The Ethics of Silence - April 2022

By 2022, I had already spent months pleading for the implementation of a lawful injury management plan, for a safe return-to-work process, for basic protections that should never have required begging in the first place.

When I directly reached out on LinkedIn to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics, I wrote to him as a long-serving staff member in crisis.

In my message, I wrote about the implementation of the injury management plan being “non-negotiable” because it was both “the law” and “my employee and human right.”  

I wrote about the fear of losing my home because my income and entitlements had been withheld.  

I wrote about the university’s failure to provide a safe work environment and my concerns regarding the conduct of senior staff.  

I wrote about the emotional and psychological toll this had taken on me and my family.  

And I pleaded, again, for someone to finally intervene before more damage was done.

As I’ve already written, he read the message, viewed my profile, then he blocked me on LinkedIn.

That was it.

Just silence.

What made it even harder to process was what was happening publicly at exactly the same time.

While I was privately pleading for help from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics, his LinkedIn feed was filled with posts about:

• flourishing at work,
• ethics,
• wellbeing,
• diversity,
• culture,
• mental health,
• and what it means to live a “good life.”  

One post discussed whether “flourishing at work” was possible.  

Another spoke about ethics being “an exceedingly practical subject” connected to mental health and “what’s real.”  

Another discussed “ethics and culture” in workplaces.  

I remember staring at those posts in disbelief - viewed via a friend’s LinkedIn account because I had been “blocked” by the DVC of Ethics. 

Privately, I was living the exact opposite of everything being promoted publicly.

There was no flourishing.

There was no psychologically safe workplace.

There was no practical ethics.

There was no meaningful intervention.

And there was certainly no dignity in what was happening to me.

What affected me most was what the blocking represented.

It represented an institution choosing distance over due diligence and respectful engagement.

“Risk management” by not complying with statutory obligations, over humanity.

Image over accountability.

Because by that point, I had repeatedly raised concerns regarding workplace safety, injury management failures, statutory non-compliance, and the withholding of my entitlements.

I was trying to survive financially.

I was trying to preserve my health.

I was trying to save my home.

And instead of meaningful engagement from someone responsible for ethics oversight, I experienced disappearance.

A Final Reflection

As I look back on this period, I often think about a simple question raised in an article titled  “What If We Applied the Golden Rule at Work?”⁠. 

The article explores a principle that most of us learned as children: treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.

Simple in theory.

Yet the author argues that workplaces frequently drift away from this basic ethical standard. Decisions become driven by power, hierarchy, process, self-interest, or organisational protection rather than empathy, fairness, and respect for the human beings affected by those decisions.

The article asks readers to imagine what workplaces would look like if people genuinely applied the Golden Rule in their daily interactions, particularly when dealing with conflict, disagreement, vulnerability, or power imbalances.

Reading it, I could not help reflecting on my own experience.

Throughout this ordeal, I repeatedly asked for things that I believe most people would want for themselves if they found themselves injured, distressed, and dependent on others acting ethically.

I wanted communication.

I wanted honesty.

I wanted transparency.

I wanted a safe workplace.

I wanted my lawful entitlements respected.

I wanted somebody to listen.

I wanted somebody to care.

And perhaps most importantly, I wanted to be treated as a human being.

When I contacted the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics, I was seeking the very principles that universities, leaders, and ethics programs often promote publicly: dignity, respect, compassion, fairness, and concern for the wellbeing of others.

Instead, after my message was read and my profile viewed, I found myself blocked.

For someone already struggling under the weight of prolonged workplace harm, financial devastation, isolation, and institutional silence, it carried a deep message.

It left me wondering whether the Golden Rule still had a place inside the institutions that teach ethics, speak about human flourishing and dignity, and encourage their students to become leaders of integrity.

If the positions were reversed, if another member of staff had reached out to me in obvious distress, fearing the loss of their home, their livelihood, their health, and their future, I know I could not simply have turned away.

And perhaps that is the question that continues to stay with me:

If we truly applied the Golden Rule at work, how different would this story have been?

