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In conclusion, I am concerned that Mrs Garms has been disadvantaged financially and personally because of defective administration by Telstra in its handling of applications under the FOI Act.

Report of Investigation of Complaint Telstra, Commonweath Ombudsman

Commonwealth Ombudsman

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There were a lot of big winners that day. Helen Coonan had closed a $15 billion deal.  Barnaby Joyce has secured a $2 billion fund and a multi-million dollar compensation scheme.  Telstra had its dreams come true and was to become a fully fledged publicly traded $50 billion company.

I had a relatively small win. My five-year battle was over, and unlike the other players stood to gain only what I was owed, small change in the scheme things, but I was happy to move on.

You can’t have winners without losers though. Barnaby Joyce’s throwaway line in his speech  leading up to casting his crucial vote on Telstra’s full privatisation about an “independent assessor” went unnoticed by the media, but it didn’t slip by Telstra and the notorious DBCDE, then known as the Department of Communications.

Helen Coonan refused to tell the Department what she agreed to, but they assumed the comment about an independent assessor meant the Minister had agreed to the sort of Inquiry they believed ought to be stopped. There would be an investigation, compensation would have to paid and more worrying, someone credible might write a damning report.

For years, everyone from whistleblowers to competing corporations have raced to the Minister’s office with the latest Telstra scandal expecting surprise, outrage and a swift reaction from the Government.

This isn’t how the Australian telecommunication regime works. Competition, regulation and a level playing field might make good filler for media releases but they are a fairytale in this country. The Minister’s Office and Department have enforced an unwritten policy of selling out anyone and everyone to prop up Telstra since before the days of T1.

With the compensation scheme Barnaby Joyce had made a precondition for his support for the T3 bills on the cards, Telstra and the Commonwealth Government had a common enemy -  me, a couple of other small businesses and the Endeavour Foundation, a charity for the disabled.

A week after the T3 deal was done, Telstra and the Department met in the Minister’s office and a conspiracy to cheat us all was born. I wasn’t special, just a name on a list. All they needed know was that I just might happen to have evidence of wrong-doing by Telstra or the Department.

You might think the Endeavour Foundation would be afforded special consideration because no one likes lowlife who cheat a charity, but Helen Coonan, Telstra and the DBCDE don’t see the world that way. If you are an unhappy Telstra consumer, competitor or contractor in business – it’s their mission to put you out of business.

The Minister’s office, Telstra and Department came up with the idea claims assessment didn’t necessarily have to mean that. They could bury it if it meant an assessment of a claims assessment instead. In other words, an assessor would ask, “Have you made a claim?”  and let you know if you said yes or no.

This is so silly even the Department’s own legal team didn’t understand what they were trying to do. They advised the Minister and Department the ACMA has the requite powers to conduct an Inquiry and the Minister has the authority to order the ACMA conduct it.

Chris Cheah, a Department stooge parachuted into the ACMA set the Minister’s office straight. The ACMA could have no part in this. The AMCA  has a lot of power, and if directed by the Minister to use it, couldn’t guarantee a meaningless outcome. An ACMA Inquiry would lead to a far-reaching Inquiry.

With the ACMA ruled out, Telstra and the Department looked for fresh direction

Simon Bryant and David Lever, the Department’s managers in charge of crafting policy to protect consumers and competition floated an alternate strategy. They could bypass an Inquiry entirely by looking at cases resolved years earlier.A little confusion on dates and the commitment to an independent assessment would on paper be fulfilled without lifting a finger.

No stone was left unturned. With a flurry of emails and phone calls Lever and Telstra’s lobbyist Athol Chalmers worked together to build up dirt files on potential claimants. Searches for a consultant dirty enough for the job came up empty.

By Christmas, they decided on a solution – scrap the search for an Independent Assessor and the Department could go ahead and write a report itself.  It was called an Independent Assessment of Claims against Telstra, and filled with pointless guff – but so long as the media didn’t find out – it’d do just fine.

They had won round one. The Government had conned its way into out of an investigation, compensation and damning report.

Next on the chopping block – the future of the entire media industry.

END PART ONE

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Click to Download

Thank you for your letter dated 19 May 2011 to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy concerning the independent claims assessment conducted by the department in 2005 regarding claims against Telstra. The Minister has asked the department to review your correspondence and respond on his behalf.

I note you claim you received advice from Senator Barnaby Joyce that the then Government would deliver an independent claims assessment compensation scheme in return for his support for legislation enabling the full privatisation of Telstra.

Following a meeting in 2005 between Senator Helen Coonan (then Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) and Senator Barnaby Joyce, the department was directed in late 2005 to undertake an assessment of the Casualties of Telstra claims against Telstra. The assessment focussed on due process, that is, whether all dispute resolution options had been explored by the complainants, rather than the merits of any particular party’s claims.

The department wrote to claimants and invited them to participate in the assessment. The letter made clear that it was a matter for claimants and Telstra to determine their own courses of action and resolution in respect to individual disputes and that the Commonwealth did not undertake to provide compensation should disputes remain unresolved. I am advised that you were written to on 22 December 2005 and invited to participate, and that you declined this offer in a letter provided to the department on 31 December 2005.

The department wrote to you again on 9 January 2006 to confirm that you did not want to participate in the assessment as your letter indicated a possible misunderstanding in relation to the process for the independent assessment. The department’s letter clarified that the Minister at the time had not agreed to any commercial loss assessment process.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to the Minister’s attention. I trust that this information will be of assistance.

Yours sincerely

Duncan McIntyre
Assistant Secretary
Consumer Policy and Post

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Richard Oliver DBCDE

The legal advice contained in documents 1, 2 and 5 was provided for the purposes of advising the Telecommunications Competition and Consumer Branch of the Department on the Department’s independent assessment of claims against Telstra with respect to the “Casualties of Telstra’ (COT) group of claimants. Although the Department is no longer engaging in this independent assessment process of COTs claims, the claims are an issue that remains of high concern to the claimants themselves and a section of other telecommunications consumers. At present matters directly or indirectly relating to the COTs claims are the subject of ongoing legal actions in a variety of legal fora to which the Department is not a party.

Despite the age of the advice provided five years ago, I am of the opinion that the disclosure of this information and consequent waiver of privilege would potentially cause real harm by prejudicing the course of these proceedings by disclosing legal advice that was provided to the Department fur the purpose of its own independent assessment processes. Preserving the confidentiality of this advice is important in ensuring that the Legal Services Group’s advice or recommendations with respect to consumer claims against Telstra or any other telecommunications provider retains its essential independence.

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