Kangaroo Court - Absent Justice
This webpage is a work in progress; it was last edited in July 2024.
The text in the image below will convince you to read the following three chapters.
What made the partner of KPMG mislead the TIO concerning my still-undressed billing claims
The latest blog by Shane Dowling, author of the Kangaroo Court website, is featured here on Absent Justice because Australian citizens and several other media outlets are still discussing corruption within the public service https://shorturl.at/q4rL1. I initially raised this issue with AUSTEL (now ACMA) on 11 June 1993, and it continued until my second Administrative Appeals Tribunal FOI hearing in May 2011. Other COT group members and I addressed these ongoing corruption issues with the Australian Federal Police, Australian Consumer Affairs, the Victorian Major Fraud Group at Victoria Police, and various other parties detailed in Chapter 1 - First Remedy pursued November 1993 to Chapter 12 - The twelfth remedy pursued.
The latest blog by Shane Dowling, the author of the Kangaroo Court website, is being discussed on the Absent Justice webpage. Several media outlets in Australia are still addressing the issue of corruption in the public service, which I first raised on absentjustice.com Kangaroo Court in 2017. What is distressing about this corruption is that in my case, the Hon David Hawker MP, who was my Federal Member of Parliament from 1992 to 2001, did not address the ongoing telephone problems affecting my business when I sold my telecommunications fault-ridden holiday camp for land value only.
The corruption dates back to when the soon-to-be partner of KPMG became the Arbitration Project Manager for the COT arbitrations. As soon as he and his fellow arbitration advisors learned that FHCA had been covertly exonerated from all liability for negligence as administrators to the financial side of three of the first four arbitrations, John Rundell, the Arbitration Project Manager, allowed the wrong technical consultant, Lane Telecommunications Consultant, to assess the COT Cases' claims instead of the Principal Technical Expert, Paul Howell, who had flown in from Canada for that assessment.
Ann Garms is one of the four original Casualties of Telstra (COT) claimants.
John Rundell, Arbitration Project Manager
The Arbitration Project Manager, John Rundell of Ferrier Hodgson Corporate Advisory (FHCA), was designated as the arbitration financial advisor for the COT arbitration procedures. Three of the four COT claimants were coerced into accepting last-minute modifications to the arbitration agreement, governing the operational rules of the process (Refer to Part 2 → Chapter 5 Fraudulent conduct). This agreement, encompassing clauses 24, 25, and 26, was endorsed and approved by the government and the claimants' legal representatives. Subsequently, upon receiving the agreement via facsimile from the arbitrator's office on the afternoon of April 19, 1994, the claimants' legal counsel sought additional counsel from a Queen's Counsel prior to advising the three remaining claimants, Ann Garms, Graham Schorer, and myself, to execute it.
Maureen Gillan, the initial of the four COT cases, had previously finalized the same agreement on April 8, 1994. Given Maureen's affliction with PSD, the former government communications regulator, AUSTEL's General Manager of Consumer Affairs, Amanda Davis, consented to serve as a power of attorney in Maureen Gillan's arbitration. Amanda Davis, after careful consideration, concluded that clauses 24, 25, and 26, firmly incorporated into the agreement, afforded her client Maureen Gillan a degree of assurance that the arbitration process would be conducted in adherence to the rule of law and with transparency, overseen by legal counsel and financial and technical consultants.
Chapter 5 (Fraudulent conduct) reveals that clauses 25 and 26 were completely removed from the arbitration agreement. The remaining three claimants were coerced to sign on April 21, 1994. It was discovered that clause 24 had been modified to the disadvantage of the three named claimants. These changes also had a significant impact on any potential future appeal against the entire arbitration process or against a single consultant, as mentioned in clauses 25 and 26.
Despite this, the government authority has not taken action against the threats the three COT Cases received if they did not accept the altered agreement. It is presumed that the influence of the arbitrator and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman who approved these modifications is the reason why no government official has assisted the COT Cases in bringing this serious issue into the public domain. Before the arbitrations commenced, the government and media were informed that an independent technical consultant would be appointed to assess the COT Cases' claims against the telephone equipment installed by Telstra in their exchanges, which seemed to be causing widespread problems throughout Australia, not limited to the business operations of the COT Cases.
The COT arbitrations were of public interest, and although the names of the claimants would be disclosed in the media, the claims would be utilized to improve the network before being sold off. As more and more COT Case submissions began to demonstrate the faulty nature of the Ericsson AXE equipment and that Telstra had prior knowledge before the arbitrations began. Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd ex-Telstra officials were assigned to investigate the failure of Ericsson's telephone equipment. Lane did not make any written findings regarding my ongoing Ericsson telephone problems. Not long after, while assessing the COT Cases claims, Lane was sold off to Ericsson for an undisclosed amount (Refer to Chapter 5 - US Department of Justice vs Ericsson of Sweden:
