How Withheld Workers’ Compensation Entitlements Reached My Superannuation - October 2022

By October 2022, the withholding of workers’ compensation payments and RTW entitlements had reached the retirement savings I had spent my working life building.

My self-managed superannuation fund had placed a $30,000 deposit on an investment property in Western Australia. I had planned to buy it outright, without a loan, and have the rental income flow into my fund. A rental appraisal dated 5 October 2022 estimated that the property could be marketed at $430 to $440 a week. That was an estimate, not guaranteed rent, but it shows the retirement income I was working to establish.

I could no longer complete the purchase as planned. In an email to a finance broker on 10 October 2022, I recorded that I had taken approximately $290,000 from my SMSF to save my home. I had also sold my Melbourne investment property at a substantial loss. A security swap was the only option I had to settle because of public university employer FRAUD! I explained that I had intended to buy the property outright before I was forced to draw on those funds. 

That’s what the workers compensation fraud, committed by both a powerful public university employer and its specialised insurer caused, in retaliation for requesting a safe work environment. SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to enforce compliance and stop this act of FRAUD! It was much easier to believe the offenders, ignore the evidence put before them, and just blame the victim. The public deserve answers from both these regulators and the current ministers responsible. 

The correspondence shows me trying to rescue the purchase. On 4 October 2022, a broker introduced me to another broker to explore a loan within the SMSF and a possible refinance of my home to return money to the fund. On 6 October 2022, the second broker asked whether I was receiving workers’ compensation or other income that attracted superannuation contributions. The answer was NO. I’M A VICTIM OF FRAUD by my university employer and its specialised insurer, Catholic Church Insurance. APRA now has these financial records of damage caused by the fraud. 

I was forced to make an income protection claim while trying to sort out CCI’s bad faith conduct, but a commercial product doesn’t have the same protections that a statutory scheme was supposed to have. 

See 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/two-insurers-one-injury-only-one-did.html

AND 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/07/i-was-fighting-for-more-than-my-job-may.html

The broker’s preliminary calculation suggested that the proposed rent alone might support a loan of about $155,000, subject to further information and lender assessment.

I was seeking finance for a property I had intended to purchase without borrowing, in my superannuation. That change was a consequence of having to use my own retirement savings while my statutory workers’ compensation payments and entitlements were being withheld. 

THAT’S FRAUD, SIRA NSW! FINALLY DO YOUR JOB AS THE REGULATOR RESPONSIBLE AND STOP THE FRAUD! 

The records also show the pressure I was under. I initially told the broker the purchase price was $229,000. On 11 October, she queried that figure against the signed contract, which she said showed $327,500. On 14 October, I acknowledged that I had confused the figure with an amount involved in saving my home. I was exhausted, traumatised and trying to manage my home, a property settlement, my superannuation and the ongoing workers’ compensation offences, all at the same time. ALONE. 

 While SIRA NSW chose to do this:  

On 3 October, the developer had notified purchasers that an unexpected retaining-wall requirement would delay the release of titles. The delay gave me more time to try to find a solution, but it didn’t return the money to my SMSF. I ultimately lost the $30,000 deposit, the capital I had intended to put into the property, and the opportunity for its rental income to build my retirement fund.

Australian Catholic University and Catholic Church Insurance withheld workers’ compensation benefits and entitlements, and I’m calling for an independent investigation into alleged workers’ compensation fraud. Those allegations require findings based on the full evidence. The October emails document something immediate and concrete: while I was seeking the payments and cooperation the statutory scheme required, I was using my own assets to protect my home and desperately trying to save my retirement investment.

This is the snowball effect. Payments and entitlements owed to me were withheld. I drew on my superannuation to save my home. I sold another investment property at a substantial loss. Then I couldn’t complete an SMSF purchase I had planned to make outright, and I lost the $30,000 deposit and its potential rental return.

I had worked for decades in higher education, paid my HECS debt, and built my retirement funds so I could provide for myself. When I needed the protection of a statutory scheme, I was left funding the consequences myself. 

Government bodies and elected representatives had opportunities to hear what was happening. I want the conduct of Catholic Church Insurance and ACU governance investigated, the withheld entitlements addressed, and the resulting damage to my superannuation accounted for.

I cannot accept further threats of punishment for financial consequences caused by the withholding of my statutory entitlements. I want my payments, my entitlements and what this has cost my retirement returned to me. 

It’s fraud. 

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 589-592.

When I reported suspected workers compensation fraud, SIRA sent my evidence back - October 2022

I have worked at Australian Catholic University since 2001. My role is a senior professional role, and I’m trying to return to it safely and recover in my work. I have not resigned.

