Morning of 9 May 2022
There are days in this story that were painful. There are days that were humiliating.
And then there was 9 May 2022.
It remains one of the most frightening days of my life.
By this point, I had exhausted every avenue available to me.
- I had reported the workplace hazards.
- I had lodged the workers compensation claim.
- I had provided medical evidence.
- I had pleaded with my employer.
- I had pleaded with the insurer.
- I had pleaded with SafeWork NSW.
- I had pleaded with SIRA NSW.
- I had pleaded with my union.
- I had pleaded with my elected representative.
And still, nothing.
On the morning of 9 May 2022, at 9:25 a.m., I sent another email before getting into my car and driving to the Kogarah electorate office - alone.
I had no support.
No advocate.
No family member beside me.
I was completely alone.
In that email I wrote:
“I need my job and entitlements returned to me today. I’m alone, frightened… I’m on the brink of losing my home from employer fraud and financial abuse, and no one cares!”
Those were the words of a woman in crisis.
A woman who had worked for her employer for twenty years.
A woman who had followed every process she was told to follow.
A woman who had done everything possible to save her own life.
What makes that day even harder to reflect upon is why I was there in the first place.
I was not at the Kogarah electorate office asking Chris Minns to intervene in an employment dispute.
I was there because the systems that were supposed to protect injured workers had failed.
SafeWork NSW had failed.
SIRA NSW had failed.
The workers compensation system had failed.
After exhausting every avenue available to me, I turned to my local member because that is what constituents do when regulators are not doing their jobs.
I needed answers.
I needed somebody with influence and authority to ask questions that I could not get answered myself.
I needed somebody to help me understand how a twenty-year employee who had simply asked for a safe work environment could end up in this position.
That’s why Cheryl Han’s comments have stayed with me for all these years.
When she said, “I don’t think they’re going to give you your job back”, I remember feeling stunned. Shocked. Extremely frightened. Distressed. HUMILIATED. ASHAMED, WHEN IT WAS NOT MY SHAME TO CARRY!
- What did she mean?
- How did she know?
- What had been discussed?
- What had been said behind closed doors?
Because I wasn’t asking Cheryl Han and Chris Minns whether ACU would give me my job back.
I was asking what happened
I was asking why SafeWork NSW had not acted.
I was asking why SIRA NSW had not acted.
I was asking why every safeguard that was supposed to exist for workers had FAILED!
The question was not about my job.
The question was about accountability.
The question was about justice.
The question was about why I had been left to fight alone.
I can’t escape the feeling that the visit to the university was never really about helping a constituent.
It felt like institutional protection.
It felt like collaboration.
It felt like people talking to each other while the person whose life was being affected was excluded from the conversation.
And when Cheryl Han saw how distressed I was, the answers still never came.
Instead, there seemed to be another promise. Another possibility. Another reason to keep hanging on.
I remember being led to believe that Cherie Burton might somehow be able to help me. Looking back now, I struggle to understand why.
Cherie Burton was no longer the Member for Kogarah. She was not my elected representative. She held no role in resolving what was happening.
It was never clear to me why a frightened constituent seeking urgent assistance regarding what were serious failures by SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW, was being directed towards a former member rather than receiving answers from the people responsible at the time.
Years later, I discovered that Cherie Burton held a senior position within the NSW Premier’s Department (ie. the NSW Premier now being Chris Minns).
That discovery raised even more questions for me.
Questions I still cannot answer.
Questions about what was known.
Questions about who spoke to whom.
Questions about why I was being pointed in that direction at one of the most vulnerable moments of my life.
The Hansard records I saw, relating to Ms Burton’s role, are publicly available:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-104038
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-104079
But what I remember most is not the politics. It’s how vulnerable I was.
I had exhausted every avenue available to me. I was warning that I was losing everything. I was warning that I wasn’t coping and that I was frightened. I was warning that I had been pushed to the brink.
