Notice After Notice — Part 9 - Chris Minns again - April 2022

1 April 2022

“They Broke Me, They Fix Me”

By 1 April 2022, I was no longer writing polite follow-ups.

I was writing from fear.

It was real fear about losing my home, my employment, my safety, my dignity, and whatever remained of my trust in institutions that were supposed to protect people.

This email was sent to my elected representative, then Opposition Leader Chris Minns, and his Kogarah electorate officer Cheryl Han. Again. Yet another one. 

By this point, I had already sent notice after notice. I had already explained that this involved workplace safety, workers compensation obligations, procedural fairness, psychological injury, and systemic failures in governance and regulatory oversight.

But what haunted me most was the feeling that nobody with authority was willing to intervene before irreversible harm occurred.

That is what this email captured.

I wrote that I was frightened nobody with authority was going to stand up for my employee and human rights.

And by then, the damage was no longer confined to me.

I described what had happened to my family, the distress, the intimidation directed toward people connected to me, and the way the situation had spread far beyond a workplace issue.

What stands out to me now is desperation mixed with clarity.

Because despite everything, I was trying to negotiate a pathway back to safety, dignity, and lawful compliance. IT WAS MY STATUTORY RIGHT! IT WAS MY HUMAN AND EMPLOYEE RIGHT. 

I set out what I said were non-negotiable requirements.

I demanded that Rena Christmann not be involved in any meeting concerning my return to work. I described conduct that had caused profound harm and stated clearly that I had experienced the opposite of procedural fairness.

I asked for continuity, restoration of my accrued entitlements stolen, and recognition of the psychological injuries I said had arisen within the workplace and workers compensation system.

I was trying to save my home at the same time.

That pressure appears throughout the email.

I explained that I urgently needed proof of employment because settlement on my home was approaching, and I wrote plainly that I would not survive losing it. That required both employer and insurer discharging their WHS and workers compensation statutory obligations. 

That was the truth!

People who have never lived through prolonged institutional abuse often underestimate what cumulative harm does to a person. The exhaustion becomes physical. The uncertainty invades every practical part of life. Financial survival becomes tied to whether institutions obey laws they were already required to obey.

I was still asking for cooperation. That is what Catholic Social Justice principles are about, including and especially, a commitment to the dignity of the human person. That’s what the policies and staff code of conduct are about, that’s what WHS and workers compensation laws and regulations exist for too!

I referred to the Injury Management Plan that had been issued earlier in the workers compensation process and said it needed to be implemented.

I wrote that I would not accept alternative duties outside my substantive HEW8 library role at the Strathfield campus because, by that stage, I felt as though every boundary, entitlement, and safeguard had already been stripped away.

There is another part of this email that still stays with me years later.

I asked for my staff profile, files, email access, and work history to be restored.

Because when prolonged workplace exclusion happens, it is not just income that disappears.

It is identity.

It is history.

It is belonging.

You begin to feel erased from the very institution you spent years serving.

And then came the sentence that captured exactly how the entire process had begun to feel:

“It feels like a ‘process’ of human elimination.”

That was somebody who had now spent nearly two years trying to survive systems that kept redirecting responsibility elsewhere.

Workplace processes.

HR processes.

Workers compensation processes.

Regulatory processes.

Complaint processes.

Legal processes.

Yet somehow, despite all those “processes,” the harm continued.

What was missing in all these “processes” were SAFEGUARDS!

I also asked why earlier evidence and pleas for help sent to senior university leadership had apparently resulted in no meaningful intervention.

At the end of the email, exhaustion overtook everything else.

I wrote that I was broken, traumatised, exhausted, and frightened of further loss.

And then I wrote the sentence that, even now, explains the entire workers compensation “scam”:

“They broke me, they fix me.”

That was the reality of where I was emotionally and psychologically by April 2022.

Seeking survival.

Seeking safety.

Seeking lawful intervention before everything collapsed completely.

And still, the notices continued.

And still the institutionalised wage theft continued too. 