On 25 June 2020, Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) issued an injury management plan. I expected my insurer and employer to work with me and my treating health professionals on a safe return to my role. I’m still asking why that plan wasn’t implemented. After my CCI case manager allegedly left, I asked who would replace her. I still need the case management and coordinated return-to-work support that should have followed.

My accrued leave was depleted (ie. stolen, almost $200,000 worth of accrued entitlements), while I tried to obtain that support. My weekly compensation payments never commenced. I continue to plead with failed regulators to enforce compliance regarding the payments owed to me. I’ve been forced to beg for what I’m legally owed under a statutory scheme! 

——

On 11 January 2021, I complained to the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA). I reported suspected fraud, failures to comply with workers compensation requirements and continuing risks to my safety. I wrote:

“Instead, I received no RTW plan, no consent form from the RTW co-ordinator to sign giving permission for her to communicate with my health professionals, and no claim form to force a decision by the insurer in a 21-day deadline.”

SIRA acknowledged my complaint on 15 January 2021. I needed it to examine the records, give me clear answers and take action where the evidence warranted it.

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/sira-nsw-when-system-sends-you-in.html

——

By 10 March 2021, I was asking SIRA to explain its process in writing:

“You have not been transparent with me at all in your investigative processes. Therefore, you will put in writing for me: each step you took, with both the employer and insurer; what evidence was provided to support each allegation that there was compliance … did it ever occur to you to receive my evidence?”

Had SIRA examined the injury management plan? Had it established who was responsible for coordinating my return to work? Had it sought records from the insurer and employer and compared them with mine and those of my treating doctor? I am still entitled to know what was checked.

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/when-regulators-close-ranks-systemic.html

——

On 1 June 2021, I began sending records to a SIRA enforcement officer. On 7 June, I sent further records on a USB by registered post. I was trying to put the evidence before the authority responsible for oversight. As I explained in my email of 27 October 2022, SIRA returned the material to me by registered post.

How did sending my evidence back resolve anything?

Or this lack of transparency and integrity? See previous posts below:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/sira-nsw-closed-my-complaint-phone.html; 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/is-it-safe-to-open-what-that-question.html

——

Who investigates when benefits do not reach a worker?

SIRA’s own workers compensation fraud guidance includes an employer’s “failure to pass on workers compensation to the intended recipient” among its examples of possible employer fraud. I read that while trying to find out why I wasn’t receiving the weekly payments owed to me or cooperation from a RTW coordinator to communicate with my NTD and devise a return to work plan aligned to the injury management plan agreement! 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/injury-management-and-rehabilitation.html

But I have a further question: what happens when the concern is about the insurer? 

Who examines an allegation that an insurer has withheld benefits, relied on an inaccurate account of a worker’s history, or failed to carry out the injury management steps it initiated? Who checks the insurer’s records against the worker’s records before accepting its explanation?

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/injury-management-plan-legally-binding.html

I’m asking for those matters to be investigated. I’m not saying that a fraud finding has already been made. But calling my concerns a dispute doesn’t answer an evidenced allegation about how my benefits and injury management have been handled! 

This wasn’t a “dispute”. That completely trivialised and dismissed a very serious report of suspected EMPLOYER AND INSURER FRAUD! 

——

On 6 September 2021, I wrote:

“Had a worker engaged in fraud, these agencies would have been all over that individual and rightly so.”

Why should suspected wrongdoing involving an employer or insurer receive less scrutiny?

——

I’ve never been “always unfit” for my professional role

I also sought answers through the Independent Review Office (IRO). I wanted Catholic Church Insurance’s position in writing. A phone call telling me what the insurer supposedly said wasn’t enough. I also found it unacceptable when IRO staff would do that. A written answer gives me something I can read, compare with the evidence and challenge if it’s wrong.

And the written response was extremely wrong and indefensible. 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/i-demanded-answers-in-writing-iro.html

——

In my 27 October 2022 email to SIRA, I described CCI’s response as portraying me as “always unfit” for work. A dangerous and damaging characterisation. Does Catholic Church Insurance want to go public with this false statement? Do they want to open up a can of defamatory and discriminatory worms? 

I have worked in a professional role at ACU for two decades, with many years in a senior, high-level professional role. When I became injured, I asked for safeguards so I could recover and return safely to my work. My work history doesn’t disappear because an insurer lies to government agencies with a false narrative, that’s suspiciously consistent with the narrative of the employer’s national manager of employment relations and SAFETY, the perpetrator who ultimately led to my claim, “on behalf of the university.” 

I want CCI’s written response examined alongside my actual work history, the injury management plan and the reports of my treating professionals. I shouldn’t have to keep demanding that organisations obtain and record the insurer’s answers in writing. Written complaints deserve written answers.

