SafeWork NSW: One Month of Silence After a Speak Up Report - January 2022

The WHS regulator was notified of serious psychosocial hazards on 11 December 2021.

By 11 January 2022, it had done nothing. No response whatsoever. 

That is a matter of record.

On 11 January 2022, after waiting an entire month with no response, I followed up with SafeWork NSW regarding my Speak Up report (Reference: SUP-1112-130101).  

What followed was silence.

Silence, definitely in this context, is not neutral.

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“I request an update…”

That email was written after prolonged harm, after being forced to navigate systems that were meant to protect me but did not, and after placing trust—again—in a regulator to act.

In that email, I said plainly:

• There had been no procedural fairness
• Psychosocial hazards were not being taken seriously
• The system had failed to act despite being formally notified

I also said something that should never need to be said to a safety regulator:

There are no innocent bystanders.

Because by that point, the silence was no longer passive.

It had become participation.

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When “Speak Up” Leads to Nowhere

The Speak Up system is supposed to mean something.

It is supposed to signal that when a worker reports harm:

• someone will listen
• someone will assess
• someone will act

But one month of silence after a report of serious psychosocial hazards does not communicate safety.

It communicates:

• that harm can be reported—and ignored
• that evidence can be provided—and not examined
• that escalation does not lead to intervention

And when the worker follows up, still deteriorating, still asking for help, and instead the silence continues, at that point, silence is not a gap.

It is a position.

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The Reality Behind “Mentally Healthy Workplaces”

SafeWork NSW promotes mentally healthy workplace strategies.

But systems are not measured by what they publish.

They are measured by what they do when tested.

In my case, the test was simple:

A worker reported serious psychosocial harm.

The regulator was notified.

And nothing happened.

That is not a breakdown in communication.

That is a failure to act.

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Awareness Is Not Action

In my follow-up, I challenged something fundamental:

Stop using awareness and training to cover inaction.

Because awareness without enforcement is not protection.

Training without intervention is not prevention.

You cannot promote mental health strategies publicly while failing to act when harm is formally reported.

That is a contradiction.

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What This Reflects — Then and Now

At the time, I drew a comparison that should concern anyone relying on these systems.

When fraud is suspected, systems move quickly.

When harm is reported, the urgency disappears.

That contrast reflects what is prioritised.

This is not something confined to January 2022.

This pattern—delay, deflection, and silence—has not meaningfully changed.

The failure to respond is part of a broader, ongoing experience.

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The Human Cost of Silence

By January 2022, this was no longer just a complaint.

It was survival.

I said clearly in my correspondence:

• I was not okay
• The harm was ongoing
• The situation had become unbearable

Silence compounds the harm.

When the regulator remains absent, the message is unmistakable:

You are on your own.

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What That One Month Exposed

The period between 11 December 2021 and 11 January 2022 revealed something critical:

• A regulator notified of harm - again
• A formal reporting channel used
• A worker actively seeking intervention
• And no response

That inaction shows how the system operates when it is actually relied upon.

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Legal and Regulatory Accountability

SafeWork NSW has obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) to:

• respond to reported risks
• address workplace hazards
• enforce compliance

Psychosocial hazards are recognised, serious workplace risks.

A failure to respond to a formal report raises serious questions about whether those obligations were met, not just then, but in how similar reports continue to be handled.

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The Question That Still Stands

One month after a Speak Up report:

• no response
• no engagement
• no action

So the question is:

What is the purpose of reporting psychosocial hazards if the regulator does not respond?

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Closing

This is a documented example of how a system behaves under pressure, and how that behaviour continues to affect real people.

A report was made.

Time passed.

Nothing happened.

And the consequences of that silence did not end there.

The harm continued…

And the wage theft also continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 245.

