Notice After Notice – Part 15 - Statutory benefits still withheld - May 2022

4 May 2022

Waiting Outside the Room

There is a particular kind of distress that comes from being excluded from conversations about your own life, especially when you know something has happened, but nobody will tell you what.

By 4 May 2022, I had already spent months trying to communicate the urgency of my situation.

I had notified my employer.

I had notified the insurer.

I had notified regulators.

I had notified my elected representative.

Notice after notice.

Email after email.

Request after request.

And still the silence continued.

Weeks earlier, a phone call scheduled for 6 April 2022 had been cancelled. I had been told that another discussion would be arranged and that I would be informed. (See https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/06/notice-after-notice-part-10-first.html). 

That communication never came.

Then I discovered through social media that Chris Minns had visited ACU on 29 April 2022. (See https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-social-media-post-i-saw-on-29-april.html).

A visit that had apparently gone ahead.

A visit that, based on everything that had previously been discussed with the Kogarah electorate office, I believed would include discussion of my circumstances.

So I waited.

One day.

Then another.

Then another.

Nothing.

No phone call.

No email.

No update.

No explanation.

No inclusion.

I was left outside the room waiting for information about decisions and discussions that directly affected my life.

At that point, I was desperately trying to save my home.

I wrote:

“I need an update urgently because I’m in distress.”

I explained that Mother’s Day was approaching.

I explained that I had spent Easter alone.

I explained that all I wanted was proof of my employment that I had devoted twenty years of my life to.

I needed that proof to proceed with financing arrangements and settle on my home. Without it, I faced delays, penalties, and the possibility of losing everything.

I wrote:

“If I lose my home and my deposit, that’s a death sentence for me.”

Those words reflected the reality of what prolonged financial and psychological harm had done to me.

By this stage, the workers compensation system had already failed to provide the support it was supposed to provide.

The insurer had failed to implement the Injury Management Plan.

The employer had failed to safely return me to work.

Regulators had failed to intervene.

And now the office of my own elected representative had fallen silent as well.

I was trying to explain that this was never an employment dispute. (It was, however, adverse action for requesting a safe work environment). 

This was about survival.

It was about housing.

It was about family.

It was about dignity.

It was about the basic right to be included in discussions concerning one’s own life and about statutory rights.

I kept asking questions but was not receiving any response:

“Am I waiting for something to arrive in the post?”

It was a reasonable question.

Because nobody was communicating.

Nobody was collaborating.

Nobody was doing what they had promised.

I reminded them that the Injury Management Plan required communication and collaboration. I asked again for contact with my treating doctor, for a return-to-work plan, and for proof of the employment I had spent two decades building.

I wrote:

“I’ve reached breaking point.”

What strikes me most is how many different institutions already knew.

The employer knew.

The insurer knew.

The regulators knew.

The electorate office knew.

Everyone knew I was facing financial catastrophe.

Everyone knew I was reporting ongoing psychological harm.

Everyone knew I was asking for implementation of an existing Injury Management Plan.

Everyone knew I was trying to save my home.

Yet the silence continued.

This is what makes this part of the story so difficult.

Because by May 2022, the issue was no longer a lack of notice.

There had been notice after notice.

The issue was what happened after people received those notices. Or more accurately, what did not happen.

At the very same time, the Opposition Leader (ie. my elected representative for Kogarah) was presenting a public image of listening, engagement, accountability and standing up for workers.

Yet as one of his own constituents, I was receiving none of those things.

Behind the public statements and campaign messaging was a constituent repeatedly asking for help and repeatedly being met with silence.

Not only silence from an employer.

Not only silence from an insurer.

Not only silence from regulators.

But silence from the very office that was supposed to represent me.

And so on 4 May 2022, I sent another notice. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.

My home was at risk.

My health was deteriorating.

My family relationships were suffering.

And I was still waiting for somebody—anybody—to communicate with me.

The tragedy is that none of this was hidden.

It was all in writing.

It was all documented.

And still, I remained outside the room, waiting for an answer that never came.

At the same time, the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 314.