IRO responses have shown that concerns about insurer conduct are not unknown to the system. In its 7 October 2022 response to a NSW parliamentary committee, the IRO called insurer case management “an ongoing area of concern” and identified insurer delays and errors in weekly payments among issues it had examined.

What about no weekly payments at all, IRO? 

They make my question more urgent: when a worker provides records of a serious failure (or suspected fraud), how is that concern independently examined and resolved?

——

The harm is still growing

I estimate the financial consequences to me at more than $1.2 million. That’s a wider estimate of the damage, not a calculation of weekly payments alone. My depleted leave, the income and statutory benefits withheld, and the financial decisions forced on me have affected everything I have worked for. I’m also dealing with an ATO matter resulting from these consequences of regulatory failure! 

This isn’t a closed chapter of my life. I expect my statutory benefits of weekly payments and medical expenses owed, a case manager, implementation of the injury management plan, and a safe path back to my role. I haven’t given up my work or my place in my workplace community.

I reported these concerns while there was still time to prevent further harm. I kept writing. I kept asking the insurer and employer to carry out their responsibilities. I kept asking SIRA to examine what was happening. The damage has continued to grow while I wait and suffer, isolated, frightened, defrauded and with secondary trauma caused by the conduct and inaction of SIRA NSW and SafeWork NSW. 

I need a documented examination of what ACU did, what CCI did, what SIRA examined and why the evidence I sent didn’t produce clear answers. I want reasons and supporting records tested. I want to know how my report to regulators, of suspected fraud, was assessed and by whom.

I’m still here. I haven’t resigned. I’m asking for my statutory entitlements (that I shouldn’t be having to ask), and a safe return to the role and university community in which I have served for more than 20 years. SIRA and CCI should answer me in writing.

——

Furthermore, I’m one person who has been left alone to fight TWO powerful institutions. I have spent years documenting what happened, asking for my statutory entitlements and trying to return and recover in my role, while the financial and personal harm continues to grow. 

I find it morally reprehensible that this remains unresolved. And UNCONSCIONABLE. 

What’s needed now is a genuinely independent external investigation into the corporate conduct of ACU and Catholic Church Insurance, including how my injury management, return to work and weekly payments were “handled”. It must examine the records, hear from the people involved and establish what happened, including how my evidence was treated by SIRA. 

I shouldn’t have to carry the burden of investigating two institutions on my own! That’s an unfair, unrealistic and impossible task to place on my shoulders while all these government agencies are left to continue to do NOTHING. And that goes for the responsible Ministers of the Minns government in office too! See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/09/i-asked-my-local-mp-chris-minns-to.html.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 553.

“Please make it stop”: My plea to the Fair Work Ombudsman - October 2022

After silence from my elected representative’s office, I wrote again to the Fair Work Ombudsman. I addressed the then Fair Work Ombudsman, Sandra Parker, directly in the letter. I was pleading. I was frightened, facing further financial loss, and trying to find someone who would listen to the seriousness of what was happening to me.

The heading of my letter said:

“URGENT — I can’t tolerate any more loss and this abuse anymore”. 

I wrote that two things required immediate action: the financial harm and the psychological harm. I was at risk of losing another $30,000 connected to a property purchase through my self-managed super fund. I had already drawn on my superannuation to protect my home. At the same time, I felt increasingly isolated from my work, my colleagues and the community to which I had contributed for over 20 years.

I asked a painfully ordinary question:

“I need to give an update to the finance broker this week. What do I say?”

That wasn’t a rhetorical question. A real deadline was approaching. I needed someone to understand that another delay had consequences in my actual life.

I had raised concerns about my workplace safety. Catholic Church Insurance had issued an injury management plan. I was asking for that plan to be implemented, for a safe return-to-work process, in a safe working environment. Those were not abstract documents to me. They were supposed to be a path back to my work and a way to prevent further harm.

In that letter, I used the word “reinstatement.” I understand why I did. I was pleading for someone to act. But it’s a word I no longer want to keep using to tell my story.

I did not resign. I did not choose to leave my job or my workplace community. I had worked hard for more than two decades, earned three degrees and made a substantial contribution in a senior library role. The people who worked with me can speak to that contribution. 

I shouldn’t have to plead as though my work and my place in that community never existed.

What I need is for the injury management plan to be carried out, for a return-to-work plan to be developed and implemented, and for the hazards I raised to be addressed so I can work safely. I need meaningful contact with my colleagues and my workplace community. And I need oversight that checks what’s happening in practice, rather than accepting an organisation’s description of its own compliance at face value.

A plan on paper doesn’t protect a person if nobody carries it out. The title or qualifications of a return-to-work coordinator do not protect a person if the necessary contact, planning and practical steps don’t happen. I have a SafeWork GIPA file, and I have tried to explain the distance between what was represented about return-to-work arrangements and what I experienced. 