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Reference: What SafeWork NSW Says Should Happen

SafeWork NSW – Incident response and investigations: Customer Service Standard (What to expect)

https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/prosecutions/customer-service-standard-what-to-expect-during-a-workplace-investigation

This Customer Service Standard sets out how SafeWork NSW says it will respond when notified of a workplace incident, including serious safety risks and work-related illness. It outlines both the investigation process and how people affected are to be engaged, assessed, and kept informed throughout.  

According to the standard:

• Incidents are triaged and assessed to determine an appropriate regulatory response
• Inspectors are expected to take action and begin collecting information about the incident
• Investigations involve gathering evidence, including speaking with affected persons, reviewing documents, and testing what has occurred
• SafeWork NSW will communicate outcomes of the initial response, provide updates during any investigation, and inform affected individuals of the final decision    

These are not optional steps. They are the stated standard.

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How This Relates to My Lived Experience

My experience did not reflect this standard.

It did not begin with silence. It began with how the matter was handled when I sought help.

Instead of an objective, evidence-based response:

• the inspector accepted the account of the employer representative—the very individual I had identified as responsible for the ongoing harm
• my own account, as the affected worker reporting serious psychosocial risk and fearing for my safety, was not treated with the same weight or scrutiny
• there was no meaningful attempt to test competing accounts, gather evidence, or verify what had actually occurred

This is directly inconsistent with the standard’s requirement to collect information, assess the incident, and determine whether a breach of work health and safety laws has occurred.

I had approached SafeWork NSW because:

• there were no effective control measures in place to stop ongoing harassment and intimidation
• I was not being protected by the employer or insurer, despite clear work health and safety duties of care
• external avenues, including an attempted APVO, had failed to recognise the seriousness of what was occurring - see http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/07/apvo-court-registrars-response.html

This was sustained, escalating workplace conduct that extended into:

• my private communications
• my interactions with my union
• and even my medical spaces

In that context, an evidence-based investigation—grounded in independent assessment, not reliance on a single party’s account—was critical.

That did not occur.

Instead, the process reflected:

• acceptance of the employer’s version without verification
• failure to investigate whether protections were in place or being implemented
• failure to assess whether work health and safety obligations were being breached

What followed that initial failure was silence, after I formally tried a second time to escalate the matter through the Speak Up online form on 11 December 2021. 

SafeWork NSW's own Customer Service Standard compared with what occurred in practice. This was not delay. It was dismissal, followed by silence.

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The Gap

The Customer Service Standard describes a process that requires:

• independent information gathering
• objective assessment of risk and potential breaches
• and ongoing communication with affected individuals

My experience reflects the opposite:

• one-sided acceptance instead of investigation
• failure to test evidence or protect the reporting worker
• silence following formal escalation

This is serious because it goes directly to whether SafeWork NSW is meeting its own stated standards when a worker reports serious psychosocial hazards and seeks protection.

SIRA NSW: Complaint Shut Down, Broken Contact Pathways, and Staff Conduct That Escalated Harm - January 2022

By January 2022, this was no longer “just” about a workers compensation claim.

It had become a matter of regulatory conduct.

What follows is not a misunderstanding.

It is not a minor service failure.

It is a documented example of how the regulator, State Insurance Regulatory Authority, handled a formal complaint, and how that handling escalated harm.

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This is a continuation of what had already happened in late 2021.

By the time January 2022 arrived, I had already reached the point where even opening correspondence from State Insurance Regulatory Authority triggered fear and distress.

That did not happen in a vacuum.

It happened after an entire year of what I experienced as harm, obstruction, maladministration, and escalating distrust from the very institutions responsible for protecting injured workers and enforcing statutory obligations.

I wrote previously about reaching a point where I could barely bring myself to open registered mail from SIRA because of what those interactions had already done to my mental state:

“Is it safe to open?”

That question was not dramatic. It was real.

By then, even limited exposure to responses from the regulator had become distressing enough that I avoided fully reading them.

I had not even properly viewed the response from SIRA’s Senior Complaints Manager in December 2021. What I did manage to read was already enough to deepen the distrust and fear I had developed toward the regulators responsible for protecting my statutory entitlements.

