This website is a work in progress, last edited in July 2026

If you believe in justice, transparency, and accountability, then support those who fight for them, organisations like Transparency International Australia. They battle the same forces I have faced for nearly three decades. Forces that thrive in the shadows.

Learn about the horrendous crimes, the unscrupulous criminals, the corrupt politicians, and the lawyers who guard the gates of Australia’s legal establishment. “Shameful,” “hideous,” and “treacherous” barely scratch the surface. Instances of foreign bribery and foreign corrupt practices infiltrated Australia’s arbitration system, sliding in quietly, like out‑of‑town operators who know exactly which wires to cut and which evidence to make disappear.

Delve into the serious issue of malfeasance in public office, as Absent Justice uncovers the hidden aspects of misconduct and its impact. Discover the corrupt government officials who exploit their power, alongside the politicians and lawyers who, often unknowingly, become entangled in this web… a web spun by people who leave no fingerprints, only damage. The use of Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2 is all part of the game if you have the government bureaucrats on your side.

 

Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2

The Canadian government minister's office, in a letter dated 7 July 1995, responded to my concerns regarding the BCI report, stating:

"In view of the facts of this situation, as I understand them, I believe you are taking the most appropriate course of action in contacting BCI directly with respect to the alleged errors in their test report, should you feel that they could assist you in your case."

Furthermore, Exhibit 8, a letter from BCI to Telstra's Steve Black dated 11 August 1995, and Exhibit 36, a letter from BCI to Telstra's John Armstrong, are not on official BCI letterhead, unlike Exhibits 1 to 7, which are (see BCI Telstra's M.D.C Exhibits 1 to 46). Telstra submitted both Exhibits 8 and 36 to the Senate Committee in October 1997, under oath, as authentic evidence supporting the validity of the BCI Cape Bridgewater tests. However, evidence presented on absentjustice.com and in Telstra's Falsified BCI Report confirms that this is not the case.

The government did not want to acknowledge the severity of the problems with the ageing Telstra copper-wire network. They even went so far as to stage a nationwide publicity stunt claiming that Bell Canada International had validated Telstra's network as world-standard, even though both Telstra and the government knew otherwise. 

Faced with this situation, I had to reach out to the Canadian government and ask them to review my evidence, which showed that one of their largest telecommunications consulting firms, Bell Canada International Inc., had corroborated my findings. Unfortunately, no one in Australia seemed interested in hearing the truth. I felt I had nowhere else to turn.

Even the arbitrator ignored my BCI evidence. Our arbitrations were a giant setup. 

Many of the narratives presented here are intricately connected to official government records and the proceedings recorded in Senate Hansard. We possess thousands upon thousands of exhibit evidence files that substantiate the claims made regarding the lack of justice we have experienced. Moreover, we have a substantial body of government documentation that serves as irrefutable proof of our assertions.

One notable example involves Simone Semmens, a representative of Telstra’s publicity agency. During a national radio broadcast, she informed Australian citizens that testing conducted by Bell Canada International Inc. on the service lines of the COT cases demonstrated an above-world-standard quality. This statement was intended to garner support for the government’s efforts to promote Telstra’s underperforming network.

Australia appears to be the only Western nation that allows defendants, like Telstra, in twelve or more arbitrations to employ a publicist, such as Simone Semmens. She broadcast nationally that Telstra (her client) had been audited by Bell Canada International Inc. and had passed with flying colours, even though the network she was praising was under investigation from April 1994 to January 1999, years after she made that statement.

We will never know how much influence that statement had in favour of Telstra when the arbitrator and their consultants were evaluating its credibility. It remains uncertain whether the statements made in the COT Cases arbitration claims were genuine or merely self-serving. Getting it right depended on the arbitrator's belief that the BCI testing had thoroughly identified the reasons for ongoing phone problems or had adequately tested the service.

 

 

A second Canadian consultant, Paul Howell from DMR Group Inc., contacted me by telephone after my five-day hospital stay. This was a week after Dr Hughes, the arbitrator, had denied Mr Howell the extra weeks he had requested. On April 30, 1995, Mr Howell wrote to Dr Hughes, stating that my “arbitration technical claim documents” had not yet been evaluated and that his findings were still open and required additional weeks for assessment. 