That distance needs a legitimate independent examination.

See SIRA’s lazy response: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/when-regulators-close-ranks-systemic.html

Instead, I felt I was being reduced to a characterisation of myself that I didn’t recognise. 

Isolation made it harder for the people who knew my work to be heard, and harder for me to challenge what was being said about me. 

The humiliation and shame of that are difficult to describe. 

I had spent years contributing to a university community, yet I was left trying to prove that I deserved to be treated with dignity.

In the letter, I tried to explain what repeated dealings with lawyers and agencies had done to my sense of safety. I wrote that I was in “‘don’t hurt me’ mode.” I said it was debilitating.

I wasn’t asking to be spared scrutiny. I was asking for the records and the conduct of everyone involved to be examined properly. I wanted someone to test the accounts they were being given, to ask whether the promised protections were operational, and to recognise the danger of leaving a frightened, injured person to navigate one more layer of bureaucracy alone.

Too often, it felt as though protecting the institution from risk mattered more than assessing and managing the risks to me. I cannot know every person’s motives. I can say that the combined effect of their actions and inaction was devastating. 

Policies about safety and the dignity of the human person mean very little if they are not upheld when someone needs them most.

I wrote:

“I need a support network from my university community colleagues.”

That need hasn’t gone away. Neither has my need to work safely, to recover, and to have the injury management and return-to-work obligations treated as real responsibilities rather than paperwork.

My letter ended with the words:

“Please make it stop.”

I shouldn’t have had to beg for so long to be heard. 

And I shouldn’t have to surrender my work, my community or my dignity to make the danger visible.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 555.

I asked my federal MP for help. An automatic reply was all I received - October 2022

On 25 October 2022, I wrote to the office of Linda Burney, then the federal Member for Barton and my elected representative. I was following up on this serious work health and safety matter I had already put to her office in writing before the October long weekend.

I was frightened. I was facing further financial loss. I needed someone to hear what was happening to me and help me find a way forward.

“I’m very alone, frightened and traumatised more from systemic abuse and failure,” I wrote.

I explained that if what I was experiencing didn’t stop, I feared losing another $30,000 of my hard-earned superannuation. I told the office I was afraid I would have a breakdown. I asked for “support and kindness and human dignity and compassion.” I urged them to read the two documents I had attached and asked for urgent action that week.

I also explained why I needed help with this federal matter. I had received a letter from the Fair Work Ombudsman, but I was so traumatised by what had happened that I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I told my MP’s office plainly: “I’m imprisoned in fear now and I need support from my federal MP office.”

An automatic reply arrived. It acknowledged receipt and asked constituents to provide an address and contact number if they hadn’t already done so. I had included both.

I never received a personal response. I never received the help I had asked for.

I understand that an MP’s office cannot resolve every matter a constituent brings to it. But I had described urgent financial and psychological harm, identified a Fair Work Ombudsman letter I was struggling to face, and asked for human support. Even a response explaining what the office could do, or where it could help me take the next step, would have mattered.

I had already sought help from my state representative and that turned into betrayal. By the time I wrote to my federal MP’s office, I felt abandoned by the systems that were supposed to respond. Reaching out again took effort I could scarcely afford.

Elected representatives ask us to trust them with our votes. When a constituent writes in fear, explains the harm they’re facing and asks for help with a matter involving a federal agency, that trust should mean more than an automatic acknowledgement.

I was a constituent asking to be heard. The silence that followed has stayed with me.

I have already written about the Fair Work Ombudsman letter and the distress it caused me, when I finally read it. See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-fair-work-ombudsman-when-another.html

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 552.

“I Need Support, but No More Emails”: What I Told My Second Workers’ Compensation Solicitor - October 2022

By the time I approached a second workers’ compensation solicitor, I was struggling to read another email.

I had asked for a safe working environment. After I made a workers’ compensation claim due to employer retaliation, an injury management plan was issued. I wanted that plan implemented, my treating health professionals involved, and a safe path back to my job and university community. I kept trying to explain why the ongoing conditions around me mattered to my recovery.

In one email to the firm, I wrote:

“I can’t view any more emails...”

That sentence came after years of trying to get someone to listen. I told the firm that I had reported my concerns to SafeWork NSW around October 2020 and to SIRA in January 2021. Serious conduct by my employer and insurer had continued despite those reports. I needed the solicitor to examine what had happened, rather than assume the employer and insurer had complied with their obligations.

I wrote:

“I tried to communicate what happened.”

I had sent the firm a USB containing evidence. I had also sent a timeline of incidents. Yet my circumstances were being pushed through a standard claims process while the cause of my injury and the barriers to returning to work remained in place. Yet again. It felt like a repeat of my experience with the first workers compensation solicitor. It was re-traumatising and extremely frustrating.

