Hedley Thomas on ‘Hellish two years of bullying and harassment‘

Hedley Thomas
APRIL 21, 2016
THE AUSTRALIAN

In most morality plays and everyday stories of the triumph of good over evil, heroes and villains are easy to identify.
The righteous heroes fight the good fight, often against the odds (this is sometimes cliched as a “David and Goliath” battle). They proudly wear, metaphorically, the white hats.
The callous and corrupt villains who cause chaos and destruction don the black hats. In this way they are easily distinguishable in the media’s depiction and the public is invited to go along with the construction. Most of the time, the system works.
But what happens when one of the heroes turns out to be seriously disturbed, a homophobic stalker, a serial bully whose relentless and cruel conduct inflicts severe damage on an innocent, upstanding bank executive who happens to be gay?
Michael Fraser, a self-styled “consumer advocate”, has worn a white hat in public life for several years. He has been profiled as one of the heroes while wrongdoing by Australia’s banks and big corporations, like the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, have been investigated and highlighted by him, journalists, politicians and others, culminating in the Turnbull government’s crackdown yesterday.
At the Press Club in Melbourne last week for a showcase public event on whistleblowing and corporate corruption, Fraser was one of the drawcards.
ABC presenter Michael Rowland, who introduced the talent on the podium to the Press Club’s audience, described Fraser as “a very active consumer advocate who helped highlight the plight, the ruthless exploitation, of workers at the 7-Eleven convenience chain, and has led to some wide-ranging and hopefully sustainable and long-lasting changes at that company. Michael, great to see you.”
A short time later, Fraser was told by one of Australia’s leading journalists, Fairfax Media’s highly regarded investigator Adele Ferguson: “Michael, you’re a whistleblower of sorts. You’re a consumer advocate. What is it that motivates you? What drives you? There must be easier jobs. And you keep going. Is it a moral obligation to do that? Does it make you feel good?”
Fraser, from the Gold Coast, who claims to have no assets apart from his website, The Arbitrator, which he promotes as a way to achieve justice for hapless victims of the banks and other big businesses, replied to Ferguson: “It makes me happy. People say ‘thank you for helping me’, but I won — I got the good feeling. For me, it’s about helping people, it makes me happy, and I feel fulfilled.”
Remember those words. In December, 2015, Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum SC, delivered an evidence-based assessment of the facts in a defamation case in which the much-vaunted consumer advocate, Michael Fraser, was the defendant without a leg to stand on.
At times it is difficult to read as it describes “devastating harm” caused by a cruel, untrue and embarrassingly public campaign, waged with a gleeful zeal by Fraser against the Commonwealth Bank’s Dr Brendan French, head of customer relations in the bank’s retail division.
The judgment has been written with such force it suggests Justice McCallum was appalled by the antics of Fraser, who was the Press Club special guest just last week.
She awarded damages of $300,000 to French, a man she described as an expert in alternative dispute resolution, respected for his integrity, intelligence and decency. A university graduate in fine arts whose PhD thesis investigated the history of ideas in religious studies, including platonic philosophy, he fell into Fraser’s clutches when the bank asked him to find out ways of assisting the “consumer advocate”.
Justice McCallum: “Styling himself ‘The Arbitrator’, Mr Fraser claims the vocation of ‘keeping big business honest’. Under that pious mantle and purportedly in wreak of unspecified wrongs done by the bank to unnamed customers, Mr Fraser has subjected Dr French to a hellish two years of bullying and harassment.
“Publicly, he has mounted a wide-reaching and wholly unfounded attack on Dr French’s reputation. In a disturbingly more sinister private campaign, Mr Fraser has bombarded Dr French with hundreds of emails, texts and voice messages, many containing thinly veiled threats evidently motivated by homophobia and other senseless vitriol. To make matters worse, Mr Fraser has used these proceedings as a forum for repeating and aggravating the defamation. The defence was scandalous.”
