Chapter 3 All Or Nothing
Extra Chapters Coming Soon
DRAFT ONLY
Call for Justice
My name is Alan Smith. This is the story of my battle with a telecommunications giant and the Australian Government—a battle that has twisted and turned since 1992, winding through elected governments, government departments, regulatory bodies, the judiciary, and the Australian telecommunications giant, Telstra, or Telecom, as it was known when this story began. The quest for justice continues to this day.
My story began in 1987, when I decided that my life at sea—where I had spent the previous 20 years—was over. I needed a new land-based occupation to see me through to retirement and beyond.
Hospitality was my calling, and I had always dreamed of running a school holiday camp. Imagine my delight when I saw the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp and Convention Centre advertised for sale in The Age. It was nestled in rural Victoria, near the maritime port of Portland. Everything seemed perfect. I performed my due diligence to ensure the business was sound—or at least, all the due diligence I was aware of. Who would have guessed I needed to check whether the phones worked?
Within a week of taking over the business, I knew I had a problem. Customers and suppliers alike were telling me they couldn’t get through. Yes, that’s right—I had a business to run and a phone service that was, at best, unreliable, and at worst, not there. Of course, we lost business as a result.
And so, my saga begins. It has been a quest to get a working phone at the property. Along the way, I received some compensation for business losses and many promises that the problem was resolved. It never was. I sold the business in 2002, and subsequent owners have suffered the same fate.
Other independent businesspeople similarly affected by poor telecommunications joined me on this journey. We became known as the Casualties of Telecom—or the COT cases. All we ever wanted was for Telecom/Telstra to acknowledge our problems, rectify them, and compensate us for our losses. A working phone—is that too much to ask?
We initially called for a full Senate investigation into Telecom and these issues. Instead, we were offered an arbitration process. It seemed like a fair way to resolve the problem, so we accepted. At that early stage, we genuinely believed the technical faults would be addressed.
No such luck. Suspicions that something was deeply wrong with the arbitration process surfaced almost immediately. We had been promised access to the Telecom documents needed to make our case. Despite that promise, those documents were never provided. We still don’t have them.
Then came the discovery that our fax lines were being illegally tapped during arbitration. With the government against us, we lost.
Worse still, we were tricked into signing confidentiality clauses that have hampered our efforts ever since. I may be breaching those clauses by making this public—but what choice do I have?
We turned to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to obtain the documents we were promised. We know the evidence exists—proof that our lines were faulty and improperly tested. But without access, justice remains out of reach.
So I ask you: Are we imagining this? Or has there truly been massive corruption and collusion among public servants, politicians, regulatory bodies, and Telstra itself—protecting Telstra at the expense of rural Australian businesses?
Unmasking the Machinery of Betrayal
How does one begin to tell a story so steeped in treachery, so riddled with deceit, that it threatens to shake the very foundations of trust in our institutions? How does one, armed only with truth and a battered fax machine, stand against a government-endorsed process that masqueraded as justice while quietly feeding privileged information to the defendants—Telstra, then a government-owned telecommunications giant?
This is not a tale of paranoia. It is a chronicle of documented sabotage. It is the story of how I, and others like me, were systematically undermined during arbitration processes that were supposed to deliver fairness. Instead, they delivered silence, obstruction, and a chilling form of surveillance that still haunts me.
The Vanishing Faxes
Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1).
My 3 February 1994 letter to Michael Lee, Minister for Communications (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-A) and a subsequent letter from Fay Holthuyzen, assistant to the minister (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-B), to Telstra’s corporate secretary, show that I was concerned that my faxes were being illegally intercepted.
An internal government memo, dated 25 February 1994, confirms that the minister advised me that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (See 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)
In January 1999, a group of arbitration claimants submitted a damning report to the Australian Government. It revealed that confidential documents—faxed in good faith—were being intercepted, screened, and manipulated before reaching their intended recipients. In my case, six critical claim documents vanished. The arbitrator’s secretary admitted they were never received. Yet I was denied the right to resubmit them.
My fax account tells a different story. It shows I dialled the correct number every time. And years later, one of the technical consultants who reviewed those transmissions stood by his statutory declaration: the faxes had passed through a secondary machine before being retransmitted. Dual time stamps told the tale. The evidence was irrefutable.