That moment also forced me to confront another devastating question:

What does “ethics” actually mean inside institutions when a distressed worker pleading for lawful protections becomes something to block out rather than respond to?

That question still remains…

While the institutionalised wage theft continues…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 302

Reference:

Yamada, D. (2010, 18 October). What if we applied the Golden Rule at work? at 

https://newworkplace.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/what-if-we-applied-the-golden-rule-at-work/ 

Should we apply Practical Ethics or Practical Wisdom to such systemic issues? 

 

Once We Repaired Things — Part 7 - Non è una buona giornata

Montalcino

I arrived in Montalcino in the late afternoon.

The bus wound slowly up the mountain roads, and I remember looking out the window in disbelief at how beautiful it all was. The light was beginning to change. The town was glowing softly against the hillside, and as we drew closer, little lights were starting to switch on across the stone buildings.

It looked unreal.

Ancient. Quiet. Safe.

I had wanted to visit this part of Italy for a very long time, and when I finally arrived in Montalcino, I walked slowly up the main street toward the clock tower, trying to take it all in. I still remember the feeling of standing there looking upward at the old stone buildings and narrow streets, dragging my suitcase behind me over the incline while trying to work out where my bed and breakfast was located.

I was exhausted.

Not holiday tired.

Life tired.

And despite the beauty surrounding me, I was carrying far more with me than luggage. 

When I finally found the bed and breakfast, I remember climbing the steep stairs to the entrance with my bags and feeling completely overwhelmed by where I was. I stood there in awe.

I had travelled to one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The lights were coming on across the hillside. People were gathering in restaurants and piazzas. Life was unfolding all around me. Yet I felt completely alone, not only because I was travelling by myself, but because the people whose support mattered most seemed unreachable. The beauty was real. The loneliness was real too.

And instinctively, like most people do when they experience something beautiful, I wanted to share it with someone.

So I took a photo.

I believe it was the clock tower near where I was staying. The lights were coming on, the streets were glowing softly, and I felt something close to peace, even if only briefly.

I sent the photo to Paul.

Partly because he was of Italian background. Partly because he was planning to travel to Italy himself not long after me. But mostly because I wanted to share the moment with someone who would appreciate it. 

It was simply:

“Look how beautiful this is.”

But sometime afterward, I realised I had been blocked. Sitting there alone on the other side of the world, that feeling was horrific.

In that moment, I felt profoundly alone. It felt eerie. 

When someone suddenly cuts off communication without explanation during a period when you are already emotionally vulnerable, it feels shattering.

It frightened me.

What made it worse was that I was already not okay before I boarded the plane to Italy.

I hadn’t travelled there because life was wonderful.

I travelled there because I needed to escape.

At that point, I was already struggling under the weight of what had been happening professionally. I was exhausted from trying to hold myself together inside an increasingly unsafe work environment while simultaneously carrying grief, confusion, isolation, and unresolved personal pain.

I now understand it for what it was.

A flight response.

I fled.

But what I discovered in Montalcino was something deeply unsettling:

you can travel thousands of kilometres away and still not escape what is happening to you.

Even there, surrounded by beauty, I could not sleep properly.

I had nightmares while I was in Italy.

Nightmares about work.

Nightmares about returning to Sydney.

Looking back, those nightmares and that dread feel almost like a warning from my own nervous system. I couldn’t have known what lay ahead, but somewhere inside me I already sensed that I was not safe.

At the time, I didn’t yet understand why my body seemed so frightened all the time. The worst of what was going to happen professionally hadn’t even occurred yet. The institutional escalation, the retaliation, the worsening psychosocial harm, the isolation and procedural cruelty that would follow — all of that still lay ahead.

The worst of what was going to happen personally hadn’t occurred yet either. 

But somewhere underneath it all, my nervous system already knew something was terribly wrong.

I was carrying dread long before I had language for it.

Most mornings, I would sit by the window in the dining room of the bed and breakfast with my journal.

The view was breathtaking.

Beyond the piazza below were restaurants beginning their day, stone buildings catching the morning light, and beyond them the rolling Tuscan hills stretching endlessly into the distance. It was everything I had imagined Tuscany would be.

People travel across the world hoping to find places like this.