In my other email, I described what the interruption to my income and the use of my leave had meant for me. I feared losing another $30,000 from my superannuation fund. I wrote that I had been forced to use my remaining annual and long service leave while still being harassed by the cause of the claim and while I sought the compensation payments I was owed.

I also raised the absence of a replacement case manager, after the initial one who had issued my injury management plan, left the insurer. I described repeatedly asking CCI to communicate with me about who would take over. My summary of the response I experienced was one word:

“Silence.”

I was trying to explain that my psychological symptoms could not be dealt with in isolation from what I said was still happening. I wrote:

“Symptoms of psychological injuries cannot be treated separately from the cause. And no one listened to the cause.”

The emails show how frightened and exhausted I was. They also show what I was asking for. I wanted the financial harm addressed. I wanted the isolation and conduct of organisational mobbing to stop. I wanted contact with my university community, which had been my workplace and support network for two decades. I wanted my treating doctor and psychologist involved in recovery and return to work planning.

That was the whole point of a workers compensation statutory scheme!

I wrote plainly about what correspondence had become for me:

“I’ve gone into ‘don’t hurt me mode’ with emails…”

In the second email, I made the request even clearer:

“I need support, but no more emails. They’re a trigger of trauma.”

Those words were a request for a different way to communicate with someone who was already overwhelmed. I needed the people assisting me to hear what I was saying and take practical steps.

I ended that email with the simplest statement I could make:

“I need positive progress for procedural fairness and natural justice. I need the abuse to end. I need kindness.”

I still want my injury management plan acted on. I still want a safe return to my job, with proper safeguards and the people responsible for my recovery working together. 

These emails record how hard I tried to make that need understood, even when writing them had become painful.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 551 & 554.

I Asked for a Safe Work Environment. I Was Repeatedly Directed to “Medical Assessments” Under Threat

I Had Had Enough: My Complaint to SIRA About Medical Assessments, Safety and a System I Could No Longer Trust

By the time I sent this complaint on 21 October 2022 to the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority, I had had enough.

I wanted a safe work environment. After my employer continued to injure me in retaliation, I wanted the injury management plan issued by Catholic Church Insurance on 25 June 2020 to be implemented. I wanted to recover in my job, with communication between my treating practitioners, the insurer and my employer, and safeguards against the conduct I had reported.

Instead, I was trying to protect myself from contact I experienced as harassment “on behalf of the university”, struggling to maintain a connection with my workplace while this individual was isolating me “on behalf of the university”, and being directed toward further medical assessments under vague and fabricated threats, “on behalf of the university.”

I requested a safe work environment, and instead, I found myself repeatedly having to answer questions about my “fitness for work” that I’ve been successfully performing for two decades, while unethical practitioners were deemed to have a right to an “opinion” but my voice and statutory right to return and recover in my HEW 8 professional job in my university community, was disrespectfully ignored and disregarded by both regulators and lawyers. 

All this shit was happening around me, while my questions about workplace safety went unanswered. That’s why the conduct of independent medical examinations became part of my complaint to SIRA. It was also why I questioned the way SIRA and SafeWork NSW responded when I sought accountability.

That’s the context missing when my story is reduced to whether I attended an IME. I did attend assessments. Too many “assessments” under threat and beyond reasonable and fair, whether from employer or insurer, depending what fabricated excuse suited the fragmented system that has allowed them to do this. But the SafeWork NSW inspector believed it all, because of the perpetrator’s job title, while literally telling me, “I’m not here to play he said she said.” 

I also asked why aaaaalllllll these repeated IMEs were necessary, what information practitioners had been given, how my privacy would be protected (because it hadn’t been so far), whether I could have someone with me as one safeguard, and what anyone was actually doing about the conditions I told them had injured me.*

*See SafeWork NSW’s response quoted above. In other words they were doing NOTHING but then went further by perpetuating the lie they were told! No independent verification or if the agreements, plans, policies, laws and regulations were operationally implemented!

To me, all this is victim blaming at a whole new systemic level, ironically, by regulatory agencies we trusted to intervene and keep us safe at work! 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/enter-unsafework-nsw-that-rtw-plan-i.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/when-regulators-close-ranks-systemic.html

——

A report after an examination that never took place

On 14 November 2019, I went to an appointment with Deepinder Miller, arranged by my publicly funded university employer, under a vague, very frightening and distressing threat, from the moment I requested a psychosocially safe work environment. I asked questions because I didn’t understand why I had been sent there, straight after raising concerns about my safety at work. Why had I been sent for an “assessment” after raising concerns about bullying, harassment and my safety at work?