A Chilling Revelation
While crafting my manuscript, R'ng for Justice, I shared the early draft with Helen Handbury, Rupert Murdoch’s sister. She had visited my holiday camp twice and witnessed firsthand the torment I endured. Upon reading my story, she was visibly shaken. “I will get Rupert to have it published,” she said. “He will be shocked.”
What horrified Helen wasn’t just the illegal fax hacking—it was the scale of it. The fact that it continued even during her second visit. The fact that I had provided evidence to the Australian Federal Police showing this surveillance dated back to 1994. And the fact that, despite all this, the arbitrator refused to allow me to resubmit the missing documents.
At the time, the News of the World hacking scandal hadn’t yet erupted. But Helen saw the parallels. She saw the rot.
The $400 Million Question:
Blood Money in the Boardroom
Helen Handbury wasn’t just shaken—she was horrified. What I laid before her wasn’t a mere tale of bureaucratic failure. It was a blueprint of institutional rot. A system so corrupted, so brazen in its contempt for ordinary Australians, that it rewarded the powerful while grinding the rest of us into dust.
The illegal fax interceptions. The denial of natural justice. The surveillance. The obstruction. All of it was bad enough. But then came the revelation that turned Helen pale: Rupert Murdoch—her own brother—had quietly received $400 million in compensation from Telstra. A payout cloaked in silence, sanctioned by a government-owned corporation that was simultaneously dragging everyday citizens through the mud of arbitration and mediation.
I showed Helen the Senate Hansard records. They weren’t vague. They weren’t speculative. They were damning. Members of Parliament were deeply alarmed. The entire Telstra board knew—knew—that Telstra could not meet the licensing obligations tied to that $400 million deal. And yet, they signed it anyway. They pushed it through. They handed over the money.
Who approved this grotesque transaction? Who, in the shadows of the boardroom, decided that the Australian public—who owned Telstra—should foot the bill for Murdoch’s empire while the rest of us were denied justice? This wasn’t incompetence. It was collusion. It was calculated. It was criminal.
Helen struggled to process it. She had seen the toll these arbitrations took on people like me. She had walked through my camp, listened to my story, and seen the evidence with her own eyes. And now, faced with the knowledge that her brother had been compensated while others were crushed under the weight of legal costs, she was deeply disturbed.
This wasn’t just about money. It was about betrayal. About a government and a corporation that conspired to silence dissent, conceal misconduct, and reward the elite. It was about a boardroom decision that reeked of underhanded skullduggery—one Helen could not reconcile.
She wanted Rupert to see my story. Whether she ever shared it, I’ll never know. She passed away before I could deliver the second draft. Her husband, Geoffrey Handbury, wrote me a kind letter, saying he was too old to pursue it. But the truth had already begun to surface. Senate records later confirmed it: Telstra’s board knew it couldn’t meet its agreement with Fox—and proceeded anyway.
They did it with full knowledge. They did it with impunity. And they did it while the rest of us were left to rot.
The Machinery of Collusion
The deeper I dug, the more grotesque the architecture of corruption revealed itself. This wasn’t a one-off payout. It was a symptom of something far more insidious—a machinery of collusion operating behind closed doors, where truth was suffocated and justice was bartered away.
The Senate Hansard records were not just concerned—they were alarmed. They documented a government-owned corporation knowingly entering into a contract it could not fulfil. Telstra’s board was fully aware that it would fail to meet the licensing obligations tied to the $400 million compensation deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire. And yet, they proceeded. No hesitation. No accountability. Just a rubber stamp and a transfer of wealth.
This wasn’t corporate negligence.
It was state-sanctioned betrayal.
The implications were staggering. Telstra, still owned by the Australian public at the time, had effectively siphoned taxpayer money into the hands of one of the world’s wealthiest media moguls. Meanwhile, ordinary Australians—claimants like me—were being surveilled, sabotaged, and silenced in arbitration processes that were supposed to protect us.
The same Telstra that intercepted my faxes. The same Telstra that denied me the right to resubmit missing documents. The same Telstra that built its defence on stolen information. That Telstra was simultaneously cutting secret deals with Murdoch while trampling over its own citizens.
And the government? It watched. It knew. It did nothing.