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 300

Notice After Notice — Part 8 - Chris Minns does not care - March 2022

29 March 2022 

Urgent Plea to the Kogarah Electorate Office for a Meeting with Chris Minns

By 29 March 2022, I was no longer simply asking for assistance.

I was pleading for intervention.

Not just because of what my employer and insurer had done, but because the very regulators responsible for enforcing workplace safety and workers compensation compliance in New South Wales — SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW — were refusing to act.

This email was sent directly to the Kogarah electorate office of Chris Minns, who at the time was the Leader of the Opposition and my elected representative.

And again, there was notice.

Clear notice.

Repeated notice.

Urgent notice.

I explained that I was exhausted, traumatised, unable to sleep, and terrified for my life. Yet even in that condition, I was still caring for others — supporting family, helping friends, and trying to thank neighbours who had shown kindness during one of the darkest periods of my life.  

By this point, I understood something that many psychologically injured workers eventually discover:

When psychosocial harm is involved, the system often stops functioning as protection and instead becomes part of the harm itself.

The issue was never an employment dispute. Is was a WHS issue that I raised at my work. 

Now I was explicitly raising concerns about regulatory failure — that SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW were not enforcing compliance, not properly investigating, and not intervening despite repeated warnings and escalating evidence.

I was asking my elected representative to help because regulators with statutory responsibilities were failing to act while the harm continued escalating.

The final section of the email is difficult to reread now because it shows how serious the situation had already become:

“Please let Cheryl know I need that meeting with Chris now to save my life.”  

And then:

“I need inclusion to happen asap before I lose everything, including my life. I’m serious.”  

They were warnings sent to a parliamentary electorate office.

Warnings sent while describing ongoing regulatory inaction.

Warnings sent while repeatedly asking for intervention before irreversible harm occurred.

It was serious psychological and financial abuse! It was torture! It was coercive control! It’s the equivalent of domestic violence in the workplace! 

This is why the “Notice After Notice” series matters.

Because these emails show a chronology of repeated escalation, repeated requests for help, repeated disclosures of risk, and repeated opportunities for intervention.

And despite all of that, the silence (and indifference) continued…

And so did the institutionalised wage theft…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 299

Notice After Notice — Part 7: Obstruction is against the law! - March 2022

28 March 2022

 

“I’m frightened”: The email to Professor Hayden Ramsay, Cheryl Han and Chris Minns

By 28 March 2022, I had stopped believing anyone was going to voluntarily do the right thing.

But I still kept asking.

I kept pleading.

I kept documenting.

This email was sent to:

• Professor Hayden Ramsay, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Ethics) at the University;
• Chris Minns, Member for Kogarah and later Premier of New South Wales; and
• Cheryl Han from the Kogarah electorate office.

I was reporting that I had effectively been cut off from proper reporting pathways inside my own workplace.

I wrote that a WHS executive staff member had blocked my access to Service Central and other communication channels, preventing me from reporting what I described as ongoing misconduct by HR executives, the return-to-work coordinator, and WHS management.  

Regarding obstruction, see also http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/04/blocking-mobbing-and-truth-2020.html and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/04/employment-lawyer-3-part-5-unacceptable.html

I explained that I could not even get through to Professor Hayden Ramsay’s office directly.

I described having to hide my phone number simply to leave a voicemail with his executive officer after repeated failures to get through normally.  

That is what this had become.

Not workplace support.

Not injury management.

Not safety.

A worker trying to find any remaining pathway to be heard.

Weeks earlier, on 24 February 2022, I had already sent a message to ACU’s “Respect. Now. Always.” crisis number because I no longer knew where else to report what was happening. See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/05/respect-now-always-except-when-i-needed.html 

That service appeared primarily intended for sexual assault and harassment matters involving students. 

But I wrote:

“Where else was I able to formally report this reckless and wilful misconduct…?”  

I was describing ongoing psychological harm, financial harm, isolation, and fear.

At the same time, I was still asking for the basics required under workplace and workers compensation law:

• implementation of my injury management plan;
• contact with my GP;
• proper return-to-work coordination;
• restoration of entitlements; and
• returning to my job at the Strathfield campus library.  