Why was Fraser held up as a paragon of virtue at the Press Club, lauded by journalists and former ACCC chief Allan Fels? Because he had already been characterised as one of the heroes. The narrative is written: the villains are in the banks, not the ranks of those who pass on information to journalists.
Journalist Joe Aston’s provocative column in Fairfax’s The Australian Financial Review highlighted the hypocrisy around Fraser’s pending Press Club appearance. But for Aston’s trouble, he was scoffed at, during the filmed event, as a “gossip columnist”, while The Age’s new editor, Mark Forbes, suggested Aston should cease taking his cues and stories from spinners. Fraser’s halo remained intact.
A year ago, Fraser used his web site to promote his plea for donations to fund his defence. Sympathetic media articles described his plight. Fraser said: “This case is not just about me. Winning this case will show others that they can face up to the banks about serious misconduct, to stand up for what is right, and win.”
In the lead-up to the case, Fraser’s solicitor, Stewart Levitt, told a journalist at The Australian it was indeed a ‘David and Goliath’ battle, adding: “It’s hard to understand why anyone, knowing Michael Fraser as a person, would target him. He’s a person of no financial standing, and this is really a microcosm of what’s alleged against banks in relation to their customers: they’re using their wealth and position to litigate a matter against a young man who is an enthusiastic consumer advocate who has no assets whatsoever.”
Justice McCallum regarded the comments as absurd, ruling: “The harm caused to (Dr French) by Mr Fraser’s bizarre conduct is serious and has plainly occurred solely because he was the human face of customer relations at the Commonwealth Bank.
“There is not the smallest suggestion of any actual wrongdoing on Dr French’s part. More pertinently, no person who has read what Mr Fraser has said about Dr French publicly and in his many messages to him could reasonably characterise Mr Fraser as no more than ‘an enthusiastic consumer advocate’ being unfairly targeted by Dr French. Rather, he was obsessively fixated upon persuading Dr French by any means, including threats, to meet him in person. When, sensibly, Dr French declined to do so, it is no exaggeration to say that Mr Fraser became Dr French’s stalker.”
On Fraser’s website, The Arbitrator, and in an email to more than 500 people within the bank and other organisations, and on the Facebook page of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (in which French held a directorship), the CBA’s complaints manager was depicted as monstrous.
According to Fraser, French’s “gross incompetence in his role at the Commonwealth Bank has destroyed the lives of thousands of customers”; his “bullying and harassment of bank customers is so aggressive it is akin to using a phone book to beat them”; he “dishonestly engaged in harassment, bullying and unethical practices”; he “corruptly awarded his life partner a CBA contract when he stood to benefit from that contract personally as a co-owner”; and acted corruptly in his role as a director of the consumer affairs body.
Each of those imputations, Justice McCallum ruled, “is entirely false”. She added: “It is plain from the evidence before me that, tragically, Dr French has been made the target of a senseless vendetta founded in madness.”
The vendetta began in late October 2012 when Ian Narev, chief executive of the bank, received an email from Fraser, who wanted a private meeting with him.
Today, on The Arbitrator web site, Fraser says: “I speak up against corporations behaving badly and I do my best to fight for the rights of Australian people affected. I specifically focus on executives and CEOs that are corrupt, ignore serious issues, or are not doing their job.
“We have also worked behind the scenes with the media and various politicians to help raise systemic issues and hold the powers that be accountable.”
But on October 25, 2012, Fraser told Narev: “Hi Ian, One thing I can say for sure, you may not know me now, but from this point on I will be someone you never forget. My followers consist of over 10,000+ (I have lost count beyond this) of the general public, federal politicians, 2 film companies, a handful of celebrities and prominent entrepreneurs. Rest assured I will never go away until you meet with me …”
It was left to French to initiate contact with Fraser. In the ensuing days and weeks, the tone of Fraser’s correspondence became increasingly aggressive and threatening, as he warned French: “You do realise you have me for life now, or at least the life of your career in CommBank.”