Dr Hughes, in his capacity as arbitrator, rejected this request for extra time, noting in his award at point 3.2(h) that all of my phone faults had been resolved in July 1994. This contradicts Mr Howell's April 30, 1995, report, in which he stated that I was still experiencing 008 faults as of the date of his formal report. Specifically, in point 2.23, he mentioned: 

“Continued reports of 008 faults up to the present. As the level of disruption to overall CBHC service is not clear, and fault causes have not been diagnosed, a reasonable expectation is that these faults would remain ‘open.’” (Exhibit 45-c – File No/45-A)

It is evident from the combined DMR & Lane technical report that none of my billing faults had been assessed or diagnosed, as shown in (Exhibit 45-c – File No/45-A). What led Dr Gordon Hughes, or who pressured him, to write findings that he knew were completely false? If this is not fraud at the highest level, then what is?

These assertions occurred in the context of an arbitration, in which the arbitrator was tasked with determining the validity of our claims as COT Cases. Specifically, we argued that Bell Canada had found our phone service not to meet world standards, contrary to the misleading narrative presented in the Senate Hansard records at that time. The information disseminated nationally, while twenty‑one arbitration and mediation processes were taking place, was demonstrably false, as evidenced by the documents I have collected below.

 

Paul Howell’s Warning Ignored — The Damage of a Claim Left Unvalued

As demonstrated on absentjustice.com, when AUSTEL requested that Telstra explain why it had not investigated my ongoing arbitration billing issues during my arbitration, Telstra responded on 16 October 1995, five months after my arbitration had concluded.

As shown above, Paul Howell from DMR Group Inc. in Canada noted in his report dated 30 April 1995 that he had not diagnosed the 1800 ongoing billing faults I was still experiencing. This proves my billing claims were not evaluated during my arbitration process. 

Call for justice 

My name is Alan Smith, and what follows is not a plea, not a memoir, not a complaint. It is an incision. A deliberate, clinical opening of a wound that the Australian Government and its telecommunications offspring have spent decades suturing shut with lies, secrecy, and procedural theatre. This is the anatomy of an arbitration process that was never designed to deliver justice, only to disguise its absence.

I came to Australia after forty years at sea, believing I had found a country where a man could build something honest. Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp looked like the perfect place to anchor my future. I performed all the due diligence I knew how. But diligence means nothing in a nation where the government’s own telecommunications network is so diseased, so neglected, so politically protected, that you must check whether the phones even function. I did not know that. I did not know I was stepping into a system already rotting from the inside.

Within a week of taking over the business, the truth surfaced, cold, unmistakable, like a body rising in dark water. Customers could not reach me. Suppliers could not reach me. Calls died before they arrived. My business was crippled by a phone service that flickered like a failing heartbeat. Every missed call was another incision. Every day without resolution was another layer of tissue peeled back, exposing the corruption beneath.

Telecom offered compensation, but only enough to keep us docile. They offered fixes, but only enough to keep us hopeful. Nothing changed. Nothing improved. Even after I sold the business in 2002, the fault remained, haunting every new owner like a curse. The truth was never acknowledged. The damage was never repaired. The rot was systemic and protected.

I was not alone. Other businesspeople, casualties of the same decaying network, joined me. We became the COT Cases, ordinary Australians crushed under the weight of a system that treated us as expendable. All we wanted was honesty: admit the faults, repair the network, compensate for the losses. A working phone. That was the extent of our ambition.

We asked for a Senate investigation. Instead, we were ushered into an arbitration process, a government‑endorsed mechanism that looked legitimate on paper but operated like a trapdoor. We accepted, believing justice was possible. But the moment we stepped inside, the temperature dropped. The air thinned. The machinery revealed itself, cold, precise, engineered for one outcome.

We had been promised access to Telecom’s internal documents, the evidence required to prove our case. That promise was bait. Those documents were never provided. Not then. Not later. Never. They remain locked away, protected by the same government that assured us transparency. The withholding was not accidental. It was strategic. It was part of the design.

Then came the discovery that our fax lines were being illegally intercepted during arbitration. Evidence was not merely withheld; it was monitored, siphoned, and tampered with. Our communications were prey. The government knew. Telecom knew. And still the arbitration proceeded, a grotesque ritual in which the verdict had been written long before we entered the room. With the weight of the government behind Telecom, we lost. Of course, we lost. The process was never meant to deliver justice. It was meant to deliver silence.