I wrote that my GP was still waiting to be contacted to begin developing a return-to-work plan aligned with the agreed injury management plan.  

That alone should never have been happening this far into a workers compensation process.

Why I Was Contacting My Elected Representative

From October 2021, the reason I was reaching out to my elected representative was because I had already escalated the matter to the authorities that were supposed to protect workers.

I had reported the workplace health and safety issues.

I had reported the ongoing harm.

I had escalated the matter to SafeWork NSW, the regulator responsible for enforcing workplace health and safety laws.

I had also escalated the conduct of the insurer to SIRA NSW, the regulator responsible for overseeing the workers compensation scheme.

Yet the situation continued.

The injury management plan remained unimplemented.

My treating doctor was still waiting to be contacted.

The return-to-work process that was supposed to support recovery had not commenced.

My entitlements remained withheld.

The financial harm continued to escalate.

The psychological harm continued to escalate.

And the very systems that were supposed to provide protection appeared unwilling to intervene.

That is why I sought help from my local Member of Parliament, Chris Minns, because there had been a serious failure of regulatory oversight.

I was asking for help because the regulators themselves had become part of the problem.

After years of trying to resolve the situation through the proper channels, I was left doing something no injured worker should have to do:

Begging an elected representative to help ensure that workplace safety laws and workers compensation obligations were actually enforced by the regulators SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW. 

Attached to that same email was a SafeWork NSW poster explaining what should happen when a worker is injured.

The contrast is impossible to ignore.

 

According to the poster:

1. Tell your employer.
2. See your doctor.
3. Recover at work.

I had already done those things.

What I was still waiting for was the system to do its part.

I also warned Professor Ramsay that my family may be resubmitting their formal complaint after what I described as harassment, privacy breaches, and distortion of facts involving HR executives.  

I specifically asked that it not be pushed back through the same internal processes again.

Because by then, trust in those processes had collapsed. See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/07/intimidating-family-as-community.html

And near the end of the email, I wrote something that still stays with me:

“I’m frightened, so please take these complaints seriously, before it’s too late.”  

I attached medical documentation.

I attached signed consent forms authorising contact with my treating professionals.

I attached evidence showing ongoing trauma linked to workplace victimisation.  

I also wrote:

“I’ve exhausted every avenue for help to assert my employee and human rights.”  

And still, nothing meaningful changed.

This was not a failure of notice.

It was notice after notice after notice.

Sent to university leadership.

Sent to elected representatives.

Sent while I was explicitly stating I was frightened and traumatised.

And still, the silence continued.

And so did the institutionalised wage theft…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 298. 

A reminder of what got me here: 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/05/i-advise-you-make-workers-compensation.html

Notice After Notice — Part 6 : Email to Chris Minns’ Kogarah Electorate Office - March 2022

24 March 2022

By late March 2022, something had changed.

In the beginning, I had still believed people would listen if I explained things clearly enough. I believed that if those in positions of authority understood the seriousness of what was happening, there would be intervention, humanity, and accountability.

At first, the responses coming from the Kogarah electorate office had seemed respectful and even hopeful. There was at least the impression that someone was listening.

But by 24 March 2022, that feeling had almost disappeared.

The silence had become heavier.

The avoidance more obvious.

And the consequences in my life were becoming critical.

That morning, I emailed Cheryl Han from the Kogarah electorate office again.  

I was no longer casually requesting assistance from my elected representative, Chris Minns.

I was asking for an urgent meeting because my situation was deteriorating and I did not know how much longer I could hold everything together on my own.

I wrote:

“My request for a meeting with Chris is urgent. Please put me on the calendar for the closest availability and let me know the timeslot.”  

By that stage, I had already spent years trying to navigate processes properly.

I had reported concerns.

I had attempted internal resolution.

I had engaged regulators.

I had continued trying to communicate respectfully, despite the escalating harm.

But instead of resolution, I experienced delay, exclusion, silence and procedural avoidance, especially from SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW. 

