Bad Bureaucrats
PLEASE NOTE: as of 1 July 2024, this current text below is still being edited - Thank you
Government Corruption. In the public service, misleading and deceptive conduct has spuriously perverted the course of justice during the COT government-endorsed arbitrations over more than two decades.
The following two links, Australian Federal Police Investigations-1 and my second interview with Australian Federal Police (AFP) transcript of that meeting 26 September 1994 Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1 shows that the AFP had evidence Telstra had handwritten notes about my various business and private activities going back to at least September 1992 two years previous as well as being aware in April 1994, when I would be away from my business two months before my intended visit.
Is this the type of information the hackers had discovered and conveyed to Graham Schorer that was widespread in Telstra? Suppose this was not the type of unlawful conduct that the hackers advised was displayed on COT-related arbitration documents that the hackers had seen. What other documents showed that Telstra was committing crimes against the COT cases?
What was also uncovered during the COT Case arbitrations was recorded by John Rundell, the arbitration project manager, in his letter of 18 April 1995 to Warwick Smith, the first administrator of the arbitrations and copied to both the arbitrator Dr Gordon Hughes and the legal counsel to the arbitrations namely Peter Bartlett. In this letter, John Rundell notes:
“It is unfortunate that there have been forces at work collectively beyond our reasonable control that have delayed us in undertaking our work. (see Prologue Evidence File No 22-A)
If the question is: "Should a citizen be responsible for exposing crimes committed by public officials more than twenty-six years ago?" then surely the answer must be "Yes," particularly if those crimes affected the lives of other Australian citizens.
The fax imprint across the top of this letter (Open Letter File No 55-A) is the same as the fax imprint described in the Scandrett & Associates fax interception report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13), confirming faxes were intercepted during the COT arbitrations. The question the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (TIO) and the Federal Attorney-General has still not answered is:
Was this letter actually faxed to my office by the TIO to assist me in any pending appeal process? If not, why was such an important letter deliberately kept from me during my designated appeal period?
If I had received a copy of this letter declaring the agreement used in my arbitration process was not credible, I would have appealed the arbitrator's award. After all, how could an appeal judge argue against the arbitrator's findings that the agreement was not credible, even though he used it anyway?
One of the two technical consultants attesting to the validity of this 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 also clear from Front Page Part One File No/1, File No/2-A to 2-E, File No/3, File No/4 and Front Page Part One File No/5 that numerous documents faxed from my office to the arbitrator's office did not reach their intended destination.
It is important to introduce here the bribery and corruption issue the US Department of Justice raised against Ericsson on 19 December 2019:
"One of Telstra's key partners in the building out of their 5G network in Australia is set to fork out over $1.4 billion after the US Department of Justice accused them of bribery and corruption on a massive scale and over a long period of time.
Sweden's telecoms giant Ericsson has agreed to pay more than $1.4 billion following an extensive investigation which saw the Telstra-linked Company 'admitting to a years-long campaign of corruption in five countries to solidify its grip on telecommunications business." (https://www.channelnews.com.au/key-telstra-5g-partner-admits-to-bribery-corruption/)
The US Department of Justice has accused Ericsson of bribery and corruption. Ericsson is the same company whose telecommunication equipment was under investigation by the COT arbitrator. And, as for bribery in the case against Telstra, Senate Evidence File No 21 Senate Hansard dated 27 Feb 1998 re kick-backs and bribes shows Telstra paid kickbacks and bribes to several Australian politicians and government bureaucrats.
It is clear from the following Google link: "Angry shareholders sanction Ericsson chiefs over Iraq ... https://www.icij.org › investigations › ericsson-list › angry.." that the COT Cases were right to demand answers to why Ericsson was allowed to purchase the main arbitration technical witness investigating their claims against Ericsson's telephone equipment which was the subject matter under investigation during the COT arbitrations.
It is important we use the Ericsson link above as part of my ongoing attempt to have the Australian government impartially investigate my claims against Telstra and whether Ericsson should have been allowed to purchase Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd during the period Lane was the officially appointed arbitration technical consultant assigned to the COT arbitrator who himself had been assigned to value the COT cases claims against Telstra.