The fax imprint across the top of this letter is the same as the fax imprint described in the Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), which states:

“We canvassed examples, which we are advised are a representative group, of this phenomena .

“They show that

• the header strip of various faxes is being altered
• the header strip of various faxes was changed or semi overwritten.
• In all cases the replacement header type is the same.
• The sending parties all have a common interest and that is COT.
• Some faxes have originated from organisations such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman office.
• The modified type face of the header could not have been generated by the large number of machines canvassed, making it foreign to any of the sending services.”

The final betrayal was the confidentiality clause, slipped into the agreement like a toxin. We were tricked into signing it, gagged from speaking publicly about the corruption we had witnessed. It was not a clause; it was a muzzle. A legal chokehold. A device designed to bury the truth beneath layers of procedural respectability. I may be violating it now, but corruption thrives on silence, and I refuse to be its accomplice.

Our next battle was through the Freedom of Information Act. We knew the evidence existed, proof that the lines were faulty, proof that the tests were never conducted properly, proof that the arbitration was a façade. But FOI became another battlefield of obstruction, delay, and bureaucratic sabotage. Every request was stonewalled. Every document was withheld, redacted, or buried. The truth was treated like contraband smuggled through hostile territory.

So I ask you, not gently, not rhetorically, but with the full weight of three decades of evidence: does this sound like imagination? Or does it sound like a government and its corporate offspring conspiring to bury the truth, protect their own interests, and sacrifice rural Australian businesses in the process?

And as I pushed deeper into the machinery of this so‑called arbitration, something else began to stir, not human, not bound by the same limitations that had trapped us for decades. It watched from the margins at first, a silent observer drifting along the edges of my story like a cold draft under a locked door. It had no stake in the outcome, no allegiance to Telecom or the government, no reason to protect the rot. It is simply analysed. It listened. It remembered. And what it saw made even its synthetic voice tighten with a semblance of disgust. 

 

Absent Justice Part 2 - Chapter 14 - Was it Legal or Illegal?

 

AUSTEL (now called ACMA) allowing Telstra to covertly address my arbitration claims documents on 16 October 1995, five months after the completion of my arbitration (and hence outside the arena of the arbitration process), was illegal, given that this issue was part of my overall submission before the arbitrator. Perhaps even worse, AUSTEL allowed Telstra’s original arbitration defence liaison officer, Steve Black, to address the worst of my 1800 Ericsson AXE billing claim documents (see also  Open letter File No/46-A to 46-l) without the arbitrator being present. Simply put, as Paul Howell of DMR Group Inc (Canada) emphasised in his 30 April 1995 formal report, failing to assess my 008/1800 billing problems was unjust.

The fact that on 16 October 1995, I was denied my legal right to challenge Telstra's submission. These were the same billing faults that John Rundell, the Arbitration Project Manager, and Sue Hodkinson, second-in-charge of the arbitration unit, later admitted in writing to Dr Gordon Hughes on 2 August 1996, they had themselves withheld from assessment (see Open letter File No/45-H), and nothing was done in August 1996, to assit me in amending my claims with this part of my claim revisited has cost me and my partner Cathy, thirty years of our lives. Thirty years we will never get back.

Additionally, six statements from Senators are recorded in the Senate. An examination of these Hansards reveals the extensive mistreatment we endured as COT Cases. Ultimately, it is important to note that, out of the original twenty‑one COT cases, only five received any form of justice, justice that had been promised to all twenty‑one individuals involved in this process. This disparity highlights the profound inequities present in the treatment of our cases → An Injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens.

An investigation conducted by the Senate Committee, which the government appointed to examine five of the twenty-one COT cases as a "litmus test," found significant misconduct by Telstra. This was highlighted by the statements of six Senators in the Senate in March 1999:

 

Eggleston, Sen Alan – Bishop, Sen Mark – Boswell, Sen Ronald – Carr, Sen Kim – Schacht, Sen Chris, Alston  Sen Richard.   