In early December, Fraser wrote: “Hi Brendan, I hope you are well. I am thinking that there will be something that would get you to talk, but I am not sure what that is.”
Commonwealth bank executive Brendan French.
In early January 2013 at about 4:30am, Fraser wrote: “Hi Brendan, I genuinely hope you had a nice time with your family over the break. We don’t want to have to apply all kinds of pressure to get you to talk, and would simply just like to have an open line of communication.”
At 3:15am on January 14, 2013, Fraser was threatening to visit French “very soon”, and warned: “My advice is to not think about it too much as you may work yourself up into a frenzy wondering when we are going to jump out with cameras.”
Fraser posted an article, “War on the Banks and any Bank executives that get in the way”, on his web site, forwarded it to French and announced: “I can break you mentally. You may be interested to know that my special skill is psychology. I am constantly psychoanalysing you. Did you know that I am also a powerful hypnotist? You have never faced someone like me and that is why I will remove you all, one by one, and win on behalf of the Australian people.”
At 1:07am on January 30, 2013, he asked French: “How many times per week do you dream about me?”
He said he had “only just begun to wind the pressure on” and was “currently working at about 5 per cent intensity”.
Justice McCallum found that on discovering French was gay, Fraser’s communications “began to include explicit homophobic references”. He emailed to say that his contacts “have even provided me with information on your sexual preference and the name of your partner etc”.
McCallum: “If there was still any doubt, Mr Fraser’s conduct had plainly become that of a stalker. Dr French gave evidence that there were also references to his sexual orientation and personal life in many of Mr Fraser’s voicemail messages. Those communications caused increasing fear to Dr French …”
Fraser made threats that French would be going to prison and would “enjoy his experience there”, a sinister reference, according to Justice McCallum, to his sexuality. Fraser boasted of “how much attention I’m getting from the media already, like a lot of the newspapers and different types of TV etc. It’s really, really good”. Sometimes, Fraser adopted a foreign accent — Greek or Russian — in his calls and voicemails, and other times his voice was “slow, studied and threatening”. He called French “virtually every day, sometimes several times a day and often during the early hours of the morning (between 2am and 5am) or otherwise outside of work hours”.
The messages were “outrageous, grandiose and frankly threatening statements” directed at French, including “I am coming for you” and “there is nowhere that you can hide”.
McCallum: “He repeatedly made statements to the effect that would never be free of him and that he would track him down no matter where he was every day for the rest of his life.”
Fraser warned: “I am an internet search optimisation genius and I can make certain that when anyone types your name into Google, the only material that they will find will be the truth of your evil acts, for the world to see. I am coming for you.”
By the middle of 2013 the first four pages of results against French’s name on a Google search were taken up exclusively with Fraser’s publications rather than books or articles published by French.
French was increasingly anxious and regularly went to The Arbitrator website. He was frustrated, Justice McCallum found, “because he knew that this was probably exactly what Mr Fraser wanted but could not stop himself, saying that it had become ‘a hideous, damaging fascination’.”
Referring to an article by Fraser — called ‘Who is Brendan French?’ – on The Arbitrator web site, Justice McCallum wrote: “I would not wish to give further oxygen to the scandalous allegations it makes. It is enough to say that the article was sinister and menacing, as well as being defamatory.”
Another article about French, illustrated with people carrying pitchforks, caused him to feel “sick, humiliated and hopeless.
Fraser followed French and his solicitors from a lift at court to their car; he sent the bank’s media team an email which, Justice McCallum ruled, “implied, bizarrely and entirely without foundation, that French was a pedophile. The email was raised at a meeting of the bank’s CEO and group executives … there was no truth in the content of the email.”
French told the Supreme Court: “To be frank, mud sticks and I guess we all know that, and I understand that these kinds of allegations will have a very significant half-life.”