This was not just a failure of oversight. It was complicity. A coordinated effort to protect the powerful and bury the truth. The watchdogs appointed to oversee the arbitrations—the so-called umpires—turned a blind eye. The arbitrator refused to act. The system was rigged from the start.
Helen saw it. She recoiled from it. And she wanted Rupert to see it too.
Strategies for Survival
So how does one tell a story like this without falling prey to legal retaliation?
• I document everything. Time stamps. Statutory declarations. Senate records. I build a fortress of facts.
• I anonymise where necessary. I use composite characters and layered narrative to protect identities while preserving truth.
• I publish through platforms that honor whistleblowers. I consult legal experts. I embed my evidence in memoir, in culinary disaster, in the rhythm of shipboard life.
• I let the reader feel the dread. The silence. The betrayal.
The Unanswered Questions
How many other arbitrations were compromised by this insidious surveillance? Is this form of electronic eavesdropping still a problem in legitimate processes today? How many lives were ruined while the government compensated the powerful and ignored the pleas of its own citizens? And what does it say about a nation when one of its richest sons sacrifices his citizenship to become American, while the rest of us are left to fight for justice in the land we call home?
This chapter is not the end. It is a beginning. A signal flare in the fog. A call to those who still believe in truth, in accountability, and in the power of one voice to pierce the silence
• 1987: Transition from maritime life to land-based hospitality.• Purchase of Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp near Portland, Victoria.• Initial excitement and vision for a thriving school holiday business.• Early signs of trouble: customers and suppliers unable to reach the camp by phone.• Realisation that the phone service was unreliable—crippling for a hospitality business.• Attempts to resolve the issue through Telstra (then Telecom) met with denial and delay.• Mounting business losses and emotional toll.
• Discovery that other rural business owners were facing similar telecommunications failures.• Formation of the Casualties of Telecom (COT) group—united by shared injustice.• Initial optimism: calls for a Senate inquiry into Telecom’s conduct.• Government offers arbitration as an alternative to investigation.• Acceptance of arbitration in good faith, believing technical faults would be addressed.• Early signs of deception: promised documents withheld, technical faults ignored.
• Arbitration begins under the guise of fairness and resolution.• Telstra’s failure to provide critical documents despite legal obligations.• Claimants discover their fax lines are being intercepted—illegal surveillance during arbitration.• Evidence mounts: missing faxes, dual time stamps, unexplained delays.• Arbitrator refuses to allow resubmission of lost documents.• Realisation that the process is rigged—claimants are being sabotaged from within.
• Attempts to challenge the arbitration outcome blocked by confidentiality clauses.• Legal gag orders prevent public disclosure of misconduct.• FOI requests were launched to obtain the missing documents.• Government departments stonewall or heavily redact responses.• Emotional and financial toll on claimants intensifies.• Growing suspicion of collusion between Telstra, government regulators, and legal overseers.
• Evidence emerges of systemic corruption: Telstra’s internal knowledge of faults, concealed from claimants.• Senate Hansard records reveal Telstra’s board knowingly entered into contracts it couldn’t fulfill.• Revelation of Rupert Murdoch’s $400 million compensation deal with Telstra.• Helen Handbury’s reaction: horror at the scale of injustice and betrayal.• Contrast between Murdoch’s payout and the suffering of ordinary Australians.• Telstra’s dual role: sabotaging claimants while rewarding the powerful.• The machinery of collusion exposed—government, corporation, and legal system intertwined.
⚓ The Beginning of the Saga
It began in late 1987 when my wife Faye and I bought a small accommodation business perched high above Cape Bridgewater, near Portland on Victoria’s southwest coast. The Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp had previously operated as a school camp. We intended to transform it into a venue for social clubs, family groups, and schools.
The camp was a phone-dependent concern. Being in a remote area, the telephone was the primary means of access for city-based clients. Our mistake was failing to investigate the telephone system thoroughly before making the purchase. The business was connected to a phone exchange installed over 30 years earlier, designed for “low-call-rate” areas. This antiquated, unstaffed exchange had only eight lines and was never intended to handle the volume of calls from a growing population and seasonal holidaymakers.
In blissful ignorance, we sold our Melbourne home, and I took early retirement benefits to raise the funds for what we believed would be an exciting new venture.
