The YouTube video below features powerful firsthand accounts from nine of the sixteen COT Cases affected by various issues related to Telstra's services, as discussed in a pivotal documentary on Channel Nine television. Although this thought-provoking documentary was produced two decades ago, it was added to the Price Waterhouse Coopers Deloitte page in March 2025. It highlights the significant challenges several small business owners faced, who refer to themselves as the Casualties of Telstra (COT). These individuals relied on landline telephone systems to operate their businesses during the 1980s and 1990s, when communication was not conducted through email, mobile phones, or the Internet. If such modern communication methods had been available, many small business operators would not have lost their livelihoods.
I believe you are taking the most appropriate course of action
I have never received a written response from BCI, but the Canadian government ministers’ office wrote back on 7 July 1995, noting:
"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."
Explore the unsettling realities of horrific crimes, dishonest criminals, and the widespread corruption permeating Australia's legal profession. Descriptive terms like shameful, hideous, and treacherous capture the extent of wrongdoing committed by these lawbreakers. Many visitors to this website have commented on how it vividly illustrates a comprehensive landscape filled with criminal activities, particularly emphasizing the complex web of fraud. Why should an Australian citizen be compelled to seek help from the Canadian government because a Canadian telecommunications provider, specifically Bell Canada International Inc., submitted a report to the government telecommunications authority claiming to be factual when this was far from the truth? (Refer to Telstra's Falsified BCI Report 2).
Please take note:
Once I receive the FOI documents, I look forward to a prompt message articulating Canada’s unwavering commitment to the rule of law. This fundamental principle upholds our democratic values and ensures justice for all citizens. This crucial message will be prominently showcased alongside the Canadian Flag, symbolizing Canada's dedication to ethical governance, transparency, and integrity in public affairs.
The Canadian government strongly supported my claims against the fundamentally flawed report by Bell Canada International Inc., which Telstra used to defend itself in my arbitration claims. Additionally, a Canadian technical consultant from DMR Group Canada Inc., who was brought in as the principal technical consultant from Montreal, Quebec (H3B 4G7), confirmed that the arbitration process I was involved in would not have been allowed to proceed so unethically in North America.
By hovering your mouse over the Canadian flag image above, you can also learn about the strong ethical principles upheld by Canadian seamen. Despite facing significant challenges, they believed that sending wheat to Communist China—especially when that wheat was being redeployed to North Vietnam, a country at war with Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, where hundreds of troops were being killed or mained—was immoral and unethical, and therefore should not have continued.
Yet the Australian Government made a conscious decision to maintain its trade relations with Communist China, despite knowing that a significant portion of Australia’s wheat was being diverted to North Vietnam. This wheat was not merely a trade commodity; it had the potential to sustain North Vietnamese soldiers who were directly engaged in combat against Australia and its allies during the conflict. The ramifications of this trade raised serious ethical questions about the implications of supporting a nation that was opposing Australian, New Zealand and USA forces.
Why did the saga of wheat in Communist China play such an essential role in my arbitration twenty-seven years later, after I was nearly shot as a suspected spy by the Chinese Red Guards? Read Flash Backs – China-Vietnam for more information.
Until the late 1990s, the Australian government maintained ownership of the telephone network and its communications carrier, Telecom, now known as Telstra, following its privatization. This monopoly on communications resulted in the gradual deterioration of service quality, ultimately calling for resilience and proactive measures. Instead of initiating essential repairs to our severely lacking telephone services through a government-endorsed arbitration process designed to facilitate resolutions, we were locked in an uneven struggle. The claimants of the COT Cases faced insurmountable barriers, with ongoing issues related to our telephone and fax services remaining unresolved despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars we invested in pursuing justice through our claims against Telstra. This experience undermined our integrity and highlighted the audacity of the crimes committed against us.
Rather than adopting robust and practical strategies to tackle the persistent telecommunications deficiencies, the government opted for an arbitration process, which was ostensibly intended to create a fair forum for dispute resolution and consumer assistance. However, this system frequently obscured the fundamental issues plaguing the telecommunications sector. Even though the government acknowledged the deeply entrenched and systemic nature of these challenges, its selected approach often seemed more focused on projecting an illusion of care rather than undertaking the meaningful reforms desperately needed to bring about substantial change in the telecommunications landscape.