Deepinder Miller ended the appointment and told me to ask HR.

I won’t repeat Deepinder Miller’s lies on record. It’s retraumatising. I’ve already written emotionally charged posts on those incidents of WHS breaches leading to distress and fear in my story - 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-doctor-who-commits-fraud-2019.html; and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/hr-associate-director-unfit-to-do.html

I had attended. I was trying to understand the purpose of the assessment. An examination didn’t proceed, yet a substantial “report” was produced about me. I found that horrifying.

It wasn’t merely an upsetting appointment that I could put behind me. I received the report much later, in October 2020, alongside arrangements for yet another “assessment” by my publicly funded university employer under a continuation of their bullshit and vague threats, only three months after one I attended for the insurer, Catholic Church Insurance. ONLY THREE MONTHS APART with relentless harassment in between by the cause of my claim, the national manager of employment relations and SAFETY, and suspiciously no cooperation from CCI from around August 2020, including no identified case manager responsible to implement the injury management plan agreement?!

And then RG, the “senior claims specialist”, suddenly recorded herself as case manager after ignoring me, waiting for the damage to be done and fooling workers compensation solicitor #1. The records don’t lie when forensically analysed, nor the reactive cover up attempts, like RG suddenly having left CCI when my GP was given the run around when trying to get a hold of this alleged case manager. And nobody knew she had supposedly left and suddenly now worked for Transport for NSW?

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/sira-nsw-and-illusion-of-regulation.html

Have readers caught on to what’s going here, because the regulators still haven’t. 

Going back to Deepinder Miller. I questioned how such a detailed account could result from a meeting that had ended without an examination, and I disputed statements about what happened. Seeing that account used in further correspondence deepened my fear of what could be written about me without my experience being fairly heard.

I couldn’t bring myself to read it then. I still haven’t fully read it for my safety now. The delay, the disputed description of our brief meeting and the arrival of the report alongside another appointment, almost a year later, after non-stop WHS and regulatory violations by both employer and insurer, added to my distress. I complained about that experience and sought scrutiny of how an account of an examination that didn’t proceed had been produced and used.

The bundle I sent to SIRA NSW in October 2022 included public reviews concerning Deepinder Miller. I cannot verify what happened to the people who wrote them, and I don’t present their allegations as findings. They alarmed me because I recognised concerns about being listened to and about what appeared in reports. I wanted the bodies responsible for oversight to examine complaints properly, including my own.

A practitioner conducting an assessment of someone reporting psychological injury should understand that the manner of questioning and the handling of sensitive information can themselves cause distress. 

I didn’t  surrender my dignity or my interest in privacy by attending an appointment.

I’m sure the Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear by includes to “do no harm.” 

I’m sure Hippocrates didn’t make an exception to allow a continuation of adverse action and systemic harm directed at workers who had requested a workplace right to a safe work environment. 

What a messed up system our contemporary society has! Where are the SAFEGUARDS?!

——

A “Significant Cost” to the University. What About the Cost to Me?

In January 2020, the university arranged another assessment after their true motive with Deepinder Miller failed. This time it was with Michael Robertson. I engaged a second employment lawyer to challenge what was happening. I didn’t attend that proposed appointment.

On 15 January 2020, the university HR associate director asked my now second employment lawyer whether I intended to attend on 21 January. The email said:

“You will appreciate that if the University does not cancel the appointment in advance, a significant cost will still need to be paid”.

To quote from my post regarding that incident:

“How significant has the cost been for the university, by HR executive staff, to destroy my life, defrauding me of all my leave entitlements (personal, annual and long service leave), income, superannuation, livelihood, workers compensation fraud and likely more in suspected coercion, influence, aiding, abetting etc. of others, to collude in such destruction? 

The financial abuse and exploitation alone should be taken extremely seriously, as well as contraventions of WHS laws.”

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/employment-lawyer-2-part-1-2020.html

——

More appointments, while I was asking for protection and a return to my work

In mid-2020, I attended an insurer-arranged assessment with Melissa Barrett. I raised concerns about that experience, including the refusal of a support person. A safeguard!

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-doctor-full-of-innuendo-lies-and.html

Around the same period, I was trying to coordinate with my treating practitioners, the insurer and the university about returning to my work. My treating professionals had recommended rehabilitation support to help the people involved communicate. Then, on 25 June 2020, the insurer issued an injury management plan. Those were practical steps toward a supported return. I wanted them followed through.

Instead, the stressor that I’d been trying to protect myself from continued to contact me. The university’s national manager of employment relations and safety now used a new excuse to continue badgering and harassing me, when I had explicitly emailed her to LEAVE ME ALONE! 