🧭 A Life Built for Hospitality
I knew I could run this business. At fifteen, I went to sea as a steward on English passenger/cargo ships. In 1963, I jumped ship in Melbourne and worked as an assistant chef in some of the city's elite hotels. Two years later, at twenty, I joined the Australian Merchant Navy. By 1975, I’d served as a chef on many Australian and overseas cargo ships.
Faye and I were married in Melbourne in 1969. I freelanced in catering and worked on tugboats while studying hotel/motel management. I’d already managed one hotel/motel, pulling it out of receivership and preparing it for release. By 1987, at 44, I had gained the experience and confidence to transform a simple school camp into a successful, multifaceted concern.
📞 Marketing Meets Silence
I personally visited nearly 150 schools and shires to promote the camp. In February 1988, we printed and distributed 2,000 colour brochures. Then we waited for the phone to ring. It didn’t. Not even a modest 1% inquiry rate.
By April, we suspected the problem lay with the telephone service. People asked why we never answered our phone or suggested we install an answering machine — which we had. Even after replacing it, complaints continued. Callers reported extended periods of engaged signals.
Then came the dropouts. Calls would go dead mid-conversation. If the caller hadn’t given contact details and didn’t ring back, we lost the lead. Between April 1988 and January 1989, Telstra received nine complaints from me, along with several letters. The typical response to my 1100 call was a promise to check the line. Occasionally, a technician was sent. The verdict? “No fault found.” But the problems persisted.
🕵️♂️ Digging Deeper
Eventually, we learned the previous owner had suffered the same issues and had complained — also unsuccessfully. In 1988, I began building a case against Telstra and obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act. One, titled Telstra Confidential: Difficult Network Faults — PCM Multiplex Report, included a subheading: “5.5 Portland — Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp.” Telstra had been aware of the faults since early 1987.
Harry, our neighbour, sympathised. His daughter, calling from Colac, often struggled to get through. Fred Fairthorn, former owner of Tom the Cheap grocery chain, had similar problems. He said, “But what can you expect from Telstra when we’re in the bush?” I expected better. We were promised better.
📉 Decline and Doubt
We encouraged people to write, but the telephone culture was entrenched. People wanted immediate responses. As bookings dwindled, I began to question my decision to move to Cape Bridgewater—and to ask Faye to sell our family home to satisfy my ambitions. It wasn’t the fun I’d anticipated. I operated in a state of constant anger — a very unamusing Basil Fawlty.
We toured South Australia to promote the camp through the Wimmera region. Responses were few. Was the phone to blame? How could we be sure? The uncertainty itself was stressful.
📵 The Message That Killed My Business
Sometimes the culprit was obvious. On a shopping trip to Portland, I realised I’d left the meat order list at home. I called from a public phone box — only to hear a recorded message: “The number you have called is not connected.” I tried again. Same message. Telstra’s fault centre said they’d investigate. Later, I called again and got an engaged signal. I bought what I could remember and hoped for the best. When I got home, the phone hadn’t rung once.
Anyone who uses a phone has heard the recorded voice announcement (RVA):
“The number you have called is not connected or has been changed. Please check the number before calling again. You have not been charged for this call.”
This incorrect message was the one most callers reached when trying to contact the camp. Telstra never acknowledged it. But in 1994, among a trove of FOI documents, I found a Telstra internal memo stating:
“This message tends to give the caller the impression that the business they are calling has ceased trading, and they should try another trader.”
✍️ Chapter Two: No Fault Found
No Fault Found, or an RVA fault, is a deceptive mechanism implemented by Telstra. This Recorded Voice Answering message informs unsuspecting callers that the number they are dialling is disconnected from Telstra’s service, when in reality, they are connected. This insidious misrepresentation has allowed Telstra to evade accountability for decades.
In a chilling memo, Telstra acknowledged the urgent need for “a very basic review of all our RVA messages and how they are applied.” The memo ominously suggested, “I am certain that as we begin to probe deeper, we will uncover a myriad of network scenarios where inappropriate RVAs are thriving.” This admission hints at a dark web of manipulation hiding in plain sight, obscuring the truth from countless customers.
It seems the “not connected” RVA triggered whenever the lines in or out of Cape Bridgewater were congested — which, given how few lines there were, was often.
