As we have explained on our throughout absentjustice.com, we have broken this complex story up into sections in the hope of providing clarity. There are many people and organisations involved in this collusion and perversion of the course of justice, including government officials, the arbitrator, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and the defendants (Telstra). A number of different headings apply to many of the issues. To avoid repeating the beginning of the story on each webpage, the Hacking - Julian Assange section begins mid-1994 and reveals the details of how incompetently COT arbitrations were handled, beginning with the lead-up to the process in 1994 and from then on.

Because, not long into our arbitrations, Graham Schorer (the official COT spokesperson) received two phone calls within a couple of days, both from young people. They told Graham they knew we were in arbitration with Telstra and wanted to alert him to what they had discovered when they hacked into Telstra’s email network: they had found documents confirming that there were people close to our arbitration – as well as Telstra – who were acting unlawfully towards us. Both times they rang, they asked if we would like them to send us that evidence.

Graham and I discussed the offer of the first call but, although we were interested in what Graham had heard, we finally said NO on the second call. We were concerned this might be a set-up by Telstra. Therefore, if we agreed to accept this promising material, our arbitrations might be declared null and void – especially if we accepted Telstra documents deliberately tampered with.

Since then, Andrew Fowler and Suelette Dreyfus have each published books referring to Julian Assange’s hacking into Telstra’s Lonsdale Telephone Exchange in Melbourne, through which both Graham’s business and mine were tasked. In hindsight, we probably should have accepted that very kind offer. We might have been able to use that evidence against Telstra all those years ago, but perhaps we would not be here writing our story 20 years later.

Graham’s statutory declaration about these two 1994 phone calls is discussed below. However, some issues we discuss elsewhere on the website are also relevant to this page, such as fax and telephone hacking, submission of false material to arbitration, and harassment. Australian Federal Police transcripts (see Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1) support my assertion that during my 1992 commercial settlement process with Telecom/Telstra and through to at least 1994 (during my government-endorsed arbitration procedure) the Cape Bridgewater Holiday Camp telephone services were live monitored and my business was under surveillance. This was further confirmed in 1999 (see Open Letter File Nos/12 and 13).

A matter of importance 

When I first started to put absentjustice.com together, back in January 2015, the main aim was to explain the story of the Casualties of Telstra (COT) group as clearly as possible, both from my own perspective and from the perspective of the other COT members too. We decided that it was also important for the public to know that none of us is looking for vengeance, even though we have all been damaged by our experiences with Telstra, even though we may have lost our businesses, even though the telephone problems that sent us to arbitration in the first place are, mostly, still occurring. As the website name indicates, we are just looking for justice. As part of our plan, and because we are all considerate people, we, therefore, decided to blank out (sometimes called ‘masking’) the names of those who, as part of our arbitration process with Telstra, had been prepared to be involved in numerous crimes that were committed against us. From the very beginning of our search for the justice that our arbitrations didn’t achieve, we have left the door open for those people to explain their contributions to our dilemma, but not one of them has yet come forward; not one of them has even attempted to explain why they did what they did.

The Collusion begins

In a 10 February 1994 letter, John MacMahon, AUSTEL’s general manager of consumer affairs, acknowledges receipt of nine audio tapes from Telstra and states that these tapes, related to the “taping of the telephone services of COT Cases”, were passed on to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). The Federal Court did not issue a warrant for this taping, and no warrants were issued in the Australian states where the tapings occurred. This taping was carried out illegally. And, it was carried out during a legal resolution process that involved the COT members.

Despite these investigations, the AFP did not officially provide findings of Telstra’s surveillance or monitoring activities to the victims of those crimes. Today, Telstra has still not been held accountable, not even for those illegal tapings during my arbitration process with Telstra. If the AFP or the government had pursued these questions, I would not be still searching for answers today.

The AFP interviewed me about this matter on many occasions in 1994. Although they could not show me the documents and tapes AUSTEL had given them, they were taking my problems with Telstra and my arbitration seriously. In one interview, I showed them an FOI document that shows the writer knew where a caller usually rang from even though, on this occasion, the caller was phoning from a different number, “somewhere in Adelaide”. The police were concerned that a caller was identifiable even when calling from a different number. In their meeting transcripts, the AFP states, “You were live monitored for a period of time. So we’re quite satisfied that there are other references to it.” (See Australian Federal Police Investigation File No/1). Even though I supplied these 26 September 1994 transcripts to the arbitrator, he made no finding concerning it.