That is the context in which this January 2022 complaint occurred.

It was not an isolated incident, but a continuation of systemic harm.

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A Complaint That Could Not Even Be Properly Lodged

On 3 January 2022, I attempted to lodge another formal complaint.

The official complaints email address did not work.

“Firstly, your email address for submitting feedback does not work…”  

This is a regulator failing at the most basic level:

Providing a functioning pathway for complaints to even be received.

Because of that failure, I was forced to send my complaint through the CTP Assist channel, an entirely different scheme, simply to ensure somebody at SIRA would receive it.

“…since the email address customers are meant to use… is broken…”  

That alone says something deeply troubling about the accessibility and seriousness of the complaints process.

I had already experienced the same problem with my employer - being sent a broken link to what was supposed to be a complaint form. See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2024/10/zero-complaints-management-process.html. 

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What I Reported — Distress Made Worse by the Regulator

At the centre of the complaint was an interaction with SIRA while I was already in distress.

What followed made that distress worse.

“I called because I was already in distress…”  

At that point:

• My statutory entitlements remained withheld
• My financial stability was deteriorating
• I was trying to settle on a home
• I was experiencing ongoing conflict with employer, insurer, and regulatory systems simultaneously

And during that interaction, instead of receiving understanding, professionalism, or even basic humanity, I encountered something that intensified the situation.

There was:

No trauma-informed response.

No sensitivity.

No compassion.

No empathy.

No humanity.

What I experienced felt cold, procedural, dismissive, detached, and at times openly confrontational.

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“Customer Care” That Escalated Harm

The complaint eventually involved:

• The Senior Complaints Manager
• Escalation to a manager at Associate Director level within “Customer Care”

Even writing those titles now feels surreal, because the conduct I experienced bore no resemblance to care.

This was, without hesitation, the worst public service experience of my life.

Because the regulator responsible for protecting injured workers, repeatedly responded in a way that deepened distrust, distress, and psychological harm.

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The Call That Pushed Things Further

When I called SIRA, I said something very clear:

Do not interrupt me.

If the call is being recorded, let me speak.

Let the information be documented and escalated to someone with authority to properly assess what I was reporting.

Instead, I was told to calm down.

I was not in a position to simply “calm down”.

Not after a year of escalating harm.

Not while facing the collapse of financial security.

Not while trying to protect my employment, my home, and my future.

And certainly not while the regulator itself appeared unwilling to properly confront what had been happening.

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The Senior Complaint Manager’s Response: Narrow the Complaint, Close the Issues

When the same senior complaints manager (from 2021) responded formally, the complaint was reduced to two administrative matters:

• A broken email address
• An interaction with an external service

Everything else was effectively shut down. AGAIN. 

“The other issues raised as part of your complaint are closed…”  

Closed — despite the seriousness of the allegations.

Closed — while the harm remained ongoing.

Closed — with instructions to take the matter elsewhere:

“…you need to proceed to the NSW Ombudsman…”  

This was not genuine complaint handling. It was containment.

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The Distress Was Not Caused by an External Service — It Happened Within SIRA Itself

One of the most important points in this entire incident is this:

The interaction that triggered and escalated my distress was not with an external counselling provider.

It occurred during contact with SIRA’s own frontline staff.

Because the later responses attempted to narrow and redirect the issue into confusion about “Acacia Services” and external counselling pathways.

But that was not the core issue at all.

The distressing interaction occurred when I contacted SIRA directly while already overwhelmed and trying desperately to communicate the seriousness of what was happening.

I repeat what happened. 

I had said clearly:

Do not interrupt me.

Do not shut the conversation down.

If the call is being recorded, let me speak and escalate the information to someone with authority to properly assess it.

Instead, what I experienced was detached, dismissive, procedural communication from frontline staff who appeared focused on ending the interaction rather than understanding the seriousness of what was being reported.

