospital 18 kilometres away from my holiday camp, Telstra finally decided to take my telephone faults seriously. None of the 35 children (all with cancer-related illnesses) had mobile phones, or the six or so nurses and carers. Mobile telephones could not operate successfully in Cape Bridgewater until 2004, eleven years after this event. My coin-operated gold phone was also plagued with phone problems, and it took several tries to ring out of the holiday camp. An ambulance arrived once we could ring through to the Hospital.

Viewing my Absent Justice Book 2 → Chapter 1 to Chapter 12 will give the reader some understanding of the difficulty I experienced when operating a telephone-dependent business in the 1990s with a grossly ineffective telephone service.

My experience with Telstra is one of injustice, deceit, and persecution. It goes beyond my personal struggles and encompasses the many unlawful happenings against me and other COT cases in different ways. As you read my COT Telstra story, I urge you to understand the gravity of the threats that Telstra carried out against me, the lies told about me by the arbitrator and Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), and the appalling treatment I received from TIO arbitration consultants.

My China story is an essential part of my COT story. It is a story of Telstra gaining access to my phone conversations and using this information to threaten me. Even after my wife left the holiday camp, the China Flashbacks continued to haunt me. On June 3rd, 1993, Telstra technicians visited my residence and left a file note in my briefcase. The note was redacted but began with the visible text: "Alan Smith spoke with the former prime minister, Malcolm Fraser." It was clear that Telstra had gained unauthorized access to my conversations with Mr Fraser, the Minister for the Army, to discuss selling wheat to China in 1967.

China and North Vietnam

Trading with the enemy 

My story elucidates a significant concern regarding the government's unethical conduct and lack of compassion during the Vietnam War. The decision to vend wheat to China, despite being cognizant of the fact that some of it was serving to nourish North Vietnam, whose troops were perpetrating heinous acts, not only against the Australian military but also against the troops of our allies, such as New Zealand and the USA, is a flagrant example of immoral trading practices. This trade deal serves as an indication that the bureaucracy of Australia, which is responsible for advising the politicians, may engage in corrupt practices that do not align with the best interests of the people they serve.

Absent Justice Book 2  further posits that the government officials who endorsed and supported the Casualties of Telstra arbitrations did so at the expense of the claimants. The sale of wheat to the enemy is a potent example of corruption that has existed in the government for decades, dating back to the Vietnam War and, potentially, even earlier.

It appears that my faxes to and from various COT Cases who were interested in my China story, especially Ann Garms and Graham Schorer's telephone lines, were intercepted during the period I discussed this terrible trade.

In my 18 September 1967 correspondence, I said that I had serious concerns about the mental distress experienced by a significant number of crew members of the vessel Hopepeak after we refused to return to Communist China, where we had just delivered 13,600 tons of Australian wheat (refer to British Seaman’s Record R744269 -  Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smiths Seaman. The prospect of being forced to sail to a communist country with another cargo of wheat destined for China and North Vietnam was deeply troubling for all of us. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 More images

Vietcong guerilla

 

Viet Cong (VC), in full Viet Nam Cong San, English Vietnamese Communists, the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam (late 1950s–1975) and the United States (early 1960s–1973). The name is said to have first been used by South Vietnamese Press.

On 3 February 1994, before the arbitration process began, I wrote to the Hon. Michael Lee, Minister for Communications (Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-A). A subsequent letter from Fay Holthuyzen, assistant to the minister (Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-B), to Telstra’s corporate secretary, shows that I was concerned that my faxes were being illegally intercepted.

AUSTEL writes to Telstra on 10 February 1994 stating:

“Yesterday we were called upon by officers of the Australian Federal Police in relation to the taping of the telephone services of COT Cases.

“Given the investigation now being conducted by that agency and the responsibilities imposed on AUSTEL by section 47 of the Telecommunications Act 1991, the nine tapes previously supplied by Telecom to AUSTEL were made available for the attention of the Commissioner of Police.” (See Illegal Interception File No/3)

QUESTIONS ON NOTICE: 

On 15 February 1994, during my settlement /arbitration process, Senator Richard Alston (Shadow Minister for Communications) put a number of questions to the Senate Estimates Committee, On Notice, to be answered by Telstra. These are the questions most pertinent to the COT claimant's arbitration claims Main Evidence File No/29 QUESTIONS ON NOTICE):

1. Could you guarantee that no Parliamentarians who have had dealings with ‘COT’ members have had their phone conversations bugged or taped by Telstra?
2. Who authorised this taping of ‘COT’ members’ phone conversations and how many and which Telstra employees were involved in either making the voice recordings, transcribing the recordings or analysing the tapes?
3. On what basis is Telstra denying copies of tapes to those customers which it has admitted to taping?