During my government-endorsed arbitration, I phoned AUSTEL’s Cliff Mathieson, a public servant at the government communications regulatory department, to discuss a hanging-up fault. On 26 April 1994, Mr Mathieson suggested he and I conduct a series of tests on the phone line. He planned for me to hang up and count aloud, from one to 10, while he listened. This first test proved he could hear me count right up to 10. He suggested we try it again and count even further this time. It was still the same situation: he could hear me right through the range as I counted. Then he suggested I switch the phone on that line with a phone connected to another. I did this, and we repeated the counting test with the same results. It was apparent to both that the fault was not in the phone but somewhere in the Telstra network. Mr Mathieson suggested that, as I was in arbitration then, I should bring this fault to the attention of Peter Gamble, Telstra’s chief engineer. Lindsay White, a Telstra whistleblower, named Peter Gamble in a Senate estimates committee hearing as the man who said he and Telstra had to stop the first COT five claimants (including me), at all cost, from proving our claims (see Senate Hansard ERC&A 36, Front Page Part One File No/23 dated 24 June 1997).
I submitted the EXICOM Telstra arbitration defence report about TF200 to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In my submission, I detailed the importance of obtaining Freedom of Information (FOI) documents similar to this report. My request stems from concerns that officials within the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) have been complicit in aiding Telstra to obscure critical information regarding the inaccuracies in the arbitration report for TF200. This concealment of facts raises significant questions about transparency and accountability in arbitration, undermining public trust in regulatory practices. Accessing these documents is vital for uncovering the truth and ensuring that such past discrepancies are rectified.
They have still not been rectified.
Transcripts from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) dated 8 October 2008 (No V2008/1836) reveal significant testimony provided by Graham Schorer, the spokesperson for COT cases. In an official capacity under oath, Mr Schorer conveyed to two government attorneys and a senior member of the AAT panel that he and I were actively seeking access to a series of freedom of information documents that Telstra had withheld during the critical arbitration discovery process. Our primary objective was to compile a comprehensive and factual narrative that would illuminate and potentially open doors for other similar cases—fewer than sixteen—that could prompt the Senate to advocate for a thorough government investigation into the validity of our claims. Refer to An Injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens.
What Mr. Schorer failed to disclose to the attorneys or the presiding judge, Mr. GD Friedman, was a crucial detail that had a bearing on our case: unbeknownst to me, the government had concealed AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings from the then Minister of Communications, The Hon Michael Lee MP, and the arbitrator in March 1994. Alarmingly, these findings were provided to Telstra a mere six weeks before I signed my arbitration agreement. This transfer of information was strategically timed to assist Telstra in mounting a defence against my claims regarding the persistent problems I was experiencing with telephone and fax services, continuing even on the day the information was bestowed upon them.
The government appeared to operate under the belief that preventing me from substantiating my claims was imperative. It was not until November 2007—twelve years after the government initially supplied these AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings to Telstra—that I received access to this critical document. By this point, the utility of the findings had diminished significantly, as they were now five years past the six-year statute of limitations for filing an appeal against my award.
A thorough examination of this report may lead an impartial observer to conclude that the government has patently breached its obligations towards me as an Australian citizen. This breach appears to stem from a discriminatory practice favouring Telstra, a corporation wholly owned by the Australian government—representing the collective interests of the Australian people—during that significant period in March 1994.
Between February and October 2008, senior Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) member Mr G D Friedman considered my AAT Freedom of Information hearing (No V2008/1836). (Refer to Chapter 9 - The ninth remedy pursued) On 3 October 2008, stated to me in open court in full view of two government ACMA lawyers and several court witnesses:
“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.”
On 26 May 2011, regarding case number 2010/4634 refer to → Chapter 12 - The twelfth remedy pursued, I asserted that my Freedom of Information applications to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) should be granted without charge, as their content is in the public interest. This request encompasses all information that Telstra and AUSTEL (currently known as ACMA) withheld during my government-endorsed arbitration process and in my AAT FOI appeal process in 2008.
Senior AAT member Mr. G.D. Friedman presided over the hearings in 2010 and 2011. It became apparent that Mr Friedman was not informed that the government solicitors (Australian Government Solicitor) and ACMA based their defences regarding my claims on inaccurate documentation originating from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) and other archival materials. This includes the sanitized report by Bell Canada International Inc., which was allegedly conducted in November 1993 by Telstra and BCI at the Cape Bridgewater telephone switching exchange, and the AUSTEL COT sanitized report released in April 1994. These documents were employed to substantiate Telstra's defence against my government-endorsed arbitration claims during the 1994-1995 period.