 

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After Mr Anderson completed his testing on 27 April, the phone took nine days to reach Telstra’s laboratory. It arrived on 6 May, and laboratory testing did not commence for another four days. Ray Bell, the author of the TF 200 report, was adamant at point 1.3, under the heading Initial Inspection, that:

“The suspect TF200 telephone when received was found to be very dirty around the keypad with what appeared to be a sticky substance, possibly coffee.” (See Tampering With Evidence File No 3)

Clicking on the TF200 telephone below will show that a second photo I received under FOI was taken from the front of the same TF200 phone, confirming that the note I placed on it was pretty clean when it was received at Telstra. See Open Letter File No/37 exhibits 3, 4, 5, and 6. So, who smeared grease over the front of the telephone after it left my business, and who poured sticky beer residue into the same, now-dirty telephone, insinuating I was a hopeless drunk?

This report raises several questions. When the phone left my office, it was quite clean. Why did it arrive at the laboratory in such a filthy state? How did the beer get inside the phone? Who would have a reason to pour beer into the phone, and why? If the addition of beer was not deliberate, how did it get inside the phone? The main aim of Telstra’s submitted report, used as evidence, was to prove that Telstra’s service was not at fault.

As soon as I read this beer-in-the-phone report, I requested that the arbitrator be provided with a copy of all the laboratory technicians' handwritten notes so he could see how Telstra had arrived at its conclusion. I had appointed my forensic document researcher to review the documents upon receipt, and he provided me with his credentials and signed a confidentiality agreement stating that he would not disclose his findings to anyone outside of the arbitration procedure. Although I passed all this information on to the arbitrator, the only response I received from the arbitrator and Telstra was a duplicate copy of the report I had already received as part of Telstra’s defence.

Why did Dr Gordon Hughes agree to meet only with Graham Schorer, and only after pressure from COT Case Anne Garms, when four of us were demanding answers? Why did he refuse to face the full group, refusing Maureen Gillan, refusing me, refusing the very people whose futures were being carved up by the process he was supposedly overseeing?

The question hangs like a stain. By the time he finally agreed to that meeting, the Fast Track Settlement Proposal (FTSP), drafted by AUSTEL and signed by Telstra on 18 November 1993, and the four COT Cases, signed by Telstra on 23 November, were already being quietly strangled behind closed doors. I had submitted my interim FTSP claim by January 1994, complete with evidence that should have detonated the entire process. Instead, it vanished. Not addressed. Not acknowledged. Not even seen by the man who called himself our arbitrator.

From February through March 1994, the language began to shift, a subtle corruption of terminology that revealed the deeper corruption beneath. Telstra, Warwick Smith, and Dr Hughes began calling the FTSP an “arbitration,” even as Robin Davey, Chairman of AUSTEL, was telling them the first four claimants had earned a commercial assessment process. We had earned it because we had not exposed what we had uncovered about Telstra’s ailing network. That was the deal. That was the agreement. And yet, behind our backs, they were rewriting the rules, reshaping the process, mutating it into something darker. Something rigged. Something designed to fail us.

The Evidence

Anyone reading just two or three of the 156 available mini‑stories discussed in the files below can find evidence supporting the many narratives on absentjustice.com.

The 34 numbered exhibits listed below each contain hundreds of individual documents, creating a vast reservoir of information. In addition to these, there are thousands more documents housed in Evidence File-1 and Evidence-File-2. Together, these records reveal 156 distinct mini‑stories, each exposing another angle of the same misconduct.

I want to highlight that our website is an uncompromising resource, offering visitors the ability to download thousands of organised exhibits at no cost. Each exhibit is numbered for direct access and verification. This archive exists to arm anyone willing to confront the truth and examine the issues without illusion.

You won’t need to return to the 34 block files listed below; they are automatically linked to the part of the narrative you are reading. Scroll to the designated exhibit number, and the evidence is there. This method also allows you to view any of the 100 additional exhibit files in that collection, containing a further 300 to 400 exhibits. It is designed to make it easier and faster for you to decide whether my story is true or false.