For a newly established business like ours, this was catastrophic. Yet despite internal memos acknowledging serious faults, Telstra never admitted any existed. My continued complaints branded me a nuisance caller. This was rural Australia, and I was expected to tolerate poor service — not that Telstra ever admitted it was poor. Every technician’s verdict: “No fault found.”
📞 The Weight of Uncertainty
The frustration was immense. Was this just general rural service compounded by congestion on an antiquated exchange? Ours was the only accommodation business in Cape Bridgewater. We relied on the phone more than most. But if there was a specific fault, why wasn’t it being found?
By mid-1989, the business was in trouble. We began selling shares to cover operating costs — just 15 months after taking over the business. Instead of reducing the mortgage, we were selling assets. I felt like a failure. Neither of us could lift the other’s spirits.
📵 Silence in the City
I launched another round of city marketing. We both went. Maybe it was masochism that made me ring the camp’s answering machine via remote access — hoping to respond to messages promptly. All I got was the dreaded recording:
“The number you are calling is not connected or has been changed…”
On the way home, just outside Geelong, I tried again from a phone box. This time, the line was engaged. Maybe someone was leaving a message, I thought. Ever hopeful.
There were no messages. And no answers. How many calls had we lost while we were away? How many prospective clients gave up because they thought we’d ceased trading? Anger and frustration simmered just beneath the surface.
💔 Collapse
By late afternoon on 28 October 1989, the final thread of our twenty-year marriage snapped. I was already on prescribed medication for stress—PTSD, though no one called it that back then. The flashbacks had returned with a vengeance: August 1967, when I was arrested by the People’s Republic of China, accused of spying for the United States. They branded me “a US aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists.” I was twenty years old. That trauma had lain dormant for decades, buried beneath duty and distraction. But the collapse of my marriage unearthed it like a landmine.
The telephone problems were relentless, compounding the chaos. And beneath it all, a deeper fury simmered—one shared by many seamen who’d witnessed the betrayal firsthand. We knew that Australian wheat, sent to China under the guise of humanitarian aid, was being diverted to North Vietnam. It was feeding the very soldiers who were killing and maiming our mates from New Zealand, Australia, and the USA who were fighting in the jungle.
Margaret and Jack, dear friends from Melbourne, stepped in. Margaret came home with me to bail me out. The fun, however, had just begun.
🧹 Picking Up the Pieces
We returned to a disaster. Faye had left the night before, advised to seek a “safe house.” Doors were unlocked, meat from the deep freeze left out, and items had vanished. According to the camp diary, 70 students from Monivae Catholic College were due in two days — booked for five days and four nights.
Without Margaret, I would have been wiped out.
Shopping felt insurmountable. What to feed 70 students and staff? By the time I placed the order, it was Sunday evening. They were arriving the next day. Then the hot water service broke down.
The staff weren’t thrilled about cold showers. Even so, Monivae College returned two or three times a year for the next five years. Their support helped me keep trading.
So did Margaret. She carried me through that first week. Seeing that I was barely holding on, she suggested that Brother Greg, one of the Monivae teachers, come talk to me. It was inspired. We spoke late into the night — Margaret too — working through everything from childhood to the collapse of a twenty-year marriage.
📓 Logging the Madness
The phone problems continued. I began keeping a fault log — recording every complaint, name, contact detail, and the impact on the business and my wellbeing.One day, the kiosk phone was dead. The coin-operated gold phone in the dining room had a dial tone, so I dialled my office number. The response:
“The number you have called is not connected…”
I was charged for the call — the phone didn’t return my coins. Five minutes later, I tried again. This time, the office phone appeared engaged (it wasn’t), and the gold phone returned my coins.I used this testing routine often, registering every fault with Telstra. The situation was wearing me down. Why was this still happening? Could Telstra really be this incompetent? Or was something worse going on? Had I become too much of a nuisance?
But that was absurd. I’d been impeccably polite — even when I fantasised about sheer violence.
💸 Consequences and Losses
Now alone, I entered 1990, digging into my meagre reserves to pay staff. I was suffering what finance professionals call “consequential resultant loss.” Faye was no longer contributing unpaid labour, and I had to pay her a yearly dividend on her financial investment.