And instead of answers, I was given more false promises of support. Another thread of hope. Another reason to keep believing that somebody was finally going to help.
I find that deeply disturbing.
This was not a routine constituent matter. This wasn’t somebody upset about a planning application or a pothole.
This was a worker whose life was collapsing in front of them.
A worker warning of escalating financial harm.
A worker warning of escalating psychological harm.
A worker who was desperately trying to save her home, her livelihood and, ultimately, herself.
What happened that day felt like a profound betrayal of trust.
I had placed trust in my elected representatives. I had placed trust in their office.
I had placed trust in the belief that if the regulators failed, somebody would care enough to ask questions.
Instead, I left carrying more false hope, when what I desperately needed was integrity. What happened next is what makes this so serious.
I walked out of that office. I walked back to my car. I sat alone in my car.
It was pouring rain.
And that is when I finally broke.
I sat there alone and sobbed, because every avenue had now failed.
- My university employer had failed.
- Catholic Church Insurance had failed.
- SafeWork NSW had failed.
- SIRA NSW had failed.
- My union had failed.
- And now my elected representative had failed.
I wailed in that car from sheer despair.
I was frightened. I was facing the loss of my deposit. I was facing the loss of my home. I was facing the loss of everything I had worked so hard for, for over twenty years.
Everything I had built honourably. Everything I had sacrificed for.
And I was completely alone.
No support. No advocate. No family member beside me.
Just me, sitting in a car in the rain, wondering how much more I could possibly lose.
The truth is that I genuinely didn’t know what I was going to do.
That day I was on the brink because years of negligence, silence, abandonment, inhumanity, indifference, institutional protection and systemic failures had finally brought me to breaking point.
Never in my life had I felt like simply driving away and never coming back. That day was surreal. I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It was a real life psychological thriller. And no one cared.
That’s the reality of where years of silence, institutional protection, regulatory failures and unanswered pleas for help had brought me.
The most frightening part is that the warning signs were visible. The distress, the fear, the foreseeable harm.
And yet nothing changed.
That’s why this remains one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
——
It’s also impossible to separate the timing of this incident at the Kogarah electorate office.
Only days earlier, on 28 April 2022, the day before his visit to the university, Chris Minns attended Workers Memorial Day and publicly posted:
“Every workplace should be safe, for every worker, every day.
We all need to do more. And we need to do better.”
Workers Memorial Day exists to honour workers who have lost their lives because of workplace incidents and to acknowledge the families left behind.
Those are important words.
But as I sat in that car, broken, frightened and abandoned by the very systems that were supposed to protect me, those words echoed in my mind.
While those words were being spoken publicly, I was privately begging for help.
I was never afforded the opportunity to have a meeting, to explain the failures of SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW (but I had provided Cheryl Han at the Kogarah electorate office with the contemporaneous documents back in October 2021).
There was never an opportunity to explain that I was losing everything because the agencies responsible for protecting workers had refused to act. (But there were repeated emails - see the Notice After Notice series of posts).
Instead, I was left carrying the burden alone.
This is what my "elected representative" for Kogarah, Chris Minns, did instead:
https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-social-media-post-i-saw-on-29-april.html
All of it was a sham.
——
What haunts me most is that I don’t believe anybody expected me to survive this.
I don’t believe anybody expected me to still be here years later writing these words.
The silence was too complete.
The confidence with which I was dismissed was too great.
It felt as though everybody assumed I would eventually disappear.
That I would lose my home.
That I would break.
That perhaps I would simply become another story that nobody would ever hear.
But I am still here.
And I am writing it now, because behind the slogans, behind the speeches and behind the carefully crafted public messaging was a constituent pleading for help while her life was falling apart.
A constituent who trusted her local member.
A constituent who believed that when regulators failed, elected representatives would listen.
A constituent who asked for help and was left alone in a car in the rain wondering whether she could survive another day.
All because years earlier, she had asked for something very simple.
A safe work environment.
And the institutionalised wage theft was allowed to continue…
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 317.