Neither of these reports accurately reflects the significantly adverse findings that AUSTEL initially determined regarding Telstra’s dealings with me prior to my arbitration (refer to AUSTEL’s Adverse Findings) or during my most recent hearings in 2001. In summary, the government has misrepresented the facts and systematically defended four separate claims using known false reports over seventeen years. As of 2025, ACMA continues to permit these inaccuracies to obscure the truth pertaining to my claims.
It is important to note that during this second AAT hearing (No 2010/4634), Mr Friedman (Judge) hearing my case stated:
“Mr Smith still believes that there are many unanswered questions by the regulatory authorities or by Telstra that he wishes to pursue and he believes these documents will show that his unhappiness with the way he has been treated personally also will flow to other areas such as it will expose the practices by Telstra and regulatory bodies which affects not only him but other people throughout Australia.
“Mr Smith said today that he had concerns about the equipment used in cabling done at Cape Bridgewater back in the 1990s. He said that it should – the equipment or some of the equipment should have a life of up to 40 years but, in fact, because of the terrain and the wet surfaces and other things down there the wrong equipment was used.”
During this second AAT hearing in May 2011, I again raised the telephone problems that had affected my business from before my arbitration to 1995, stressing that the arbitrator had failed to investigate or address most of those problems. I, therefore, allowed them to continue for a further 11 years after the end of the arbitration. Since that second AAT hearing, and as a result of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout, which began in mid-2011 and is continuing today, numerous faults, just like those that I raised during my arbitration and both AAT hearings, have been found to have continued unabated; this can be confirmed by a simple internet search for “Australia NBN”.
One of the documents I provided to both the arbitrator in 1994 and the AAT in 2008 and again in 2011 is a Telstra FOI (folio A00253) dated 16 September 1993 and titled Fibre Degradation. It states:
“Problems were experienced in the Mackay to Rockhampton leg of the optical fibre network in December ’93. Similar problems were found in the Katherine to Tenant Creek part of the network in April this year. The probable cause of the problem was only identified in late July, early August. In Telecom’s opinion the problem is due to an aculeate coating (CPC3) used on optical fibre supplied by Corning Inc (US). Optical fibre cable is supposed to have a 40 year workable life. If the MacKay & Katherine experience are repeated elsewhere in the network, in the northern part of Australia, the network is likely to develop attenuation problems within 2 or 3 years of installation. The network will have major QOS problems whilst the CPC3 delaminates from the optical fibre. There are no firm estimates on how long this may take. …
“Existing stocks of Corning cable will be used in low risk / low volume areas.” (See Bad Bureaucrats File No/16)
Were the citizens of Australia entitled to be advised by the Australian government, before it sold off the Telstra network, that, e.g., the aforementioned optical fibre with CPC3 coating, supplied to Telecom/Telstra by Corning Inc (USA), was installed in their area? How many people in Australia have been forced to live with a subpar phone system, i.e., a known poor optical fibre that Telstra should NEVER have installed? How many businesses have gone up against the wall due to Telstra’s negligent conduct of knowingly laying their existing stocks of Corning cable in locations that Telstra believed were low-risk/low-volume areas?
Chapters one to three in our Tampering With Evidence page show Telstra was also prepared to re-deplore some 450,000 faulty TF200 telephones to locations where Telstra thought moisture was non-existent. The decision-makers regarding where Telstra installed these moisture-prone phones were certainly not trained in meteorology. I doubt that Telstra or the government advised these TF200 customers when Telstra was sold off that if they were experiencing phone problems, this was no longer Telstra’s problem or the government’s.
These ongoing problems are further highlighted by the insights found on the protected website, Delimiter. "Worst of the worst: Photos of Australia’s copper network | Delimiter.
Below are three further examples where the unaddressed arbitration issues continued:
23 June 2015: > Unions raise doubts over Telstra's copper network; workers using ... that when reading in conjunction with Can We Fix The Can, which was released in March 1994, these copper-wire network faults have existed for more than 24 years.
9 November 2017: Sadly, many Australians in rural Australia can only access a second-rate NBN. as shown in this news article https://theconversation.com/the-accc-investigation-into-the-nbn-will-be-useful-but-its-too-little-too-late-87095
28 April 2018: This ABC news article is more of the same >NBN boss blames Government's reliance on copper for slow ...
Sadly, as the above shows, many Australians living in rural areas can only access a second-rate NBN. This wouldn’t have been the case if the Australian Government had ensured the arbitration process they endorsed to investigate the COT cases’ claims of ongoing communication problems had been conducted lawfully.