Apart from being told to “calm down”, I was promised someone would call me back.

No callback came, just the emailed response of administrative containment and deflection from the senior complaints manager. 

I repeatedly encountered the same dismissive and emotionally detached approach, interactions that left me feeling degraded, unheard, and increasingly distrustful of the regulator itself.

This was occurring while:

• statutory entitlements remained withheld,
• critical information had allegedly been withheld from me,
• financial collapse was becoming a real possibility,
• and I was trying to communicate evidence of what I believed were serious systemic failures involving multiple stakeholders.

What compounded the harm further was the growing belief that the evidence I had painstakingly attempted to provide was not genuinely reviewed at all.

I had provided records.

I had attempted to explain the chronology.

I had attempted to communicate systemic concerns.

Yet the responses felt predetermined, dismissive, and procedurally defensive.

That is what became so psychologically destabilising:

The feeling of being dismissed by people who neither understood nor genuinely examined the evidence being placed before them.

The issue was never that frontline staff personally caused the underlying situation.

The issue was the repeated failure to recognise that what was being presented may have exceeded ordinary complaint handling and required escalation, analytical assessment, and genuine regulatory intervention.

But then again, how do we explain this? See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/please-dont-neglect-us-what-i-asked-of.html and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/sira-nsw-closed-my-complaint-phone.html

Instead, it was repeatedly shut down.

And over time, that repeated institutional response became part of the harm itself.

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The Complaint System Became Part of the Harm

This is the point that matters most.

As I’ve said in the introduction to this post, the issue was no longer “just” employer conduct or insurer conduct.

The issue had become the regulator itself.

When a complaints process:

• fails to properly receive complaints,
• narrows allegations rather than investigating them,
• responds to distress with procedural detachment,
• redirects accountability externally,
• and treats a distressed injured worker as a problem to manage rather than a person to assist,

the complaints process itself becomes part of the harm.

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Distress Escalates — Because the System Escalated It

My later responses reflected escalating distress.

It emerged from cumulative exposure to:

• institutional indifference,
• repeated procedural failures,
• perceived dismissal of serious concerns,
• ongoing withholding of statutory entitlements,
• and a growing sense that no authority within the system intended to intervene meaningfully.

Over time, that changes a person.

It changes how safe they feel.

It changes whether they trust institutions at all.

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No Safe Path Through the System

Before entering the workers compensation system, I was advised by the third employment lawyer I tried:

It’s not worth your health — make a claim.

Instead of protection, what followed felt like exposure to escalating harm from every direction:

• Employer
• Insurer
• Complaint systems
• Regulators

Different structures.

Same outcome.

I was damned if I pursued employment law and exposed myself to significant power imbalances, undisclosed conflicts, procedural obstruction, and enormous financial cost.

And I was damned if I entered the workers compensation system, where I ultimately found myself confronting not only employer and insurer conduct, but regulators that appeared unwilling to genuinely regulate.

Instead, what I experienced was a system that shut complaints down, refused to properly engage with evidence, and repeatedly treated distress as an inconvenience rather than a warning sign of systemic failure.

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From Maladministration to Conduct

This is why my complaint to the NSW Ombudsman is not limited to maladministration.

It includes conduct.

Because this goes beyond delays or administrative inefficiency.

It raises serious questions about:

• how distressed people are treated,
• how authority is exercised,
• whether complaint systems are genuinely accessible and accountable,
• and whether regulators themselves are causing further harm to the very people they exist to protect.

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This Needs to Be Said Clearly

This was not just poor service.

This was harmful.

And when harm comes from within a regulator — particularly one responsible for safeguarding injured workers and protecting statutory rights — it becomes a matter of public accountability.

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Continuation

This was not the first incident involving SIRA NSW.

And it would not be the last.

It was another stage in the continuing deterioration of trust between an injured worker and the institutions meant to safeguard her rights, safety, dignity, and future.

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 242.