The final sentence in that short email captured where I had emotionally arrived:

“It’s human cruelty.”  

There comes a point where prolonged neglect stops feeling “administrative” and starts feeling deeply inhuman.

The same day, I also wrote to Professor Hayden Ramsay, who at the time was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Ethics) at the University.

I told him plainly that the “ongoing neglect and exclusion” was causing me to “fall into depression.”  

I described what was happening as:

“psychological, emotional and financial abuse.”  

And that was the reality.

By then, this was no longer simply a dispute about workplace processes or workers compensation administration.

The harm had spread into every part of my life.

I was trying to secure housing.

Trying to survive financially.

Trying to preserve my dignity.

Trying to stop the complete collapse of my future while still being excluded from meaningful engagement about my own employment and wellbeing.

I also referenced the university’s public messaging about ethics, safety, care, integrity and community.

At the same time privately, I was begging people to intervene while my health deteriorated and my life became increasingly unstable.

The distress was already visible. There were no hidden warning signs.

These were direct written pleas for intervention, engagement and humanity.

I was telling senior people — repeatedly — that the situation had become unbearable.

And still, the notices continued.

Notice after notice.

Email after email.

Without meaningful action.

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 297

——

There was something else weighing on me as I wrote these emails.

Earlier that year, I had gone to the Kogarah electorate office seeking help. By then, this was no longer simply a workplace matter. It was an urgent issue involving SafeWork NSW, SIRA NSW, regulatory failure, and the devastating consequences that failure was having on my life.

I was told that Cheryl Han was not there because she was on carer’s leave caring for her mother.

She had every right to be.

And yet hearing that stirred something in me that I could not ignore.

It brought me back to 2019, when I first raised concerns about psychosocial hazards in my workplace.

Back to when the Library Associate Director, took carer’s leave to care for her father.

I never begrudged the library associate director that leave. I never begrudged Cheryl hers.

Family matters.

Parents matter.

People should be able to care for those they love.

The problem was that I could not reconcile the contrast between the compassion and protection afforded to others and what happened to me.

When I reported workplace harm and asked for a safe work environment, the issue was not resolved locally. Instead, I was handed over to Human Resources without consultation. The concerns I raised were never treated as the serious work health and safety matter they were.

What followed was not support.

What followed was escalation.

The bullying and harassment I had reported did not stop.

The discrimination became worse.

The exclusion became worse.

The retaliation became worse.

And eventually, even my family’s privacy was dragged into it.

That remains one of the most disturbing aspects of this entire story.

My family had nothing to do with the workplace issue I had raised.

They had nothing to do with my request for a safe work environment.

Yet private family matters became known, discussed and ultimately weaponised in a process that should never have involved them at all.

It was not enough that I was already dealing with the consequences of reporting workplace harm.

It was not enough that I was already experiencing discrimination, harassment and the loss of my health.

My family’s privacy was violated as well.

That is why they made a formal complaint to the University.

Their own privacy had been breached in circumstances that should never have occurred.

——

By March 2022, these events no longer existed as separate memories. They had become part of a single pattern, where the rights, dignity and wellbeing of some people appeared worthy of protection, while mine could be disregarded.

A pattern where people who participated in, enabled, defended or remained silent about what had happened continued to enjoy the protection of their workplace rights and entitlements.

Meanwhile, I was fighting for the most basic things.

My health.

My livelihood.

My dignity.

My future.

My life.

The right to care for my own family without it being used against me.

The right to have my privacy respected.

The right to have my family’s privacy respected.

The right to ask for a safe work environment without triggering years of retaliation and harm.

That was what sat behind every email I wrote in 2022.

That was what sat behind every request to meet with my elected representative.

I was asking for somebody, anybody, with the authority to intervene, to finally acknowledge what had happened and bring it to an end.

Instead, I found myself writing another email.

Another notice.

Another plea.

Trying to explain a level of suffering that should never have followed a request for a safe work environment.

And increasingly, it felt as though the people who could stop it had simply decided not to.