The following letter, dated 16 July 1997, was written by John Pinnock, the official administrator of the arbitrations, to William Hunt, a lawyer) who acted for COT spokesperson Graham Schorer'. In this letter, Mr Pinnock notes that.
“Lane is presently involved in arbitrations between Telstra and Bova, Dawson, Plowman and Schorer. The change of ownership of Lane is of concern in relation to Lane’s ongoing role in these arbitrations.
“The first area of concern is that some of the equipment under examination in the arbitrations is provided by Ericsson.…
“The second area of concern is that Ericsson has a pecuniary interest in Telstra. Ericsson makes a large percentage of its equipment sales to Telstra which is one of its major clients.
“It is my view that Ericsson’s ownership of Lane puts Lane in a position of potential conflict of interest should it continue to act as Technical Advisor to the Resource Unit. …
“The effect of a potential conflict of interest is that Lane should cease to act as the Technical Advisor with effect from a date shall [sic] be determined.” (See File 296-A - GS-CAV Exhibit 258 to 323)
On July 24, 1997, John Pinnock sent a second letter addressing the Lane Telecommunications conflict of interest. In the letter, Ann Garms was denied the right to re-hear her arbitration claim as Lane had previously been the technical consultant assigned to her case (File 298 - GS-CAV Exhibit 258 to 323). Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd was sold off during the COT arbitrations despite Lane's involvement in the arbitration process under the auspices of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Essentially, the welfare of the COT Cases, which Lane had assessed their Ericsson arbitration claims, had no safeguard against bias after Lane was sold off.
Telstra's arbitration defence unit claimed to the COT arbitrator in several cases, including mine, that they found no significant faults with the Ericsson telephone equipment used in their exchanges. This false statement significantly impacted the arbitration claims of all COT Cases involving Telstra's use of Ericsson equipment.
None of the COT Cases were granted leave to appeal their arbitration awards even though it is now apparent that the purchasing of the Australian government-appointed technical unit Lane had to have been in motion months before the purchase. The government should investigate each COT Case to determine what they lost due to Lane not addressing the ongoing Ericsson AXE telephone problems, which destroyed the COT Case businesses after the conclusion of their arbitrations.
Australia must be the only country in the Western world that allows a witness (Lane Telecommunications was a witness to what the COT claimants and arbitrator had uncovered against Ericsson and their faulty installed telephone equipment during the COT arbitrations) to be purchased during a government-endorsed arbitration process.
I believe the Australian government should answer the following questions: How long was Lane Telecommunications in contact with Ericsson, Telstra's major telecommunication equipment supplier before Ericsson purchased Lanes? Is there a link between Lanes ignoring my Ericsson AXE claim documents and Ericsson's purchase of Lanes during the COT arbitration process?
The latest 2019/2020 5G Ericsson partnership with Telstra is relevant to all Australian Telstra subscribers; however, it is also relevant that the same subscribers visit my website, absentjustice.com, where you can see that my claims against Telstra and Ericsson are valid.
Continuing the COT story is crucial to illustrate the aftermath of the arbitrator's bribery by the Telstra Corporation and its government allies. This bribery resulted in the historical phone complaints of the COT Case being addressed while neglecting those still impacting their businesses. Additionally, the degraded state of the copper wire, similar to what the COT Cases and approximately 120,000 other Australian citizens encountered after the bribe, serves as a telling example of the repercussions: →
Worst of the worst: Photos of Australia’s copper network | Delimiter.
23 June 2015: Had the arbitrator appointed to assess my arbitration claims correctly investigated ALL of my submitted evidence, he would have had to value my claim as an ongoing problem, NOT a past problem, as his final award shows. It is clear from the following link dated > 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 faults copper-wire network faults have been in existence for more than 24-years.
9 November 2017: Sadly, many Australians in rural Australia can only access a second-rate NBN. This didn’t have to be the case: had the Australian government ensured the arbitration process it endorsed to investigate the COT cases’ claims of ongoing telephone problems was conducted transparently, it could have used our evidence to start fixing the problems we uncovered in 1993/94. This news article https://theconversation.com/the-accc-investigation-into-the-nbn-will-be-useful-but-its-too-little-too-late-87095 again shows that the COT Cases claims of ailing copper wire network were more than valid.