I tried reporting the harassment to police; I sought other means of protection, including an attempted application for an apprehended personal violence order; I tried blocking her emails to remove the stressor as per WHS policy; I begged the NTEU to intervene; and I finally asked for help from SafeWork NSW. 

My doctor recorded “psychological guarding” concerning this person on my certificate of capacity. ACU and CCI didn’t even honour that recorded legal obligation for my safety either! All failed me and I was left unsafe, unprotected and in the hands of the primary cause of my claim, Rena Christmann! 

I told the SafeWork NSW inspector that I was being isolated from colleagues who had been part of my working life for almost twenty years, while contact from the person I had asked to be protected from continued. That isolation was a safety concern in its own right. 

SafeWork NSW recognises that limited access to other people and difficulty obtaining communication or emotional support can create psychosocial risks. I needed the SafeWork NSW inspector to consider the combined effect of the isolation, the continuing contact and the pressure to attend another “assessment” only THREE MONTHS after Melissa  Barrett and without both employer and insurer cooperating with their return to work statutory obligations! Those risks were not addressed or investigated by SafeWork NSW. Instead the inspector told me they were not there “to play he said she said”, but did. SafeWork NSW took the word of the very perpetrator, who spoke “on behalf of the university.” 

What SafeWork NSW did (and didn’t do that they should have done), along with how they treated me, is unforgivable and indefensible. 

Those colleagues are part of my workplace community that I’ve known for almost twenty years. I wanted them to be able to speak with me. Feeling cut off from them intensified my isolation. IT STILL DOES AND THE TORTURE IS NOW SO MUCH WORSE. 

SAFEWORK NSW REFUSED TO LISTEN REPEATEDLY, AND STOP THIS COERCED ISOLATION AND RECOGNISED PSYCHOSOCIAL HAZARD THAT WAS COMING FROM A PUBLICLY FUNDED UNIVERSITY EMPLOYER!

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I needed the injury management plan put into action

In October 2020, another appointment was arranged by the stressor who caused the claim and whom both employer and insurer allowed to continue harassing me under a statutory scheme. This time with Peter Young ONLY THREE MONTHS after Melissa Barrett. On 12 October, I told the university’s WHS manager about the psychological guarding on my certificate and I forwarded the appointment correspondence and wrote:

“What are you doing to ensure my safety…?”

That was a direct appeal for help. It needs to be read with everything happening around it: the earlier assessment for the insurer, the injury management plan I wanted implemented, the ongoing contact that distressed me, and my efforts to obtain protection. I couldn’t  understand why another assessment was being pressed while my request to be protected from the reported workplace stressor remained unresolved.

CCI were fully aware. It was documented in incident #24 in their own commissioned FACTUAL INVESTIGATION REPORT! 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/05/catholic-church-insurance-june-2020.html

I also told my employer’s WHS and Wellbeing manager that I was distressed and demanded for Rena Christmann to stop contacting me. I told him to make the bullying and harassment to stop. That email shows what I was asking for at the time. I wasn’t asking to be left without support or without a path back to work. I was asking someone with responsibility for safety to address the conditions that were harming me!

Christmann was contacting the office of my treating psychologist without my permission (no signed consent) and even WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL GUARDING RECORDED on an updated medical certificate! This was a safe space I had a right to preserve without brazen harassment from Rena Christmann to distress me! How dare she! 

My nominating treating professionals’ correspondence that month also said they’d recommended an independent rehabilitation provider to liaise between the parties. It was explained to Christmann in an email that therapy sessions were precious time and that my treating professional’s role was as my psychologist, not a messenger. 

I needed practical coordination of my return, yet I felt trapped in a cycle of multiple and unethical appointment letters and distressing contact! No safety provided WHATSOEVER, ACU General Counsel! 

I hadn’t signed a consent form authorising that national manager to contact my psychologist. I wanted to know what information was being sought or shared, on what basis, and why the recommended rehabilitation support had not become the focus.

I also raised concerns about the handling of private messages and the effect on my family. My family made a complaint. These matters added to my sense that even attempts to seek support or maintain private relationships could draw other people into what was happening to me. They deserve careful investigation, not dismissal as an emotional reaction to an appointment letter.

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Where was the boundary between the processes?

When I sought help from SafeWork NSW, I was trying to get a workplace safety concern addressed. I understood that the national manager of employment relations and safety was also communicating with the SafeWork NSW inspector, “on behalf of the university”. Yet my concerns about the continuing contact and isolation were being pushed between workplace safety, workers’ compensation and employment processes.

That gap is a serious systemic problem. If one body treats the assessment as an employment matter, another treats my safety complaint as separate from the compensation claim, and another focuses only on the medical report, who looks at their combined effect on the injured worker? It’s a faulty “process” that’s open to abuse by the employer as a continuation of adverse action!