And yet I would often sit there crying, because what was happening inside me had travelled there too.

I was carrying everything with me.

The uncertainty.

The loneliness.

The fear.

The grief.

The growing dread about returning home.

I could not leave any of it behind in Sydney.

It sat beside me every morning while I wrote in my journal and looked out across one of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen.

Giulia, the owner of the bed and breakfast, was kind. She would smile and say to me, “Ma Vicki, è una buona giornata.”

And she was right.

It was a good day.

The sun was shining. The countryside was magnificent. I was in a place I had dreamed of visiting for years.

“Lo so, Giulia,” I said.

“I know. But not in my heart.”

That was perhaps the saddest part.

I could see the beauty.

I simply could not feel it.

What lives in your heart, your soul and your spirit doesn’t disappear simply because you board a plane. It comes with you.

And despite being surrounded by beauty, I felt completely alone.

I didn’t want to go home.

But I couldn’t stay there either.

Looking back now, what unsettles me most is that the feeling I experienced in Montalcino was not entirely new. The fear I felt when communication was abruptly cut off touched something deeper. Soon after, I would experience greater forms of exclusion and silencing in both my personal and professional life. 

With my university employer, it was while trying to raise concerns about psychosocial safety and workplace harm. Different circumstances. Different people. But the same unsettling feeling of having decisions made around me while my own voice seemed to disappear from the narrative. The truth. 

With Paul, what hurts most is the deeper realisation that I was never really seen properly to begin with.

I had already shared enough of myself for someone to understand that I was carrying significant grief and hurt. I had already indicated that my life experience wasn’t  simple and that I was trying very hard to navigate it honestly and tread carefully this time.

And yet, instead of actually getting to know me over time, I felt as though assumptions were made about who I was based on other people, other experiences, other projections that had nothing to do with me.

I became a version of somebody else. Not myself.

That is an incredibly difficult thing to carry when someone represented your last genuine hope that perhaps there was still emotional safety, authenticity, and kindness left in the world, especially when you’re already drowning elsewhere in your life.

Looking back now, that moment in Montalcino feels almost like a premonition, of what would continue personally, and of what was still to come professionally.

Because over time, the pattern became impossible to ignore.

Blocked personally.

Blocked professionally.

Silenced personally.

Silenced professionally.

Excluded from conversations about my own life.

Reduced to assumptions instead of listened to as a human being.

By the time I boarded the plane home to Sydney, I was deeply frightened…

Of returning to my life.

To be continued…

 

Montalcino - Piazza del Popolo e Palazzo dei Priori

For readers interested in the workplace context, see:  

• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/04/blocking-mobbing-and-truth-2020.html;  
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/what-nteu-decided-to-do-vs-what-it.html;  
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/is-it-safe-to-open-what-that-question.html; and
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-deputy-vice-chancellor-of-ethics.html

Notice After Notice — Part 10 - First Doubts About Chris Minns - April 2022

6 April 2022

“Another Week of Fear and Torture”

By April 2022, I was no longer simply asking for help.

I was documenting survival.

Every email I sent carried the same underlying reality: I was trapped inside a system that had already failed me repeatedly, while the people with the authority to intervene continued to delay, defer, or disappear behind process.

And still, I kept writing.

Still, I kept explaining.

Still, I kept trying to make someone understand how serious it had become.

On 6 April 2022, Cheryl Han, from the Kogarah electorate office, contacted me to say that a scheduled phone meeting with the university had been cancelled and would likely take place the following week instead.  

Email from Cheryl Han, Office of Chris Minns MP, 6 April 2022

The meeting between the Kogarah electorate office and the University was postponed, extending yet another week of uncertainty while I remained without resolution, income security, or implementation of the agreed Injury Management Plan.

Another delay.

Another week.

Another extension of uncertainty while my life, health, employment, and financial security remained suspended.

My response that day came from a place of exhaustion, fear, and desperation after nearly two years of fighting simply to have basic statutory obligations acknowledged.

I wrote:

“It’s another week of fear and torture but I hope the uni are finally learning how serious and unlawful this is.”  

