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| Due diligence requires response. |
In July and August 2021, I sent multiple emails to a pastoral colleague within my university.
They were not casual reflections.
They were written in conditions of prolonged workplace isolation, financial distress, and escalating psychological injury.
They were written because I was trying to stabilise myself in the absence of institutional response.
Eventually, they were met with silence.
This post is not about one inbox.
It is about statutory duties — and what happens when they are not operationalised in practice.
The experiences described here illustrate how psychosocial hazards can emerge and escalate when repeated communications raising concerns about safety, wellbeing, and support are met with silence rather than response.
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The Legal Framework That Applied
From July 2019 onward, psychosocial risks in my workplace had been raised.
Under the WHS Act 2011 (NSW), section 19 imposes a primary duty of care on a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers.
Health includes psychological health.
The Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work provides practical guidance on how organisations must identify, assess and control psychosocial risks in the workplace.
The Code can be accessed here:
The Code recognises that workplace behaviours such as bullying, social isolation, and lack of support are psychosocial hazards capable of causing psychological injury.
It requires organisations to:
- Identify psychosocial hazards
- Assess risks
- Implement control measures
- Consult with workers
- Monitor and review effectiveness
Psychosocial hazards include:
- Workplace bullying
- Repeated unreasonable behaviour
- Social isolation and exclusion
- Poor organisational justice
- Inadequate support
- Poorly managed conflict
These are recognised safety risks.
They are not interpersonal misunderstandings.
They are regulatory matters.
From May 2020, when workers compensation and injury management processes were formally engaged, additional statutory obligations arose.
Due diligence should have been visible. Instead, what unfolded was silence.
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The Emails That Were Never Answered
Those emails were not written casually.
They were written to a pastoral colleague inside a university that publicly proclaims commitment to dignity of the human person in its mission.
I was writing because I was being ostracised.
Because I was being isolated.
Because I was being mobbed.
Because I was being financially destabilised while being told to trust “process.”
From July 2019 onward, due diligence under work health and safety law should have been activated.
From May 2020 onward, injury management and compensation obligations should have been honoured transparently and promptly.
Instead:
Silence from colleagues.
Silence from leadership.
Silence from a directorate explicitly tasked with Identity and Mission.
In August 2021, I sent email after email.
Not because I enjoy repetition.
Not because I lack restraint.
But because I was in acute distress.
I had $299 to last more than a week.
My parents’ sacrifices and belief in my education for a better life, career and financial security — it was all at risk.
I wrote:
“Due diligence to duty of care should’ve happened from 2 July 2019… The only process is WHS and duty of care as per law… I need the transfer to pay my bills and focus on my health. I’m losing my mind… nobody has listened for two years.”
I wrote:
“I need you to call me. I’m a human person too. I need to feel dignity too… I need kindness and support.”
I wrote:
“Ostracism is a form of bullying… I need a support network.”
There was no response.
Just silence.
When a person in acute financial distress, reporting psychosocial risk and referencing statutory obligations, is met with coordinated non-response, silence in that context functions as pressure.
Silence communicates:
You are alone.
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Ostracism as a Psychosocial Hazard
The Code of Practice recognises social isolation, exclusion, and lack of support as psychosocial hazards.
Organisational psychology literature similarly recognises social exclusion as destabilising and potentially coercive. It can:
- Undermine identity
- Increase anxiety
- Exacerbate trauma
- Induce compliance
When deployed — intentionally or systemically — against someone already reporting harm, it can compound injury.
A police officer, sensing my exhaustion during one explanation of the circular regulatory loop, said:
“It’s been two years.”
Yes. It had.
And the person at the centre of the conflict remained employed.
Meanwhile, I was spiralling financially and psychologically.
Under section 19, the duty is proactive.
It does not wait for collapse.
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Identity and Mission — In Theory and Practice
The institution publicly committed to:
- The dignity of the human person
- The common good
- Justice
- Stewardship
- Pastoral care
In practice, when I asked for support, I was told to defer to “process.”
When I asked to see that process in writing, I requested:
- Complaints handling procedures
- Discrimination and harassment policies
- Workplace bullying frameworks
- WHS psychosocial hazard management procedures
- Injury management plans
- Workers compensation frameworks
What I received was not clarity.
It was containment.