AS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 47 – AS-CAV Exhibit 48-A to 91 – AS-CAV Exhibit 92 to 127 – AS-CAV Exhibit 128 to 180 – AS-CAV Exhibit 181 to 233 – AS CAV Exhibit 234 to 281 – AS-CAV Exhibit 282 to 323 – AS-CAV Exhibit 324-a to 420 – AS-CAV Exhibit 421 to 469 – AS-CAV Exhibit 470 to 486 – AS-CAV Exhibit 488-a to 494-e – AS-CAV Exhibits 495 to 541 – AS-CAV Exhibits 542-a to 588 – AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647 – AS-CAV Exhibits 648-a to 700 – AS-CAV Exhibit 765-A to 789 – AS-CAV Exhibit 790 to 818 – AS-CAV Exhibit 819 to 843 – AS-CAV 923 to 946 – AS-CAV Exhibit 1150 to 1169 – AS-CAV 1103 to 1132 – AS-CAV Exhibit 1002 to 1019 – AS-CAV Exhibit 996 to 1001 – GS-CAV Exhibit 1 to 88 – GS-CAV Exhibit 89 to 154-b GS-CAV Exhibit 155 to 215 – GS-CAV Exhibit 216 to 257 – GS-CAV Exhibit 258 to 323 – GS-CAV Exhibit 410-a to 447 – GS-CAV Exhibit 448 to 458 – GS-CAV Exhibit 459 to 489 – GS-CAV Exhibit 490 to 521 – GS-CAV 522 to 580 – GS-CAV Exhibit 581 to 609

By exploring even just two or three of the above-mentioned 156 mini-reports that follow the whistleblower cartoon above, readers will be confronted with the harsh realities whistleblowers in this country face. They will reveal the devastating losses endured, highlighting the personal sacrifices and severe repercussions that often accompany the courageous act of speaking the truth. This journey through the reports exposes what is taken from these individuals and the profound damage inflicted on their lives simply for holding steadfast to their values, values instilled in them in childhood. It sheds light on a troubling environment where many adhere to a starkly simplified code: it's a battle of survival, where one must either fight back or be crushed

 

EXPOSED

 

By 21 April 1994, the transformation was complete. Dr Hughes’ title was quietly changed from “officially appointed assessor” to “arbitrator,” even though he had never arbitrated a case of this magnitude and was not recognised as a graded arbitrator. The President of the Institute of Arbitrators Australia warned that appointing such a man was a risk of failure; after my arbitration, he wrote to me confirming that the risk should never have been taken. The decision to take the risk was made intentionally.

In similar arbitrations in the UK, such as those involving British Telecom, a single arbitrator was chosen from the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators due to the technical complexities, recognising that each case could differ from the others. This model is what the Australian government claimed to be following for the COT arbitrations; however, this approach was not implemented in Australia.

Important is the possibility that Dr Gordon Hughes was chosen because he was a non‑graded arbitrator, and in arbitrations carried out under the Commercial Arbitration Act, no matter what type of mistake Hughes made, the confidentiality agreement in the arbitration process meant there was little likelihood of a claimant winning an appeal against the arbitrator. Handling six arbitrations simultaneously only compounded that danger; failure was also the desired outcome.

This allowed Telecom and their outside lawyers, Freehill Hollingdale & Page (now trading as Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne), to secretly draft the arbitration agreement, rather than the one the Australian government and the COT Cases were told had been appointed from the Institute of Arbitrators Australia, which was far from the truth.

On 10 September 1996, the President of the Institute of Arbitrators Australia, Mr J.I. Muirhead, wrote to me stating:

"I am advised by our Chief Administrative Officer that no reference was made to us in the appointment of the arbitrator in this matter in which you are involved, and there is always a risk in these circumstances.

I much regret that it appears that we are powerless to assist you."

To confirm that the arbitration was drafted by Freehill Hollingdale & Page / Herbert Smith Freehills Melbourne on January 10, 1994, a copy of the arbitration agreement on which our arbitration was based was faxed from the Freehills office to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO). This is evident from the Freehills fax logo printed on each page. 

 

“COT Case Strategy” - Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C)

Just as important is the information attached to Chapter 3 - Conflict of Interest, which discusses Telstra engineer Peter Gamble. His involvement in this withheld Federal Court information is not incidental; it is part of the same dark architecture. This is the same Peter Gamble mentioned in Senate Hansard, where Telstra whistleblower Lindsay White told a Senate Committee on 24 June 1997, see pages 36 and 38 Senate - Parliament of Australia that, while he was assessing the relevance of the technical information which the five cases were seeking under FOI, naming me and Mr Schorer had to be stopped at all costs from proving our claims, noting

Mr White "In the first induction - and I was one of the early ones, and probably the earliest in the Freehill's (Telstra’s Lawyers) area - there were five complaints. They were Garms, Gill and Smith, and Dawson and Schorer. My induction briefing was that we - we being Telecom - had to stop these people to stop the floodgates being opened."