At that critical moment, I didn’t need someone to invent another process for me. I needed someone to ask why I was being directed to another assessment so soon after the insurer’s assessment, while my treating practitioners’ concerns and my request for a safe return were still unresolved. I needed someone to examine whether the assessments were necessary, how they were arranged, and whether safeguards were actually provided! 

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Even the written safeguard did not hold

Moving on to yet more traumatic systemic abuse. On 29 September 2021, I attended a video assessment arranged through the Personal Injury Commission with Professor Nicholas Glozier. The Commission’s written instructions said I could have one support person in the room if I announced that person at the start. I relied on that instruction. On the day, Glozier made my friend leave and engaged in conduct that was intrusive and violated my privacy, while responding to my question as to why he insisted that my support person leave, that “sometimes workers compensation solicitors get it wrong.” 

THESE INSTRUCTIONS AND RIGHTS CAME DIRECTLY FROM THE PERSONAL INJURY COMMISSION! 

I WANT HONEST ANSWERS! I THINK THE PUBLIC DESERVE HONEST ANSWERS! 

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-examination-i-was-not-prepared-for.html

I wrote to the Commission in October asking why the support described in its own instructions had been denied to me. That assessment took place inside my home. My concern is the loss of the safeguard I had been told I could use. 

I wanted to know how the decision to exclude my support person was reached, particularly when the Commission’s own written instructions had told me I could have one!

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/personal-injury-commission-pic-what.html

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What I wanted SIRA to answer

In June 2021, SIRA’s Enforcement and Prosecutions team acknowledged receiving my emails, attachments and material sent by registered post. A manager said she would review the information, identify matters within SIRA’s jurisdiction and respond with an outcome. I felt relief when I received that message. I thought the records I had worked so hard to assemble would finally be examined.

This is what happened instead:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/sira-nsw-closed-my-complaint-phone.html;

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/is-it-safe-to-open-what-that-question.html

I had asked about the insurer’s actions, the absence of a replacement case manager, the injury management plan, my leave and income, and my ability to return safely to my work.

That’s why my complaint to SIRA NSW this time, in October 2022, was angry. My language was raw. I said I had had enough. 

I questioned how a worker could be directed from one process to another while the original need for a safe return to work remained unresolved. I was frightened by what was happening to my health and livelihood and my human dignity, and angry that I still had to keep proving I was asking for help.

I had lost trust in SIRA and SafeWork NSW through my experience of trying to obtain answers from them.

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Whose costs counted?

I also keep returning to the university’s concern about a “significant cost”. What did ACU spend on proposed assessments and the “processes” that followed? What did CCI spend? I don’t have their complete figures, and I won’t invent them.

I can describe the cost to me. I used personal, annual and long service leave while trying to obtain help and return safely to work. By my calculations, that amounted to 305 days of leave, worth nearly $200,000. I was left without the ongoing income and workers’ compensation payments I was entitled to receive. I also experienced losses involving my superannuation and property. The amounts and responsibility for those losses need to be examined against the records.

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/theft-of-two-decades-of-accrued-leave.html; and 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/greater-wage-theft-and-fraud-from-pcbu.html; and 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-home-i-was-trying-to-secure-and.html and any post on the parallel crisis and snowball effect. 

The university counted the potential cancellation fee for one appointment. 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/employment-lawyer-2-part-1-2020.html.

Who was counting the cost of leaving me without the supported return to work and statutory benefits withheld that I had been asking for?

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Why I am naming the practitioners

I’ve named the practitioners because their assessments or proposed assessments are part of the documented sequence I’m describing. I believe people should be able to discuss what happened to them in a medical assessment, identify the assessment they mean, and ask how complaints about it are handled.

Naming a practitioner doesn’t mean I can determine their motives, establish the truth of every public review, or make a finding of professional misconduct. Those questions require a proper examination of records and an opportunity for the people involved to respond. What I can say is what I experienced, what I disputed, what the written instructions said, and what I asked the responsible bodies to investigate.

What I cannot accept is a version of this history in which I’m said simply to have resisted “assessment”. I attended appointments, raised concerns, sought protection and kept asking to return to my work safely. The distress those assessments caused, and the safety concerns I raised while they were being arranged, belong in the same account.

My trust in the system was worn away over years of trying to get clear answers from my employer, insurer, SIRA, SafeWork NSW, and other “processes”. Each time I was redirected or left without an answer, it became harder to believe anyone would take responsibility for the whole picture.

I am still asking for that whole picture to be examined. I want the concerns I raised about the assessments and support safeguards addressed. I want a clear account of what happened to the injury management plan issued on 25 June 2020. Above all, I want the safe, supported return to my work that I had been asking for from the beginning.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 549-550.