On 29 October 1993, only a month before Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson) and I signed our Fast Track Settlement Proposal on 23 November 1993, which eventually became our arbitration agreement, both Graham Schorer's Melbourne Golden Messenger Courier Service and my business, Cape Bridgewater holiday camp, were still experiencing issues while sending and receiving faxes between our respective offices and our technical consultant. However, the Telstra internal FOI document, folio K01489, → See AFP Evidence File No 9) confirms that Telstra was indeed testing my Mitsubishi fax machine with Golden Messenger as the testing base. This document indicates that the issue was not with my machine but with Telstra's network, which clearly indicates the company's lack of responsibility and accountability.

‘During testing the Mitsubishi fax machine some alarming patterns of behaviour was noted”. This document further goes on to state: “…Even on calls that were tampered with the fax machine displayed signs of locking up and behaving in a manner not in accordance with the relevant CCITT Group fax rules. Even if the page was sent upside down the time and date and company name should have still appeared on the top of the page, it wasn’t’

During a received call the machine failed to respond at the end of the page even though it had received the entire page (sample #3) The Mitsubishi fax machine remained in the locked up state for a further 2 minutes after the call had terminated, eventually advancing the page out of the machine. (See See AFP Evidence File No 9)

A letter dated 2 March 1994 from Telstra’s Corporate Solicitor, Ian Row, to Detective Superintendent Jeff Penrose (AFP) clarifies that Mr Penrose Home Page Part-One File No/9-A to 9-C) was misled and deceived about the faxing issues the author had to deal with, as discussed in the letter. Upon comparing the four exhibits numbered (File No/9-C) with the interception evidence revealed in Open Letter File No/12 and  File No/13, it became apparent that if Ian Row had not misled the AFP about the author's faxing issues, the AFP would have been able to prevent Telstra from intercepting the relevant faxed arbitration documents in March 1994. This would have prevented any damage to the author's overall claim.

The fax hacking by Telstra continued throughout the COT arbitrations. 

In 2024, I am still denied copies of the tape recordings that Telstra has admitted to taping the first four COT Cases' telephone conversations. In April 1994, I telephoned the Hon Malcolm Fraser, former prime minister of Australia, alerting him to the fact these tapes were being denied me even though Telstra files notes received under FOI dated around the period of these telephone taped conversations were taken at the time I had discussed with Mr Fraser my time in China when he was Minister for the Army in September 1967. Mr Fraser could not help with these phone and fax hacking issues. 

An internal government memo, dated 25 February 1994, confirms that the minister advised me that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my illegal phone/fax interception allegations. (Hacking-Julian Assange File No/28)

This internal, dated 25 February 1994, is a Government Memo confirming that the then-Minister for Communications and the Arts had written to advise that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (AFP Evidence File No 4)

On 3 March 1994, this article appeared in the Portland Observer newspaper File AS 773-b → AS-CAV Exhibit 765-A to 789) noting:

“Federal Police officers are investigating allegations of possible illegal activity on the part of Telecom Australia.

Officers from the Federal Police visited Portland last week and interviewed Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp proprietor, Alan Smith, who is one of the four original members of COT (Casualties of Telecom).”

Faxes were intercepted en route to the Federal treasurer's office - File 10-C Open Letter File No/12

I acknowledge that Senator Kim Carr was given evidence that the COT arbitration-related documents were regularly hacked into between January 1994 and as late as November 1998. Senator Carr was also provided with the first draft of the manuscript, Absent Justice. The senator participated in three Senate debates about the COT arbitrations on September 20, 1995, June 24, 1997, and June 25, 1997. Thus, including the image above as the spearhead to the following text was crucial.

Only the Treasurer's office received the first page of my letter to Mr Peter Costello, Treasurerer Canberra, dated 1/11/98, more than three years after the conclusion of my arbitration.  What happened to the other pages? 

The fax imprint across the top of this letter dated 12 May 1995 (Open Letter File No 55-A) is the same as the fax imprint described in the 7 January 1999 Scandrett & Associates fax interception report provided to Senator Ron Boswell (Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), confirming faxes were intercepted during the COT arbitrations. One of the two technical consultants attesting to the validity of this January 1999 fax interception report emailed me on 17 December 2014, stating:

“I still stand by my statutory declaration that I was able to identify that the incoming faxes provided to me for review had at some stage been received by a secondary fax machine and then retransmitted, this was done by identifying the dual time stamps on the faxes provided.” (Front Page Part One File No/14)

It is clear from Files 646 and 647 (Exhibits 589 to 647) that Telstra admitted in writing to the Australian Federal Police on 14 April 1994 that my private and business telephone conversations were listened to and recorded over several months, but only when a particular officer was on duty. 

Does Telstra expect the AFP to accept that every time this officer left the Portland telephone exchange, the alarm bell set up to broadcast my telephone conversations throughout the Portland telephone exchange was turned off every time this officer left the exchange? What was the point of setting up equipment connected to my telephone lines that only operated when this person was on duty? When I asked Telstra under the FOI Act during my arbitration to supply me all the detailed data obtained from this special equipment set up for this specially assigned Portland technician, that data was not made available during my 1994.95 arbitration and has still not been made available in 2024.

