Escalation Becomes the Harm - September 2021

Before a system fails completely, there is usually a long period where a person tries to make it work.

Letters are written. Complaints are lodged. Evidence is provided. Escalations are made to regulators, oversight bodies, and even government ministers. Each step is taken in good faith, with the belief that someone, somewhere, will eventually step in and stop the harm.

But what happens when every escalation leads nowhere?

Each response required more energy — and resolved nothing.

This post documents what that experience looked like from the inside — not just the institutional responses, but the psychological toll of trying to make a system act while it slowly conditions you to expect that nothing meaningful will happen at all.

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When Escalation Becomes the Harm

The psychological cost of trying to make the system act

There comes a point in every crisis when a person stops assuming the system will work and starts trying to force it to.

By early 2021, I had reached that point.

For nearly two years I had tried to resolve a workplace safety and workers compensation crisis through the normal channels. I had reported the hazards. I had asked for cooperation. I had tried to follow the process the system required.

But the harm wasn’t stopping.

Instead, it was escalating.

So I began doing what any citizen is told to do when institutions fail:

I escalated.

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Escalating for Help

My complaints and correspondence during this period show repeated attempts to get action from the institutions responsible for workplace safety and workers compensation oversight.

These were not casual complaints.

They involved serious concerns about:

• employer compliance with workers compensation obligations

• workplace safety risks after a psychological injury

• the handling of evidence provided to regulators

• failures in regulatory oversight

Each step I took was an attempt to find someone willing to investigate and act.

Each escalation was also a sign that the previous pathway had failed.

The system appeared to function on paper.

But in practice, responsibility seemed to move constantly between agencies.

Workers compensation concerns were directed to one body.

Workplace safety concerns were directed to another.

Complaints about those regulators were directed somewhere else again.

From the outside, it might look like checks and balances.

From the inside, it felt like being pushed in circles.

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Escalation Reaches Ministerial Level

When regulatory channels failed to produce answers, I escalated further.

I wrote to government ministers.

Ministerial offices acknowledged my correspondence and indicated that aspects of my concerns had been forwarded to the relevant authorities for review.

Yet even at ministerial level, the same pattern continued.

Responses explained which agency had jurisdiction over which issue.

Workers compensation complaints belonged to one body.

Workplace safety matters belonged to another.

Oversight of those agencies belonged somewhere else again.

The responses were polite.

But they did not resolve the underlying issue.

They simply redirected it.

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What Escalation Looks Like From the Inside

Public discussions about regulatory systems often focus on procedures and policies.

What those discussions rarely capture is the human experience of escalation.

Each complaint requires energy.

Each letter requires clarity.

Each escalation requires persistence.

Those are exactly the capacities that psychological injury erodes.

By this point, the consequences of the unresolved situation had already become severe.

Financial pressure was building.

Uncertainty about entitlements continued.

The workplace harm that had triggered the workers compensation claim remained unresolved.

The stress was constant.

And the system meant to resolve the harm had become another source of it.

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When Government Responses Become Triggers

By August 2021, something inside me had changed.

It wasn’t just exhaustion.

It was conditioning.

Government correspondence itself had become psychologically triggering.

Every email notification from a government agency created a surge of anxiety.

Experience had taught me what those messages usually contained:

another explanation of jurisdiction, another redirection, another response that did not lead to meaningful action.

Instead of helping resolve the situation, the system had begun reinforcing the trauma.

I reached a point where I could no longer safely manage these communications alone.

In correspondence with the Independent Review Office, I explained that my GP would need to review government emails on my behalf because the distress associated with them had become overwhelming.  

This was not a dramatic statement.

It was simply the reality of what prolonged systemic failure can do to a person already suffering psychological injury.

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Isolation

Systemic failure does not only damage health.

It isolates people.

The only person I could rely on to help manage the situation was my GP.  

At that point, the system had not only failed to protect me.

It had also placed me in a position where navigating the system itself required medical support.

That is a level of distress no injured worker should experience.

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All I Had Asked For

The most painful part of this entire experience was how simple the original request had been.

All I had wanted was a safe workplace and the opportunity to recover and continue doing the job I had done for nearly two decades.  

That should not have required years of escalation.

It should not have required complaints to regulators.

It should not have required correspondence with ministers.

And it certainly should not have required a GP to screen government emails so I could cope with reading them.

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The Psychological Cost of Systemic Failure

Systemic failure does not occur in a single moment.

It unfolds slowly.

Each unanswered question erodes confidence.

Each redirected complaint deepens frustration.

Each delayed response increases stress.

Over time the person asking for help begins to expect that nothing meaningful will happen.

Hope is replaced by anticipation of disappointment.

The body learns the pattern.

An email arrives.

Heart rate increases.

Breathing changes.

Sleep becomes difficult.

The system meant to resolve the harm becomes part of the trauma itself.

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The Question Escalation Raises

The purpose of escalation pathways is to ensure serious issues are addressed when ordinary processes fail.

But escalation only works if someone eventually takes responsibility.

If every escalation leads back into the same unresolved system, something fundamental has gone wrong.

Because when a worker:

• reports harm

• follows regulatory processes

• escalates through oversight bodies

• contacts ministers

and still cannot obtain meaningful action, the issue becomes larger than one person’s experience.

It becomes a question about whether the system itself is functioning.

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Why These Documents Matter

The documents from this period record more than correspondence.

They record a person trying, repeatedly and in good faith, to make the system do what it was designed to do.

They show the escalation attempts.

They show the institutional responses.

And they show the human cost when those responses fail to stop the harm.

When escalation pathways do not trigger accountability, the harm does not pause while the system sorts itself out.

It continues in real time.

Affecting health.

Affecting financial stability.

Affecting families.

And eroding the basic sense of safety every worker should be able to rely on.

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The Moment Escalation Became a Civic Duty

By September 2021, the situation had reached a breaking point.

After years of complaints, evidence submissions, and regulatory escalation, the responses from government agencies had begun to follow a familiar pattern: jurisdictional explanations, redirections, and assurances that the matter sat somewhere else.

Those responses had become psychologically triggering.

They reinforced a growing belief that meaningful action would never come.

In correspondence to ministerial offices, I explained that repeated dismissive responses from government agencies had become a source of trauma, and that I had begun asking my GP to review official correspondence before I could read them.

At that point I wrote something that marked a shift in how I understood the situation — not simply as a personal crisis, but as a matter of public accountability.

“It is my civic duty to now use a more vocal approach for the sake of the public.”

When escalation pathways fail repeatedly, the question stops being about one person’s case.

It becomes a question about whether the system itself is functioning as intended — and whether the institutions responsible for protecting workers are being held to the same standards of accountability they expect from everyone else.

Are the institutions responsible for protecting workers functioning as the public expects them to? And if not (because clearly they are failing to protect workers), then who regulates the regulators? 

Source: contemporaneous records of events - Documents 193-196.