The future looked grim. Telstra hadn’t remedied the faults — or at least hadn’t made any difference. “No fault found” was wearing thin. I couldn’t stop thinking about how many customers I’d lost because they couldn’t reach me.
Legal vultures began circling. I couldn’t meet my financial agreement with Faye. Her solicitor demanded payment. I struggled to cover my own legal costs. My son’s school fees were overdue. To pay my debts, I sold the 22-seater school bus and bought a small utility vehicle.
❤️ A Lifeline
On the positive side, I met Karen, who lived in Warrnambool. Our relationship grew serious. When she learned I was about to wind up the business, she put her house up as security for a loan, giving me two years’ breathing space. She believed in me. She believed in the camp. She wanted to be a partner.
This was early 1991.
Things began to look up. A new exchange was scheduled for Cape Bridgewater later that year — promising to fix the congestion. Karen moved in, and we worked together with renewed energy.
In August came another breakthrough: someone at Telstra finally confirmed my phone problems were real. I felt immense relief. I asked for his name. He said only that he worked at the fault centre in Hamilton.
No names.
✍️ Chapter Three
Chapter Three is a turning point — emotionally, structurally, and politically. You’ve moved from personal devastation to collective resistance, and the formation of COT is both a rallying cry and a historical milestone. I’ve edited the chapter for clarity, pacing, and narrative tension, while preserving your voice and emotional cadence.
According to Telstra’s own file note:
“Alan Smith rang 15/8/91 re service 267 267. Incoming callers are receiving engaged signal when it’s not engaged … This has been a continuing problem and he is losing a lot of business. I said it appears from the fault history that the problem may be in the exchange and that the next RCM exchange 21/8 would solve these problems but that I would check this out with the techs. I also said we would have a look at the service now to try and get it working correctly until cutover”.
At last, someone at Telstra had given me something to hang on to.
When Karen sold her house, part of the proceeds went toward my legal fees and the debt to Faye. I paid Faye out, and Karen’s name was officially added to the business title. We counted the days to the installation of the new exchange.
📞 A Brief Victory
The new exchange arrived at the end of August 1991. It was a triumph — for about five minutes. It made no difference. The phone problems continued unabated, now worsened by the crushing disappointment that the war wasn’t over.
Complaints about recorded voice announcements increased. I kept reporting faults, which seemed to be getting worse. When I asked technicians where the faults could lie if not in the exchange, their response was maddening: “No fault found.” They refused to engage. I cursed the fact that I had no contact details for the one person who had acknowledged the faults. I wouldn’t see his file note until 1995.
🏚️ A Business in Decline
New bookings were rare. The camp needed painting and upgrades. It looked sad and bedraggled. Passersby weren’t interested in stopping. When we did have bookings, cash flow was tight. We managed, but it was a stressful experience.
Karen began to see her investment slipping away. The strain came to a head while we were organising a charity camp for underprivileged children.
❤️ Charity Amid Chaos
Despite financial hardship, I’d always sponsored stays for underprivileged groups. Food was donated by generous commercial outlets, and the cost to me was minimal — just electricity and gas.
In May 1992, we hosted a charity week for kids from Ballarat and Southwest Victoria, organised by Sister Maureen Burke, IBVM, Principal of Loreto College in Ballarat. Arrangements had to be made by phone — food, transport, special needs — but Sister Burke struggled to get through. Calls rang out or returned deadlines. After a week of failed attempts, she drove 3½ hours to finalise the plans in person.
Just as she arrived, Karen was on the phone with an angry man demanding information about a singles weekend. He was abusive. He couldn’t understand why we advertised a business but never answered the phone. Karen burst into tears. She’d reached her limit. I couldn’t console her.
When Sister Burke entered the office, I quietly removed myself. Later, she told me she thought it best if Karen left Cape Bridgewater. I felt numb. It was happening again.
💔 Another Goodbye
But this wasn’t like Faye. Karen and I talked. We agreed to separate, but I assured her she’d lose nothing for her generosity. I would buy her out. We were both relieved.
Karen rented a house in Portland. We remained good friends, but without her day-to-day help, I had to abandon my promotional tours.
Later, I sent Sister Burke an early draft of this book. She replied:
“Only I know from personal experience that your story is true, otherwise I would find it difficult to believe.”