Why did it take AUSTEL/ACMA until 23 November 2007 (thirteen years) after the conclusion of my arbitration to validate my claims?

The government had already validated my claims against Telstra six weeks prior to my arbitration, as confirmed in Points 2 to 212 AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings, dated March 1994. It is concerning that despite this knowledge, AUSTEL/ACMA still allowed me to spend over $300,000 in the arbitration process trying to prove something that had already been established.

Between October 1997 and May 2011, I presented evidence to the government communications regulator AUSTEL (now ACMA) and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. The evidence showed that the arbitrator did not view 41 official arbitration documents during my arbitration process. I arrived at this conclusion by comparing the arbitrator's official schedule of arbitration-related faxes his office received from my office to Telstra's billing accounts for faxes that left my office en route to the arbitrator's fax machine.

Two Alan Smiths (not related) living in Cape Bridgewater.

No one apparently investigated whether the other Alan Smith, living in the Discovery Bay area of Cape Bridgewater, had received some of my arbitration mail. I submitted some of Alan Smith's billing information, which I had received under FOI, to explain to the arbitrator that Alan Smith was also receiving threats from Telstra and their lawyers because he, like me, refuted the billing accounts for calls he did not make. The Cape Bridgewater Telephone Exchange was a mess before, during and after my arbitration.   

The billing summons above both bear the same fax imprint of Freehill Hollingdale & Page, who represented Telstra in arbitration. They denied any billing issues in my area or across Australia. These are the lawyers who devised the COT Case Strategy and also handled my phone complaints before Telstra investigated them.

The following "COT Case Strategy" (discussed below Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C) confirms Telstra made threats that if I did not register my phone complaints in writing with their lawyers Freehill Hollingdale & Page, then Telstra would not investigate my phone complaints, which in most cases, then became a billing complaint. Telstra's billing software could not determine if the line had jammed in this case. This meant the phone would lock up the phone service. The billing software could not determine whether this was a fault or whether someone on the line was talking for a long time. 

As shown on page 5169 in Australia's Government SENATE official Hansard – Parliament of Australia. Telstra's lawyers Freehill Hollingdale & Page devised a legal paper titled “COT Case Strategy” Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C instructing their client Telstra (naming me and three other businesses) on how Telstra could conceal technical information from us under the guise of Legal Professional Privilege even though the information was not privileged. 

The Australian communications regulator, AUSTEL, has admitted that there was a locking fault in the telecommunications network from 1992 until at least 1997. During this time, Telstra, the telecommunications corporation, made significant profits despite these faults. AUSTEL, which is now known as ACMA, has been presented with evidence of this issue. Following the presentation, AUSTEL's John MacMahon, the General Manager for Consumer Affairs, requested that the presenter work with AUSTEL to resolve these ongoing billing issues in the public interest, and this was done.

However, it was later discovered that Telstra had addressed these same billing matters with AUSTEL on 16 October 1995, five months after the completion of the arbitration, without the presenter’s knowledge. This secret arrangement with the government AUSTEL (ACMA) disallowed the presenter’s legal right to challenge Telstra when, as part of their 16 October 1995 clandestine submission, they used a known false statement prepared by a local technician. As a result, the original arbitrator of the case, Dr Gordon Hughes, was also unable to make a finding on this late secret arbitration defence document → Absent Justice Part 2 - Chapter 14 - Was it Legal or Illegal?

However, some of the evidence I provided, including the billing evidence of another person named Alan Smith, who also lives in Cape Bridgewater (no relation), was not investigated by the arbitrator's technical consultants, DMR Inc (Canada) and Lane (Australia), even though it supported my claim these billing faults were known to be systemic across Australia providing revenue to Telstra and the government who owned Telstra millions upon millions of dollars in illicit profit.

As mentioned in Chapter 1 - The collusion continues, DMR and Lane informed the arbitrator, Dr. Gordon Hughes, that they were unable to diagnose the cause of these ongoing billing issues. Unfortunately, they left these billing issues unaddressed and unresolved.

I provided the same unaddressed arbitration systemic billing evidence during an official government Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) between February and October 2008 (case No V2008/1836). The judge (Senior AAT Member Mr G. D. Friedman) and the two government lawyers from ACMA seemed concerned about what this extra billing revenue meant regarding a government-appointed arbitrator not having addressed these matters during my arbitration.

I presented my 158-page Statement of Facts and Contentions, supported by 1,850 exhibits available on this website. During the AAT hearing on 3 October 2008, Mr G.D. Friedman, in his closing speech, acknowledged the validity of my claims in the presence of two ACMA lawyers and several witnesses. He explicitly noted my arguments in Chapter 9 - The ninth remedy pursued 

“Let me just say, I don’t consider you, personally, to be frivolous or vexatious – far from it.

“I suppose all that remains for me to say, Mr Smith, is that you obviously are very tenacious and persistent in pursuing the – not this matter before me, but the whole – the whole question of what you see as a grave injustice, and I can only applaud people who have persistence and the determination to see things through when they believe it’s important enough.”