It was the reality of living through prolonged institutional harm while trying to survive a workers compensation system that, in practice, seemed incapable of protecting the worker it was designed for.

I was describing what had happened to me: intimidation, retaliation, psychological harm, and the destruction of safety protections that should have existed from the beginning.

I referenced the conduct of the University’s National Manager of Employment Relations and Safety, Rena Christmann, and the impact her actions had had on both me and my family.  

And underneath all of it is a deeper harm that became impossible for me to ignore.

This is not just any employer.

This is a Catholic university, an institution that publicly speaks about dignity, ethics, mission, and human values.

So I wrote about that too, because what I had experienced stood in complete contradiction to the values the institution claimed to uphold.

I wrote:

“Listening promotes dignity. No one listened and protected me and my entitlements...”  

One of the most damaging parts of prolonged workplace harm is not only the original conduct itself — it is the repeated experience of not being heard afterwards.

Not being protected.

Not being believed.

Not being treated as fully human while trying to explain your own suffering.

At the same time, I was also trying to keep another insurer informed — not because it was their responsibility to carry what the statutory workers compensation system was legally required to provide, but because I was running out of options.

On 12 April 2022, TAL contacted me asking whether there had been any update following the meeting involving my local MP and the university.  

By then, even my income protection insurer was aware that my elected representative, Chris Minns, had become involved in what should have been a straightforward statutory workplace injury matter.

That should never have been necessary.

TAL was not responsible for enforcing workers compensation law in New South Wales.

TAL was not the regulator.

TAL was not responsible for ensuring that an employer complied with an Injury Management Plan.

And TAL was not responsible for enforcing return-to-work obligations under the statutory scheme.

That responsibility belonged to SIRA NSW and the broader regulatory system that was meant to protect injured workers.

But instead of enforcement, what I experienced was repeated shutdowns, dismissals, delays, and procedural deflection while my situation deteriorated financially and psychologically.

The regulator that was supposed to ensure compliance instead became another source of distress.

That is why I had gone to my elected representative. Because the statutory system itself had failed to function.

In my reply to TAL, I explained that the meeting had again been postponed and that the ongoing delays had become unbearable.  

I wrote:

“The last thing I’ve had a chance to do is look after my health and well-being in all of this. For me, it was another week of prolonged torture.”  

That captures the reality of what prolonged regulatory failure can do to a human being.

When a worker is left without enforcement of basic statutory protections, without income security, without safe return-to-work implementation, without effective intervention from regulators, the harm compounds.

The psychological injury does not remain static.

It escalates.

The financial pressure escalates.

The fear escalates.

And the isolation escalates.

I also wrote about the Injury Management Plan that had already been agreed to, and the fact that the recommendations supporting a safe return to work had never been properly implemented despite medical support and consultation processes already existing.  

I’m still trying to return safely to my HEW8 library role at the Strathfield campus.

That is important.

Because despite everything that had happened, despite the trauma, despite the fear, despite the escalating distress, I’m still trying to recover and return to work.

I’m not trying to destroy the institution.

I’m trying to survive it.

And yet the system continued to behave as though enforcing basic obligations was optional.

One line in that email captures just how psychologically overwhelmed I had become:

“I need to find outlets to remain sane. But I’m frightened.”  

Looking back now, I can see how much pressure I was under by then.

Not only financially.

Not only professionally.

But psychologically.

I was living inside prolonged uncertainty, prolonged non-compliance, prolonged isolation, and repeated institutional silence while trying to fight systems far larger and more powerful than myself.

And still, even in that state, I thanked the electorate office for defending my employee rights.  

Because at that point, I still wanted to believe someone might intervene.

I still wanted to believe somebody in authority might finally listen before the damage became irreversible.

But by now, I had my doubts.

This email was yet another notice.

Another warning.

Another documented moment where people in positions of political, institutional, and regulatory responsibility were being told clearly that serious harm was occurring.

And the notices just kept coming.

But the institutionalised wage theft continued…

NB: I never got an update after my elected representative’s meeting with the VC. I got silence. I found out when that meeting took place with everyone else - on Chris Minns’ social media account. 

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 301 and 304