⚠️ Casualties of Telstra
In July 1992, Karen called to say she’d heard of a Melbourne restaurant suffering the same phone issues. I felt comforted — I wasn’t alone.
Eventually, I reached Sheila Hawkins, proprietor of The Society restaurant in Bourke Street. We met in early August. It was a relief to speak with someone who understood.
Sheila was familiar with Ann Garms, who managed the Tivoli Theatre Restaurant in Brisbane. I called Ann and learned she was coming to Melbourne to lodge complaints with Austel, the telecommunications regulator. We arranged to meet with Sheila.
Ann mentioned another Brisbane business — a car parts company run by Maureen Gillen — also plagued by phone faults. Sheila had contacted Graham Schorer, who ran Golden Courier Service in North Melbourne despite a terrible phone service.
Our group gathered at Sheila’s restaurant, minus Maureen, who was unable to travel. It was Sheila who suggested we call ourselves COT — Casualties of Telstra. One of her last acts with the group was before withdrawing due to ill health.
🧨 “No Fault Found”
At the top of our shared grievances were those three maddening words: “No fault found.” It wasn’t just the faults — it was Telstra’s refusal to acknowledge them. They had a statutory duty to deliver service up to a recognised network standard. By failing to “find” faults, they avoided responsibility.
🏛️ The First Meeting
In October 1992, COT had its first official meeting with Telstra at the Ibis Hotel in Melbourne. We were united, optimistic small-business owners, seeking justice.
Telstra sent three executives. They treated us courteously. We felt heard. We asked for Austel to act as the “honest broker,” and Telstra agreed. They took our documentary evidence. We left believing resolution was near.
We had no idea what a long and arduous journey lay ahead.
🧭 Notes & Suggestions
- Tone: I preserved your emotional arc — from hope to heartbreak to collective action.
- Structure: Subheadings help guide the reader through the chapter’s shifts in mood and focus.
- Next Steps: If you’d like, I can help format the COT timeline, prepare exhibits for later chapters, or build a visual map of your network of allies.
Chapter Four awaits. Let’s keep the momentum — and the truth — alive.
✍️ Edited Chapter Four: Guaranteed to Fail
After that initial meeting, there were several more with Telstra and Austel. Graham Schorer, based in the city, became the COT representative. Under pressure from Austel, Telstra began acknowledging faults — though they still refused to admit the scale we knew to be true. As it turned out, they knew it too.
📞 The Illusion of a Guarantee
In July 1992, I was compelled to request a guarantee from Telstra that my phone service met network standards. A bus company required such a guarantee before contracting to bring groups to the camp. I doubted Telstra could offer one, given their performance, but thought it might serve as leverage.
Eventually, two guarantees arrived — both too late to secure the contract:
“Whilst our recent tests indicate that your service is now performing to normal network standards, I am initiating a further detailed study…”
“We believe the quality of your service can be guaranteed… although it would be impossible to suggest there would never be a service problem…”
They were hollow assurances. And I now need to jump ahead — to material I didn’t have access to at the time, but which reveals what was really happening inside the exchange while my business was sinking.
📂 FOI Revelations
In 1994, all COT members entered arbitration with Telstra. Under the rules, Telstra was legally obligated to provide relevant documents via the Freedom of Information Act. Many requests took years to fulfil.
In mid-1994, I received documents referring to general congestion at Cape Bridgewater. One, dated 12 July 1991, titled PORTLAND – CAPE BRIDGEWATER PCM HBER, stated:
“When the ‘A’ direction of system 2 was initially tested, 11,000 errors per hour were measured. In the ‘B’ direction, approximately 216 errors per hour were measured. 72 errors per hour is the specified number allowable.”
This level of error was known as early as February 1990 — the very time my complaints were being stonewalled. And the new exchange didn’t fix it.
This level of error was, in fact, known at least as early as February 1990, the very time my complaints were being stonewalled. And nor was it acknowledged to me at the time of writing (July 1991).
And in the new exchange, the problems continued, as another document, titled ‘Portland — Cape Bridgewater — RCM System’ showed, referring to information logged in March 1993, long after Telstra had first reported these massive error rates:
|
Initial error counter readings, Portland to Cape Bridgewater direction: |
|||
|
|
System 1 |
System 2 |
System 3 |
|
SES |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
DM |
45993 |
3342 |
2 |
|
ES |
65535 |
65535 |
87 |
|
At this stage we had no idea over what period of time these errors had accumulated. |
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The second page of this document explains why they ‘had no idea over what period of time these errors had accumulated’:
"The alarm system on all three RCM systems had not been programmed. This would have prevented any local alarms being extended back to Portland."