28 April 2018: This ABC news article regarding the NBN boss blames Government's reliance on copper for slow ... needs to be read in conjunction with my own story because if these lies told under oath by so many Telstra employees had not occurred, then the government would have been in a better position to evaluate just how bad the copper-wire Customer Access Network (CAN) really was just four years ago.
Thirty- 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 infrastructure.
The following Google link, 'THE ERICSSON LIST,' shows that the COT Cases were completely justified in questioning why the Australian government permitted Ericsson to infiltrate the Australian arbitration system upon acquiring Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd. This action deprived the COT Cases of their legal right to appeal their arbitration awards by exploiting Lane's biased conduct.
This is the story of a group of ordinary small-business people fighting one of the largest companies in the country. It is the story of how, for years, Telstra refused to address the many phone problems that were affecting the capacity of the COT Four to run their businesses, telling them 'No fault found' when documents in this publication and on our website show they were found to have existed, as our story shows.
Telstra and its legal arbitration defence team perverted the course of justice using dubious strategies, such as failing to deliver crucial FOI documents, destroying documentary evidence, and fabricating evidence. Additionally, intercepting relevant arbitration faxes that would have changed the outcome of the process had these faxes been received during my designated appeal period.
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 report provided to Senator Ron Boswell (see 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 7 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)
The arbitrator ignored the central points of our claim at arbitration, and no effort to address these points bore fruit. During all these travesties, the regulatory bodies—Austel (for the government) and the TIO (for the carriers)—failed to exercise any control over Telstra to the point where they could reasonably be seen as acting in concert.
Together, these travesties spell a breakdown of justice, way out of proportion to the problem we began with — people asking that their phone services be guaranteed to work to a reasonable standard so that they can reliably conduct their businesses.
Each of the COT members assumed, as most telephone users would assume, that their phone faults would be quite easily found and fixed by Telstra's skilled technicians. But 'No fault found' was the constant refrain, and the problems continued unabated throughout our arbitrations and for years afterwards, with disastrous effects on our businesses. This seemed incomprehensible: everyone had a phone, and the system was supposed to work for everyone. What was going on?
And why did it seem everyone was protecting Telstra, turning a blind eye to what was unlawful behaviour? Withholding important discovery documents in an arbitration procedure is unlawful. Tampering with evidence in the arbitration is unlawful Tampering With Evidence).
After Telstra 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. Another Telstra technician, 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.” (Tampering With Evidence File No 3)
A second photo I received under FOI is taken from the front of the same TF200 phone, confirming a note I placed on the phone was quite clean when it was received at Telstra Open Letter File No/37 exhibits 3, 4, 5 and 6. Who within Telstra smeared grease or dirt over the front keypad of the TF200 phone as these three photos show was the case (File 636, 637 and 638 AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647).
Relying on defence documents that are known to be flawed in arbitration is unlawful. The TIO and Austel often refused to act. When in Opposition, members of Parliament were happy to support the COT cause, but as soon as the government was theirs, that support vanished. No one was prepared to hold Telstra accountable. It was enough to make the most level-headed person suspect conspiracies.
The depths to which Telstra stooped in its conduct with the COT claimants seem to suggest they knew the arbitrator had no control over the arbitration as a judge would have during a court trial where the rule of law has to be abided by. This is not the case in Australian-administered arbitrations.
A simple click on Chapter 5 Fraudulent conduct is adequate to reveal the pervasive corruption within the arbitration process in Australia. It becomes evident to the reader that someone other than the arbitrator controlled the COT arbitrations.
The COT Cases were shocked to discover that many arbitrators in Australia face government pressure, even when the arbitration processes are government-endorsed. This was made evident by the actions of the second appointed arbitration administrator, John Pinnock, and the relevant Communications Minister, Senator Richard Alston, as highlighted during a Senate Estimates Committee ( Prologue Evidence File No 22-D) on 26 September 1997. These revelations came to light more than two years after most of the arbitrations, including mine, had been concluded.
Next Page ⟶“… 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”