There is a difference.
Process without transparency does not mitigate risk.
It obscures it.
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Fair and Dignified Working Conditions
The Sydney Archdiocese Justice and Peace Office emphasises that fair and dignified working conditions are a core principle of Catholic Social Teaching.
Work is not simply an economic transaction.
It is understood as an expression of human dignity.
Catholic social teaching affirms that workers are entitled to:
- Safe working conditions
- Respect for their dignity as persons
- Fair treatment and justice in employment
- Protection from exploitation and harm
These principles recognise that workplaces must not expose people to conditions that damage their health, undermine their dignity, or isolate them from support.
The expectation of safe and dignified work aligns closely with contemporary work health and safety frameworks, including obligations to prevent psychosocial harm.
Where institutions publicly commit to both Catholic social teaching and statutory WHS obligations, those commitments reinforce one another.
A workplace cannot credibly affirm human dignity while tolerating environments where workers experience sustained psychological harm, isolation, or exclusion.
Dignity requires more than statements of mission.
It requires action.
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Section 27 — Officer Due Diligence
Under section 27 of the WHS Act, officers have a personal due diligence obligation.
They must take reasonable steps to:
- Acquire up-to-date knowledge of WHS matters
- Understand operational hazards and risks
- Ensure appropriate resources and processes exist
- Ensure processes are in place for receiving and responding to information about hazards
- Verify that those processes are implemented
Repeated written communications referencing psychosocial risk, financial instability connected to injury management, and deteriorating mental health constitute information regarding hazards.
Due diligence requires that such information be:
Received.
Considered.
Acted upon.
Verified.
Policy existence is not sufficient.
Silence does not demonstrate verification.
Non-response does not evidence oversight.
This is not about personalising blame.
It is about governance alignment.
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Why I Wrote So Much
People sometimes ask why the emails were long.
Because I was documenting in real time.
Because I understood what gaslighting feels like.
Because institutional erasure begins quietly.
Because if I stopped writing, I risked doubting my own reality.
Writing was not aggression.
Writing was survival.
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The Psychological Reality of Silence
When someone in distress repeatedly asks for contact and receives none, the nervous system interprets that as threat.
Not disagreement.
Threat.
Human beings regulate through connection.
Silence in that context is not calm.
It is destabilising.
When an institution speaks of dignity yet withdraws contact from a worker asking for help, something fractures internally.
And yet I kept asking.
Not for special treatment.
For a phone call.
For acknowledgment.
For human presence.
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This Is Bigger Than One Inbox
This is not about one pastoral colleague.
It is about systemic avoidance.
It is about preferring silence over discomfort.
It is about invoking “process” while statutory duties remain unverified.
It is about the psychological consequences of ostracism being minimised because they leave no visible bruise.
But ostracism leaves bruises.
They are just internal.
Under the WHS framework:
- Psychological safety is not optional.
- Officer oversight is not symbolic.
- Due diligence requires response.
And emails left unanswered can become part of the evidentiary record of what was — and was not — done.
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Law and Mission Should Not Diverge
Work health and safety law and Catholic social teaching ultimately express the same principle:
human dignity requires protection in the workplace.
The WHS Act imposes enforceable duties to prevent harm — including psychological harm — through proactive risk management, consultation, and oversight.
Catholic social teaching articulates the moral dimension of that same responsibility: that work must be carried out under conditions that respect the dignity, safety, and wellbeing of the human person.
The Sydney Archdiocese Justice and Peace Office explains this clearly in its guidance on fair and dignified working conditions, emphasising that workers are entitled to safe environments, just treatment, and respect for their inherent dignity as persons.
https://justiceandpeace.org.au/fair-and-dignified-working-conditions/
Where institutions publicly affirm both frameworks — statutory obligations and social teaching — the expectation is not contradiction, but alignment.
Legal duties and moral commitments should reinforce one another.
Because ultimately, both point to the same conclusion:
Workplaces must protect people.
And dignity cannot be upheld in principle while harm is left unaddressed in practice.
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Source: contemporaneous records of events - Document 182.
Further Reading
SafeWork NSW – Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work
Sydney Archdiocese Justice and Peace Office – Fair and Dignified Working Conditions
https://justiceandpeace.org.au/fair-and-dignified-working-conditions/