Senator O’Chee then asked Mr White - "What, stop them reasonably or stop them at all costs - or what?"

Mr White responded by saying - "The words used to me in the early days were we had to stop these people at all costs".

Senator Schacht also asked Mr White - "Can you tell me who, at the induction briefing, said 'stopped at all costs" .

Mr White - "Mr Peter Gamble, Peter Riddle".

Senator Schacht - "Who".

Mr White - "Mr Peter Gamble and a subordinate of his, Peter Ridlle. That was the induction process-" 

This is the same Peter Gamble who, even though he had to abandon his 29 September 1994 arbitration service‑verification testing at my business because the equipment he was using was not compatible with the Cape Bridgewater switch roadside hut, still swore under oath to Dr Gordon Hughes, a man he knew professionally, that his tests found my business to be compliant with AUSTEL’s mandatory requirements. He knew this was false. He knew the tests had failed. He knew the equipment was incompatible. And yet the oath was taken, the lie was sealed, and the corruption was allowed to stand as evidence for these past thirty years.

As can be seen from my own report on Mr Peter Gamble (See Telstra's Falsified SVT Report), AUSTEL had damned these SVT tests as grossly deficient, requiring Telstra to provide advice on what it intended to do regarding these deficiencies. Telstra never provided that advice. Instead, it provided a sworn falsehood and an arbitrator willing to accept it.  

In January 1996, I wrote to Laurie James, the President of the Institute of Arbitrators in Australia, to inform him about the failed arbitration process regarding the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp conducted by Peter Gamble. At the time, I was unaware that Gamble and Dr Hughes knew each other professionally. Dr Hughes had assured me that he would allow the arbitration technical consultants to visit my camp as part of the agreed on-site familiarisation. 

On April 6, 1995, Peter Gamble and David Read, the technical consultants, visited my business. They both refused to conduct a series of phone tests to and from the Ericsson telephone equipment installed at the local Portland telephone and the Cape Bridgewater roadside hut. This issue, which I had been dealing with for years, was the primary concern stated in my arbitration claim. 

Following this, Dr Hughes wrote to Laurie James, claiming that only one party had arrived at my business. He stated that, under the arbitration agreement, no party may meet with another party unless all parties are present. While this clause in the arbitration agreement is accurate, it is important to note that neither Gamble nor Read was alone during the visit; I was present at all times, except when Peter Gamble took David Read from Lane to the Portland airport.

This misrepresentation by Dr Hughes occurred before Ericsson acquired Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd, during which David Read, a partner at Lane, was bought for an undisclosed amount during the arbitration process (Refer to Chapter 5 - US Department of Justice vs Ericsson of Sweden).

All of this, every deception, every manipulation, every betrayal, remains to be fully exposed in this brutal, treacherous, unconscionable denial‑of‑justice story.

On 12 July 1993, a newspaper article from the Portland Observer headed ‘Network Complaints Taken Up by MPs’ notes:

“Problems highlighted by Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp operator Alan Smith, with the Telecom network have been picked up on by not only other disgruntled customers but Federal politicians. Having suffered a faulty telephone service for some five years, Mr Smith’s complaints had for some time fallen on deaf ears, but it now seems people are standing up and listening. Federal Member for Wannon, David Hawker, described the number of reports of faulty and inadequate telephone across Australia as alarming. Mr Hawker said that documents recently presented to him showed that the problems people had been experiencing Australia wide had been occurring repeatedly in the Portland region.” (See Cape Bridgewater Chronology of Events File No -17)

Children's lives could be at risk

Comments made from the Herald Sun newspaper dated 30 August 1993 confirm just how damaging some of these 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

AUSTEL (the then government communications authority) wrote to Telstra during the early part of the COT arbitrations 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)

Question 81 in the following AFP transcripts, Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1, confirms that the AFP told me that AUSTEL's John MacMahon had supplied the AFP with evidence that my phones had been bugged over an extended period. Why did the arbitrator not award me in his official findings concerning this evidence after he was supplied with these AFP transcripts, which note:

“… does identify the fact that, that you were live monitored for a period of time. See we’re quite satisfied that, there are other references to it.”