They didn’t know how long these errors had been accumulating because, from 18 August 1991, when the new exchange (RCM) was installed at Cape Bridgewater, the fault alarm system had been left unconnected. Since this was an unmanned exchange, no one could know when faults occurred — except, of course, us poor, defenceless customers.
We had no idea over what period these errors had accumulated. The second page explained why:
From August 18, 1991 — the day the new exchange was installed — the fault alarm system remained unconnected. Since the exchange was unmanned, no one knew when faults occurred except us.
So when Telstra wrote to me in September 1992, guaranteeing my service was “up to network standard,” they didn’t even know the alarm system wasn’t connected. Local technicians were oblivious to the call loss. What kind of investigation was this? A farcical one.
💸 The Compensation Deal
The formation of COT came not a moment too soon. I was borrowing from friends to keep the camp running. I would have let down two partners who trusted me. And the phone faults continued.
In late 1992, our pressure produced results. Telstra offered me a compensation payout — with a confidentiality clause. I signed on 11 December 1992 and have honoured that agreement.
That same day, I met with Telstra’s area general manager at their city fault centre. We discussed my financial losses over four and a half years. I provided letters from clients and tradespeople detailing their unsuccessful attempts to contact me. I explained how I calculated my losses.
The manager left me alone several times to review documents. She said I could use the direct outside line to call my advisors. I rang Karen to discuss the offer and calculate what I needed to repay her.
The documents were mostly handwritten. One claimed there was only a “single” fault lasting “three weeks” that triggered the RVA message. It is estimated that I lost 50% of incoming calls during that period. Other documents mentioned minor faults at the Heywood exchange.
Telstra agreed to accept responsibility for these faults — if I accepted their offer.
I protested. I listed the constant complaints I was still receiving. Her response: “Take it or leave it.” She added, “Telstra has more time than you have money to fund court proceedings.”
Reluctantly, I accepted. My reluctance was well justified.
🧨 The Smoking Gun
In August 1993, I received my first bundle of FOI documents. One, dated 2 July 1992, revealed that local Telstra technicians agreed my complaints were correct — the “service disconnected” RVA was real. Worse, the problem was “occurring in increasing numbers as more and more customers are connected…”
Senator Alston raised this document in Senate Estimates in February 1994, demanding a response from Austel. None came. The revelation went nowhere.
Two years later, I received a FOI document marked Telecom Secret. It was a copy of the notes the manager had brought to our settlement meeting. The opening page showed Telstra knew how solid my case was. The manager had misled me.
The document stated:
“Mr Smith’s service problems were network related and spanned a period of 3–4 years.”
“Overall, Mr Smith’s telephone service had suffered from poor grade of network performance over a period of several years…”
📉 Faults Persist
✍️ Edited Chapter Five: The Fault That Wouldn’t Die
It took two years before Telstra offered any clarification — and even then, it shed no light on the matter.
In 1994, buried in a bundle of FOI documents, I found a handwritten file note:
This was simply untrue. The Elmi was already installed at my house. I requested Telstra’s Elmi print-outs from September to October 1992. Weeks later, documents and tapes arrived showing that the call drop-outs and dead lines I’d reported appeared on Telstra’s CCAS monitoring records — logged as answered calls at approximately 1:30 pm and 3:00 pm.
Why would a technician claim the Elmi was being installed when it was already operating — albeit incorrectly — at both locations? I could only conclude this reflected the competence and integrity of Telstra’s fault centre. That thought alone was terrifying for someone reliant on the phone.
🧩 A Systemic Rot
I began to suspect there was no simple fix. The problems weren’t isolated — they were endemic. From the end of 1992 into the new year, I began to question whether settling with Telstra had been a mistake. Nothing had changed.
I was forced to refinance, incurring more fees. The camp, like me, looked abandoned. We were both tired, run-down, and in need of a facelift.
PLEASE NOTE: The completion of Chapter Five will be added here once it has been fully edited.