The following three A Current Affair YouTube videos expose similar COT-type phone complaints raised by our COT group in 1994. Twenty-seven years after the COT Cases exposed these problems during a government-endorsed arbitration process that was supposed to have fixed them, Australia still has an inferior telecommunications NBN network.
Telstra-Corruption-Freehill-Hollingdale & Page
Corrupt practices persisted throughout the COT arbitrations, flourishing in secrecy and obscurity. These insidious actions have managed to evade necessary scrutiny. Notably, the phone issues persisted for years following the conclusion of my arbitration, established to rectify these faults.
Confronting Despair
The independent arbitration consultants demonstrated a concerning lack of impartiality. Instead of providing clear and objective insights, their guidance to the arbitrator was often marked by evasive language, misleading statements, and, at times, outright falsehoods.
Flash Backs – China-Vietnam
In 1967, Australia participated in the Vietnam War. I was on a ship transporting wheat to China, where I learned China was redeploying some of it to North Vietnam. Chapter 7, "Vietnam—Vietcong," discusses the link between China and my phone issues.
A Twenty-Year Marriage Lost
As bookings declined, my marriage came to an end. My ex-wife, seeking her fair share of our venture, left me with no choice but to take responsibility for leaving the Navy without adequately assessing the reliability of the phone service in my pursuit of starting a business.
Salvaging What I Could
Mobile coverage was nonexistent, and business transactions were not conducted online. Cape Bridgewater had only eight lines to service 66 families—132 adults. If four lines were used simultaneously, the remaining 128 adults would have only four lines to serve their needs.
Lies Deceit And Treachery
I was unaware of Telstra's unethical and corrupt business practices. It has now become clear that various unethical organisational activities were conducted secretly. Middle management was embezzling millions of dollars from Telstra.
An Unlocked Briefcase
On June 3, 1993, Telstra representatives visited my business and, in an oversight, left behind an unlocked briefcase. Upon opening it, I discovered evidence of corrupt practices concealed from the government, playing a significant role in the decline of Telstra's telecommunications network.
A Government-backed Arbitration
An arbitration process was established to hide the underlying issues rather than to resolve them. The arbitrator, the administrator, and the arbitration consultants conducted the process using a modified confidentiality agreement. In the end, the process resembled a kangaroo court.
Not Fit For Purpose
AUSTEL investigated the contents of the Telstra briefcases. Initially, there was disbelief regarding the findings, but this eventually led to a broader discussion that changed the telecommunications landscape. I received no acknowledgement from AUSTEL for not making my findings public.
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A Non-Graded Arbitrator
Who granted the financial and technical advisors linked to the arbitrator immunity from all liability regarding their roles in the arbitration process? This decision effectively shields the arbitration advisors from any potential lawsuits by the COT claimants concerning misconduct or negligence.<
The AFP Failed Their Objective
In September 1994, two officers from the AFP met with me to address Telstra's unauthorized interception of my telecommunications services. They revealed that government documents confirmed I had been subjected to these violations. Despite this evidence, the AFP did not make a finding.&am
The Promised Documents Never Arrived
In a February 1994 transcript of a pre-arbitration meeting, the arbitrator involved in my arbitration stated that he "would not determination on incomplete information.". The arbitrator did make a finding on incomplete information.
PRESS RELEASE
In January 2025, the latest pre-election announcement, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, said only a Labor government would
"finish the National Broadband Network NBN" and "keep the NBN in public hands."
A Labor government will inject $3bn in equity into the national broadband network, as Anthony Albanese warns against letting the critical Coalition control the necessary infrastructure.
The equity injection will fund the upgrade of Australia's remaining national fibre to the node network, which the Government claims will deliver higher internet speeds for more than 600,000 premises by 2030.
It's about how we live our lives. It is about telehealth and education services. It is absolutely critical to the way that a modern economy and a modern society function. refer to https://shorturl.at/68hD6
Who is kidding who, Mr Prime Minister?
The bureaucrats in your government, along with members of the previous Liberal Coalition Government, have been systematically misleading the Australian telecommunications industry for decades. This troubling trend traces back to a pivotal moment on 3 June 1993, when two senior technicians from Telstra inadvertently left an open briefcase at my Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp—a serene location that has now become the focal point of this issue. The contents of that briefcase hold significant implications, as documented in detail on my website, absentjustice.com, specifically on the briefcase page. The evidence cannot be ignored; it’s time to confront the reality of this ongoing deception and its impact on the unresolved COT case claims referred to in An Injustice to the remaining 16 Australian citizens.