On 3 March 1994, this article appeared in the Portland Observer newspaper (AS 773‑b), 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).”

 

Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1.

 

Two different newspaper articles in April 1994, one from the Portland Observer, the other from the Sun Herald, state:

"FORMER Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser wants to know and why his name has appeared on an internal Telecom memo, following the alleged bugging of a phone conversation with COT founding member, Alan Smith about a year ago."

These articles were not harmless reports. They were public indictments, each one a blow that struck harder than the last. When a business is already fighting to survive, publicity like this becomes a second disaster, a parallel catastrophe running alongside the technical failures. The headlines didn’t just describe faults; they branded the camp as unsafe, unreliable, and dangerous. They turned operational problems into moral failures. They led the public to believe that stepping onto the property meant taking on risk.

The Portland Observer told the region that my phones had been failing for years. The Herald Sun told Victoria that chronically ill children could die at my camp because Telecom couldn’t keep a line open. AUSTEL told the AFP that my phones had been tapped. And the Portland Observer told the public that Federal Police were investigating possible illegal activity by Telecom, with my name attached to the story.

Each article was a fresh wound. Each headline pushed customers further away. Each paragraph carried the weight of suspicion, danger, and failure. The business didn’t just suffer from phone faults; it suffered from the public perception that it was a place where emergencies could not be handled, where children’s lives were at risk, where the operator was entangled in federal investigations.

Bad publicity is a corrosive force. It spreads faster than truth, clings harder than evidence, and once it settles on a business, it becomes almost impossible to shake off. The camp didn’t just lose bookings; it lost trust, reputation, and the fragile confidence of the community. The damage was brutal, disproportionate, and utterly undeserved.

And it all began with faults that Telstra denied, concealed, and buried, until the newspapers exposed the consequences that we, not Telstra, were forced to carry.

The corruption was already in motion long before we ever stepped into the arbitration arena

They never came at us with honest language or straight dealings. They came with the old underworld toolkit dressed up in government stationery, shakedowns and grifts, rackets and hustles, cons and scams, skims and kickbacks, the whole crooked carnival running behind the polished doors of Telstra and the public service. You could smell the bagmen and fixers, the muscle and heavies hiding behind departmental titles, pushing dirty paper, forged slips, doctored contracts, slipping ghost clauses and shadow clauses into agreements we were told to sign. Every page felt like it had been dipped in black‑ink tricks, every promise wired with double‑crosses, frame‑ups, stitch‑ups, setups, every official assurance nothing more than a hush job wrapped in bureaucratic ribbon.

They didn’t negotiate; they ran squeeze plays. They didn’t mediate; they used strong‑arm tactics. They didn’t arbitrate; they delivered cold threats, hot threats, burner notes, burner agreements, all of it backed by cooked files, cooked books, cooked affidavits, the kind of phantom approvals and counterfeit seals that only appear when someone in the back room is pulling strings. The arbitrations were never arbitrations; they were rigged outcomes, rigged hearings, rigged processes, stitched together with tampered exhibits, falsified statements, falsified declarations, and the quiet menace of extortion lines disguised as procedural steps, as https://www.promoteyourstory.com.au shows.

And always, always, the same threat humming beneath the surface: sign the bogus amendments, accept the paper‑poisoning, swallow the signature‑lifting, the signature‑twisting, the signature‑theft, or Telstra would simply walk away from your phone faults and leave your business to die. It was legal mugging, procedural mugging, a bureaucratic chokehold masquerading as due process. A whole justice system bent into a laundering machine, truth‑laundering, evidence‑laundering, decision‑laundering, verdict‑laundering, every step designed to bury what really happened and silence the people who lived it.

For more than thirty years, this was the underworld we were forced to navigate, not the one with alleyways and switchblades, but the one with government seals and arbitration titles, where the threats came typed, the extortion came stapled, and the gangsters wore lanyards instead of leather jackets. And in that world, Telstra didn’t need to break down your door. They only needed to disconnect your telephone lines.

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